Unexpected Consequences

At this time yesterday, I was merely excited to have finished my first self-designed sweater.

Today? Well today I have test knitters and patterns to write in different sizes. My little sweater got a really nice reception and other people want to make it. Imagine that!

I remember when I was in elementary school, the hot topic among educators was the achievement gulf in math and science between boys and girls. I went to a fairly stellar school that was both highly demanding and highly nurturing, but it was still apparent that, by the time students reached high school, math and science were a boy's club. And much as I wish I had been the exception to the rule, I wasn't. I made decent enough grades (ok, well maybe not in advanced chemistry, sorry Ms. N), but my heart wasn't in it. And it had been earlier on. Whether or not it was the style of teaching is something I don't feel fit to judge, I only know that if the choices were between Moby Dick and plotting something on a graph, I chose the former (even though I didn't actually like Moby Dick).

Fast forward to adulthood. An adulthood that did not have the benefit of a single math or hard science course in college. And where did I end up?

Computer programming. Soft, front-end computer programming, but computer programming nonetheless. Also confectionery, which any pastry chef will tell you depends more on science than creativity. And now, pattern design. While I'd like to believe that my shining prose will carry the pattern, the truth is that, provided the math is correct, no one will care about the flowery words.

This has gotten me thinking about math education because, in my wildest dreams, I would not have spent my adult life interacting in any way with math and science. I was going to edit books or magazines. Or write them. But logic loops, hygroscopy, and geometry? Please! Those things were for math people.

Now I deeply believe that applied math and science aren't worth a damn without the basics (I am a big believer in the basics: thou mayest not read Henry Miller if one has not read Chaucer first), but I wonder if my experience with math and science would have been different if the disciplines had been presented as not merely the precursors to careers in hard sciences. I'm not saying I might not have enjoyed the life of a nuclear physicist, I'm just saying it might have been a stretch. But I didn't know how big a part chemistry played in cooking until I had to start doing it.

And, forgive me, tenured English professors, but my brain has to work a lot harder with far more satisfactory results, when I challenge it with math and science. At this point I feel confident reading and understanding what I read, especially as much of that is subjective, but when faced with a problem that has a single solution? My mind delights.

It Gets Better

These days I spend a lot of time in front of the computer crying. If you know me, you know it sometimes doesn't take much: the At&T and Folger's commercials are perennial crying favorites. I like to think emotional freedom is a trait I picked up at home: my dad's a good crier. We're all good criers. Some would say it's an ethnic thing, some would say it's political, I don't know what to think. I just know that it's always been ok to cry and that empathy was never greeted as weakness.

Well, for several years now, the internet has been trying to compete with TV for my tears and I blame Dan Savage. A couple of years ago it was this which just reduced me to a blithering mess. Upon rewatching, nothing has changed.

Now, more recently, it's this, the It Gets Better Project developed by Savage after a spate of suicides by gay or perceived gay teens. In an effort to give these kids some kind of support, gay adults, and quite a handful of straight ones too, have been making videos trying to explain that as crappy as adolescence is, especially if you feel on the outside of your society, it gets better as you get older and get to make your own decisions about where you live, whom your peers are, and how you want to live your life. To say this stuff is heartbreaking is a massive understatement.

However isolated I have ever felt (and I'll lump you readers in here with me - we're all super lucky), it doesn't even register on the same scale. While my immediate reaction involves fantasies of firearms leveled against those who disagree with me AND SIMULTANEOUSLY act against children whom they perceive as threats, my second reaction is just a sea of helplessness: all I feel that I have to give is money, and while I know the money is useful (donate here), I wish I could DO something. But all I have is compassion. I have nothing meaningful on which to draw and my rage isn't something I think would be therapeutic to share with people in real pain.

I try to understand how some people can be so utterly invested in the thoughts, actions, and lives of others; how they can think it matters so much that they would actively interfere in a stranger's life - I still don't get it. I mean, I've heard the explanations, but it has never rung true for me and so I don't even know how (other than with cleansing fire) to combat it.

So I'd like to thank the people who are making videos, who are sharing their lives with kids who think they have no life left to live. While I know emotion is preventing me from being as cogent as I'd like, I'm going to try and take a quiet moment to believe that not only will it get better for individuals, but for all of us; that we'll reach a time when this sort of abject hate is the exception and not the rule.

1-5

We had one casualty.

Don't worry, buddy, by the 20th, no one will remember you booted on the floor of the bar. Several times.

First of all, I'd like to thank all of my former classmates who admitted, without reluctance or prompting, that they read this blog from time to time. You guys rock!

Friday night saw the Class of '95 out in mighty force for our 15th high school reunion. As a member of the planning team, I am really really pleased so many people showed up. As a member of the giving team, let me urge those who haven't yet made a donation to do so before June 30th. As someone who many a giving season was only able to come up with $19.95, please don't let the fact that it hasn't been a flush year prevent you from giving something.

I'll confess that I was not expecting us to look so good. And I say this because after our 10th reunion, I went home saddened that some of you (ok, fine, the male half of you) were not well adapting to adult life. But you've tucked in your shirts, shaved your faces, styled your hair that flatters your new hairlines, and returned to the gym - would that I could follow that lead. The ladies, well, you guys look fantastic - even the recent moms and the moms of toddlers. I found devoted partner talking to a stunning mother of three and confess I looked her up and down more than I did him (and won't be mad if he did the same). I don't know what they put in the drinking water in Italy, but I want some and I'm willing to pay for it if it yields those results!

But besides everyone looking so great, and the couple of oversees and cross-country surprise visitors, everyone sounded so great. I guess it should go without saying that our resident TV star looked and sounded great, but the greatest part about talking to him was how humble he was and how excited he sounded about having found such a great gig. I just hope he remembers how talented I am and what a great team we once made when he gets approached about making a buddy cop movie. By my count there were, including myself, seven people from my kindergarten class - how cool is that? In the group are three moms and one expectant dad, oh, and the conductor of a major international orchestra. I caught devoted partner chatting up the couple of physics post-docs - predictable. My mouth still waters at the thought of the Italian market experience soon to open thanks to another intrepid 95er. To the new bride who will soon be embarking on a honeymoon to Tanzania, Mauritius, and Hong Kong, my excitement for you is, at the moment, outweighing my extreme jealousy. To the reporter headed to Haiti, please don't drink the water.

I was so happy to see you all. From rebels who became lawyers to flirts who became wonderful husbands and fathers. I know I have a highly pronounced nostalgia tumor, but, for me, knowing that the people I spent my formative years with are passing their adult ones with such grace is an inspiration and a comfort. This reunion was different for me because it was the first one where I allowed myself to realize that time had past. That I wasn't actually just a heartbeat away from 17. That the last lingering bits of identity I thought were tied up in a school weren't really that important. And this allowed me to worry less about telling you that I'm adrift right now - well the ones of you who don't read this - and don't know what comes next. It allowed me to listen more closely and feel more enthusiastically.

I'm really glad we do this every five years. I hope you feel the same way.

Morbid Nostalgia: Two Vignettes

Inspired by high school reunion planning.

1.
Once upon a time there was a boy. A sweet, funny, smart, kind boy with the faults common to teenage boys who are sweet, funny, smart, and kind. His family life wasn't the greatest, the sad tale of a divorce gone very bad and a mother who wasn't quite able to hold up her end of the responsibility bargain in the aftermath. Luckily for the boy he found a mother figure who was more than willing and more than able to bestow upon him the attention that seemed somehow compromised when it came from his father's next wife, however earnest she was. Perhaps the mother figure could be a tad overbearing, but that was a small price to pay for the solid maternal attention.

There was a girl who liked the boy. Liked in a teenage kind of way. The boy and the girl were friendly and then friends. And then. In a teenage kind of way fumblings happened. But also conversation of a teenage sort. Embarrassment. Shyness. Refumbling.

The mother figure did not approve. She may have liked the girl, but she thought the boy could do better. And she wasn't afraid to say so. Someone prettier, perhaps, more deferential, less independent. It always seemed to the girl afterward that the mother figure thought she, the girl, was hitting above her pay grade when it came to associating with the boy.

The boy and the girl were only ever going to be a teenage thing. The mother figure had the potential to be more. So the boy stopped liking the girl. No more conversations. No more fumblings. Nothing, really.

The girl's friends did an excellent job of mocking the boy, mocking the mother figure, cutting ties. Maybe they thought the boy was hitting above his pay grade; maybe they were just being kind.

It was just a teenage thing.

2.
There was a girl who liked a boy. The boy was very very unavailable. But he didn't always act that way. Sometimes he seemed more available; sometimes he seemed very available. Obviously this was not fair to the girl, nor was it fair to the girlfriend, but these are teenagers after all. The girl knew, somewhere deep down, that the boy wanted the girlfriend but wasn't above wanting the girl's attention and sometimes more than that. But she really really really liked the boy.

The girl confided her sadness, her hopes, her mistakes to her friend, the other girl. The other girl tried to be a good friend and not point out the obvious, that the boy had and continued to make a choice and it wasn't the girl. But the other girl didn't have a long history of successful female friendships and didn't always know what to say. She tried to listen, at least for as long as she could simulate interest, and she turned a mostly blind eye when mistakes were made. After all, it was what the girl really really wanted.

One night, though, the boy made a move on the other girl. In front of the girl who liked him so much. It was a clumsy grab at a popular part of the other girl, and the other girl didn't know what to do. She had no interest in the boy, but she was also painfully embarrassed at the situation. Should she loudly call the boy out for untowardly grabbing at her? Should she do nothing? She tried, as best she could in the cramped quarters groups of teenagers can be fond of, to wiggle away. But the damage had been done. The girl knew the boy had tried something with her friend and the other girl, by action or inaction, had done the wrong thing.

Later, the other girl would wonder if she could have acted differently. If female competition was at fault, or if she was intentionally allowing the girl, her friend, to see what a fickle shit the boy was. The other girl couldn't honestly say she handled the situation in the best possible way, but she hoped, fervently hoped, she hadn't acted maliciously towards the girl, her friend.

But it wasn't ever going to be the same after that. The girl was very angry at the other girl. Perhaps she was very angry at the boy, but she liked him so so much that it was probably easier to be angry at the other girl. The anger lay dormant and on the surface things went on as usual. But something was different. When the other girl started a bad relationship on the sly, she didn't tell the girl, her friend. Even though the other girl probably could have used a friend during that time. But the trust had been broken. Later, the girl started a relationship with a new boy that the other girl really really liked. Whether it was payback or an unfortunate coincidence is something no one but the girl knew. And she wasn't talking. Later still, the girl was not nice to the new boy and then there was a new new boy. But by that time the girl and the other girl didn't really talk anymore. At all.

*
A classmate of mine recently wrote a book about the films of John Hughes. I always thought the movies were cute, but I could never really relate. The characters had a teenage experience so far more polarizing than mine. My angst was different and, in fact, bracketed my high school years but stayed mostly out of them. But as a reunion comes up, I think of the people I grew up with, which friendships persevered and which feel by the wayside, through atrophy or by intent. I remarked to one classmate as we sloshed through the rain to the subway station that there wasn't a single person from our class whom I didn't wish well. My pollyanna-ish feelings about high school make me really really want everyone to be happy. For me, time heals most grudges. And I'm in no way a saint, I'm just lazy. At the end of the day, holding a grudge for decades is just too much work.

I know the boys and girls of these stories probably won't read them. But I remember. I remember how important it all seemed at the time and how utterly unimportant it is now. It was high school. These boys and girls are married, starting families, being grown-ups. But I remember. And sometimes, sometimes when I allow myself to roam freely through the less rose-colored halls of history, it makes me sad.