Satellite

The precise cultivation of an interest allows you to be part of something greater than yourself. Even really great people do this.  For example, I hone my interest in contemporary literature so I can feel like I’m part of a scene. When people riff on new novels, I can riff right back.  There’s a masturbatory quality to knowing who won the Pulitzer in 2002 and which bestseller is probably overrated. Everyone has a pet interest; everyone is a freaky fan of something.  In the eyes of others, your interest may label you a snob, but in your own eyes, it makes you special.  Maybe those are the eyes that matter most.  

In the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, teenagers cultivate an interest—dare I say obsession—in The Dave Matthews Band.  They memorize song lyrics and read articles in hopes that Dave himself will recognize that their worship is more religious than anyone else’s.  My friends and I were no exception. We rode the cliché like we were the first group of upper middle class white kids to realize DMB paired well with a certain budding interest.  The most fanatical fans knew every band member’s life story (even the flute player with the gross beard) and fastidiously tracked tour dates.   

The Dave Matthews fan club was so intense with their love that it became equally cool to hate the Dave Matthews Band—a reverse pet interest for the less-mainstream among us.  DMB remains a polarizing issue with a love/hate dichotomy running strong.  Dave Matthews Band?  You mean that no-good, no-talent excuse for music? I can’t believe you like those guys, you uncultured swine of a person.

 

My uncultured Portland friends and I bought expensive tickets to see the Dave Matthews Caravan. Mostly, it was a throwback to adolescence when life’s work amounted to no more than a healthy obsession with the band.  The original tour on Governor’s Island was cancelled because of Irene. Annoying, but I can’t imagine anyone relished the thought of being stranded on Governor’s Island in a storm with thousands of washed-up Dave fans.  The rescheduled concert was on Randall’s Island, a sizeable chunk of land just east of Harlem that I had no idea existed until two weeks ago.  A coworker referred to it as New York’s creepiest island. Whatever that means. 

Although I have never actually seen Dave Matthews play The Gorge—a beautiful amphitheater overlooking the river that separates Oregon from Washington—I knew Randall’s Island to be a downgrade. The view of the 103^rd street housing projects didn’t measure up to sunset over the Columbia (cue snobbery). The venue was fine, though. French fries were inexplicably sold in plastic dog dishes and foam “moon mats” were available for rent because seating was concrete not grass.  As a general rule, if I’m lapping up fries like a puppy on a moon mat, I’m happy enough.  

The concert ran from three to eleven with three acts: DMB, Dispach and Brandi Carlile. Dispatch is more of an East Coast thing, I think. Our high school mascot was the General, so my friends and I knew that one song…The General. Other than that, we bopped along surprised by the fans who were there solely for Dispatch.  I’m sure being a member of the Dispatch cult is just as satisfying as being a member of the DMB cult, but I’d never known this one existed.   

My friend Claire was in a unique position.   It’s a possibility that Claire was the only person on Randall’s Island who was there to see Brandi Carlile—the opening, opening act.  Claire hadn’t originally bought a ticket to see DMB on Governor’s Island because she’s on neither side of the dichotomy. Like a normal person, she doesn’t care that much.  When she heard that Brandi was a part of the new Randall’s Island line-up, she started to care very much.  Apparently, Claire is totally obsessed with Brandi Carlile, a country-singing lesbian from Washington State whom she’d already seen multiple times in concert.  And will be seeing again next Friday in Manhattan.  But fans do that kind of thing. 

In the end, Dave put on a good show, but nothing compared to the spectacle that was Claire during Brandi.  Never had I seen my friend so excited.  I admired the individuality of her cultivated interest.  Brandi took the stage early in the afternoon. Very few people left their moon mats. Claire sprung up and started shouting, dancing around until the rest of us finally followed suit.  She told me to feel her hand; it was quite literally shaking.  Being a supportive friend, I pushed my way to the front with Claire where she gazed up into the eyes of her guitar-playing girl-crush.  

“Okay. Get ready. I’m gonna scream ‘I love you, Brandi.’ Really loud. She has to know.”

“Okay.” I took a step back. 

“I LOVE YOU, BRANDI!”

We danced to Brandi’s set, which was actually awesome.  Claire gripped my hand for most of the forty minutes, then turned to me:

“OH! I forgot you were there!”

Fandom blinds. 

By the end of the set, Brandi had the crowd convinced. People were clapping along to her breathy voice. Men were bemoaning her status as a lesbian.  I admired Claire for being a fan of the least popular act.  When Dave came on, I realized that my little cluster mouthing lyrics was a cluster among hundreds.  I also noticed that most of the clusters were made up of 16-year-old Jewish boys.  In questionable company.  

But still. An interest is a connection. Claire to Brandi and us to Dave and a summer camp full of undulating Jews.  Dave Matthews is old news, but the songs sound the same as they did when we were sixteen jamming out in assorted basements. There’s something powerfully comfortable about that. The music connects us back to our roots in a way that feels more authentic than sipping Stumptown Coffee.   Although jury’s still out as to whether that’s worth $115, it’s definitely worth something.

Playing God

My digital prowess peaked around age 12 when I ruled over Roller Coaster Tycoon.  This was in the late nineties when tech-savvy meant popping a cd-rom into your basement PC and crossing your toes it worked.  We tucked our prized games into CD pouches and meticulously cared for them.  A scratch meant malfunction, and who had $29.99 to buy a new copy? No one cared if you could master Excel or if your Outlook calendar was color-coded, but the creation of the perfect digital amusement park carried major cache—at least among my friends whose cool factor was as debatable as my own.  Having unwittingly burgeoned into a tech-misfit, I miss the days of Roller Coaster Tycoon when I hubristically called myself an expert.

Roller Coaster Tycoon hit the market years after Oregon Trail, the nostalgia-inducing classic that was even more crucial to the coming-of-age experience if you happened to grow up in Oregon. The Oregon Trail is really all we’ve got on which to hang our coonskin caps.  Oregon Trail was simple: ford the river and reach the promise land sans dysentery and with plenty of buffalo jerky. My drug of choice, Roller Coaster Tycoon, was just as retrospectively bizarre as its precursor, but with more nuance and better graphics.

The game occupied hours and hours of my pre-teen agenda.  Before school, after school.  Even during school, the screens and sound effects of Roller Coaster Tycoon spun through my mind like a bad trip as I strategized and awaited the end of the day when I would resume my saved game. When I was supposed to be doing my homework or chanting my Bat Mitzvah Torah portion, I was building digital amusement parks. 

Being two extremely stubborn and bossy children, my brother Josh and I could not play together nicely.  The solution was fifteen-minute shifts with the mouse, regulated by our mother. Angsty cries of “Mooooom, his 15 minutes are uuuuup” reverberated through our creaky home until the offender relinquished control.  As the older sibling, I usually clicked well into minute 17.   

Eventually, Josh got an Xbox, I got blue eye shadow and the days of cd-roms were over.  It was a brief, fruitful period in our lives marked by the ability to play God.  The gaming trend at the time was odd: child creates then rules over some sort of digital world. Parks, cities, homes and amusement parks. The success or failure of the realm is entirely in your hands; we were power-hungry.   Josh had a game called Tropico in which you are the socialist dictator of a Cuba-esque island. He bought all the expansion packs. The premise makes me wonder what agenda these game makers were promoting.   My brother’s obsession with this game makes me wonder about his own political ambitions. That’s mostly beside the point.

The premise of Roller Coaster Tycoon was to create a high-functioning amusement park. I had no predilection for amusement parks, nor did I have more than a fleeing interest in planning or money, yet I was obsessed with every detail of my digi-parks. Or, I was obsessed with playing God during a time in life when most things—like my mutating body—were wildly beyond my control. 

Obviously, there are many details that go into the creation of an amusement park. If there weren’t, I like to think I would have avoided early-onset Carpal-Tunnel.  As park creator, you handle the finances of the park and learn the ins and outs of basic economics. You landscape.  You create roller coasters with steep drop-offs and upside-down loops.  Don’t forget to strategically place funnel cake stands so your lego-like patrons spend extra money at your park.  But with funnel cake and roller coasters come nausea. So, hire enough handymen to mop up the tiny little piles of vomit scattered around your park. This is the real world, man.

Emma and I have been friends since kindergarten. In our formative years, we played—then perverted—many games together.  In our younger days, Ken raped Barbie; years later, our computerized amusement parks became digi-death camps.  Bored with benevolent rule, we opted instead to rule our parks like Soviet Russia.  We experimented with creating no bathrooms and hiring no handymen, wondering just how much vomit could pile up along the paths of our freakshow park.  The answer: a lot.  We created roller coasters with no exits, stranding park-goers atop sky-high rides.  The weird thing is that I think our depraved antics were not entirely uncommon.  Kids are intrigued by the perverse, especially if they can orchestrate it with no real consequences.  Roller Coaster Tycoon—and all its many cousins—gave us the ability to conduct freakish experiments while circumventing the therapist’s office.   If you torture animals, you’re on track to become a psychopath. If you torture little digital people, you’re still mostly normal.

It’s amazing to think  about the hours I spent creating these parks.  Like Facebook in college, Roller Coaster Tycoon wrapped me in its addictive, comfortable arms, allowing me to live in some universe only vaguely related to my own.  Sometimes, this is exactly what we need.

Sexy Is As Sexy Does

In middle school health class we briefly touched on drugs, sex and STDs, but the curriculum skimmed these hot topics in favor of more tepid ones like wellness, emotional control and, in particular, body image.

Our intrepid instructor was Ms. Rankleve, cruelly and obviously renamed Ms. Mankleve by a gang of pre-pubescent boys who were in direst need of health class. She had a long silver mullet, and legend goes that she actually lived in her basement classroom, pushing the desks together at night to form a makeshift cot. As a current middle school teacher, I schedule regular haircuts in hopes that such a rumor never circulates about my living situation.  It was both perfectly fitting and absolutely horrifying that Ms. Rankleve was taxed with our early health education—a job that, if you think about it, should require a stringent screening process.  Then again, our middle school DARE counselor was busted for cocaine possession that same year, so perhaps screening had fallen out of fashion in Portland Public Schools.

I wonder now how Ms. Rankleve wound up a 7^th grade health teacher, a vocation most would just as well avoid. She had no particular talent for straight-talk or compassion, yet was required by profession to spend her days relating life’s most sensitive issues to life’s least sensitive age group.  Short straw or karma, this poor woman never came out on top. 

Lucky for me, my mother had already gifted me a dozen books—mostly illustrated—on the glory of becoming a woman, which I kept on a discrete section of my bookshelf.  Particularly compelling (not to mention instructional) was a cartoon of a smiling tampon lost somewhere deep inside, wondering via thought bubble, “where am I?!” That, and a set of exaggeratedly uneven breasts, the larger one demanding of the smaller one: “catch up, will ya!”  Yes, girls, your lopsided chest is perfectly normal even if you’ve only seen symmetry in Seventeen Magazine. Thanks to such gems from my personal library of womanhood, my carnal education was not solely reliant on Ms. Mankleve’s wealth of knowledge. In high school, I took health by correspondence.

Body image was paramount in the dungeon of health. In particular, we learned an inordinate amount about female body image.  After all, everyone knows men never struggle with such animal insecurities and so have no such need to overcome them.  Looking back, I have the sense we learned more about body image than we did about actually caring for our rapidly-developing bods. One could get the misimpression that it’s okay to be morbidly obese as long as you feel good about it (the technical term is Large and in Charge).  You could leave middle school thinking that a positive body image trumps healthy eating, good hygiene and regular exercise. Though overkill, the discussion of female body image was more important than our little minds could grasp: eating disorders were quickly becoming fly like flare-leg jeans and boys made innocuous comments about our curves that turned out to be forever damaging. 

At this point, though, I’m pretty tired of talking about female body image.  I’m as much into female empowerment (via body, via whatever) as the next women’s college graduate, but after a certain point we’re only rehashing more of the same. Talk comes easier than action; more is said than done.  

Women are obsessed with their bodies—slaving away to perfect them, leering at our shapely peers like creepy homeless men to see how our fleshy parts measure up. The story goes like this: Popular media feeds women unattainable versions of themselves, young men come to expect this, and young women seek to carve the vision through any means necessary.  Unless you’ve been living under a mossy rock in Central Wyoming, you’re probably hip to all this, but it’s a true story nonetheless.  In college every third woman had an eating disorder—the gym and cafeteria the breeding grounds for such perilous behavior.  Thin is in, obviously.

I’ve never had significant body image concerns, and I’ve also never been remarkably thin. The correlation here is rather evident.  I’m content saying yes to more gummy bears and dating men who prefer curves to angles—3D to 2D vision.  It might be because I’m lazy, but I’ve never even almost developed an eating disorder.  This is not to say I’m entirely healthy about all things corpus: I strive for smaller sizes, compare my breasts to my friends’ and miss the point by spurning yoga that doesn’t burn calories.  So sue me; I’m the product of a flawed society.   

Last weekend, I went to the West Indian Parade in Crown Heights. It was all sparkles and plantains and public pot smoking.  Each West Indian nation had a float followed by dozens of smiling, scantily-clad women shaking it down Eastern Parkway. And I mean really scantily-clad.  And I mean really shaking it. Rhinestone-encrusted bodices made for modest attire, while tiny sparkling stickers smacked on unmentionables were more daring.  My thin white girlfriends and I gawked at the unconcealed sexiness of our West Indian counterparts. Perhaps because of Ms. Rankleve’s heavily-focused curriculum or perhaps because of the “I love my body” temporary tattoos available in my college dorms, I started thinking about body image.  Here were these women whose bodies were far from the variety I see on glossy pages, and yet the level of confidence and sexiness was unparalleled.

I’m in no place to draw any racial or bodily conclusions here—surely, the topic is endlessly nuanced—but the parade made me think about who exactly scribes the Book of Sexy.  Middle School taught us the importance of body image and confidence, but its ingrained structures quickly cut us down to size (pun intended), leaving us to rebuild well into our twenties.  The cultivation of a positive body image is taxing work, but look no further than the West Indian Day Parade for exemplar. 

Seen It?

Jews love Curb Your Enthusiasm in the same way Jews loved Seinfeld. Larry David speaks to the Chosen. At dinner in Soho with my cousin and grandpa the other night, my cousin foolishly attempted conversation by asking, “so, do you guys watch Curb?” Apparently an acceptable abbreviation. 

We both shook our heads.

“Not much of a television watcher,” my grandpa explained in his Texas accent. I smiled in agreement. My cousin didn’t know what to do.  Clearly, he expected a different reaction. He’d remind us of an episode vaguely related to our conversation, and we’d all have a laugh at his smart pop culture connection.  He looked a little bit awkward about the whole thing, but I expertly changed the topic because this happens all the time. I, too, am not a tv watcher. I don’t have the attention span.  I’m not one to download episodes on Hulu or binge on tv on DVD.  I don’ t care that Mad Men is about to start up again or that Maya Rudolph is starring in some new show. My grandpa’s admission of the same was validation. At least it’s a familial thing, weirdos in it together. 

Many women fake things.  I fake tv lust for the sake of romance.  In college, you went to a boy’s dorm room to watch a movie—an activity that required no awkward conversation but got you sitting close together.  But time was cheap in college. In the real world, a 22-minute episode serves the same purpose in a quarter of the time, and everyone’s asleep by midnight.  So, I fake tv lust.

I dated a man who was into the show Party Down.  Walking through the subway tunnel at Union Square, my two girlfriends were talking about 30 Rock.  I hadn’t said anything for a while because I’ve only seen half of two episodes.  Finally, I piped up, trying to reinsert myself into the conversation:  

“Hey, have you guys seen Party Down?”

They stopped dead in the middle of the crowded tunnel.

“Are you kidding?”

“We’ve been seriously telling you to watch Party Down for months, and you’ve completely ignored us. Then, some guy tells you to watch it and you’re asking us if we watch Party Down. This is bad even for you.”

Yeah, I can see why that would be annoying.

I cowered in feminist shame for succumbing to the suggestion of a man when I’d rejected that same suggestion from my girlfriends. They formed a battering ram around me and berated me. I think we missed our train.

People are constantly telling me which shows I really should watch.

“Seriously, you’d love The Wire. It’s about education in the inner city.”

“Seriously, you’d love Parks and Rec. Amy Poehler is amazing. It’s totally your sense of humor.”

Thanks, but no thanks. Not the point. I always appreciate the suggestions—the attempt at personalizing these popular shows for me.  The fact of the matter is that I really just don’t watch tv.  Just like I really don’t eat meat. You can’t force it. 

My aversion to tv is not a pretentious one.  I can easily spend embarrassing amounts of time on Facebook or my favorite blog (hotguysreadingbooks.tumblr.com).  Trust me, when you’re watching Friday Night Lights, I am rarely reading Chekhov.   

A few weeks ago, I was at the gym and scored a machine with a tv.  While sweating and channel surfing, I came across a show that was actually pretty funny and ended up watching the whole episode. A rare occurrence.  A side effect to not watching tv is that I tend to be out of touch with some elements of pop culture. Excited about my hot find, I came home and asked Majken:

“Have you seen this new show How I Met Your Mother?”

She looked at me, stunned.

“That came out seven years ago.”

What Happens in Breakneck Stays in Breakneck

I spent many hours of my childhood hiking and probably twice that many hours complaining about hiking.  The Northwest babies of outdoorsy parents are forced into the woods at an early age, cajoled and bribed in hopes that someday we too self-identify as outdoorsy. Good Portland families hike together, and what yuppie family doesn’t want to be a good one? In my case, the instilling of outdoorsy values was a success (thank you, mom and dad).  In what would be an absolute shock to my frizzy-haired, ten-year-old self, hiking is now something I do of my own free will. As a wannabe adult, I contemplate the pros and cons of the Chaco toe strap and drop fifty bucks on Patagonia hiking shorts because “that stuff really lasts.”  Sometimes, it’s like my mother is a ventriloquist, throwing her own trademark sentences into my confused mouth. I’ve climbed straight up volcanoes and traversed miles of snow. Turns out, not much beats eating a soggy sandwich on a sunny, flat rock.  

New York City is a peculiar choice for someone who enjoys life’s greener side. Somehow, though, all these Northwest kids ended up here—trading mountains for subway cars and wondering about the urbanity of it all.  My Portland friends and I talk a lot about how we really should hike. After all, we come from good Portland stock, and we’ve got something to prove out here.  But we’re lazy and busy and hungover and full of excuses; without the bribes of forceful parents, hiking is lip service.  My friends own a book of day hikes from NYC that functions as coffee table literature more than trail map.  Something’s gotta give, though, because for people who think the woods are dope, sustainable city life depends on getting out there.  After months of cheap talk, we decided to get real and do our parents proud.   

The best laid plans of girls and boys are hatched at East Village bars after a few strong cocktails. Like little drunken chicks, we blindly hatched a plan.  

Much like my freshman year of college, I was overconfident and under-prepared—the most perfect of storms. The plan was simple enough: we’d each get a bagel for fortification, meet under the information sign at Grand Central and ride the Metro North to Breakneck Ridge. It’s cool when the actual name of your chosen hike also serves as overt literary foreshadowing.  If only we had been so foreshadowed. 

The rest of this story is not so interesting.  A five-mile hike turned into a ten-mile hike, and we had enough food and water for three.  A flippant attitude—because, we are hikers—caused us to follow the wrong trail for four miles, only realizing the error of our ways when we were far, far from our destination.  No sunscreen and no bug spray caused a slew of rather obvious problems.  The last two hours of the strenuous hike were spent deliriously contemplating Gatorade flavors and who would keel first if this were The Hunger Games.  Though a misadventure of the finest variety, we managed to have fun. 

Clearly, myriad mistakes were made on our shoddily-executed hike. People spend a lot of time cultivating identity.  We are hyper-aware of how others view us, and do things every day to alter and perfect the vision.  My Portland friends and I want to appear like urban outdoorsy types—equally at home sipping cocktails in the Village and chewing Cliff bars on a mountain.  In a way, this dichotomous identity is valid.  What we failed to admit to ourselves is that in the past few years, we’ve tipped far to the cocktail side of the dichotomy, those Patagonia shorts collecting dust at the bottom of our dresser drawers.  We’re not such hot stuff that we can throw caution to the wind and hit the trail without proper preparation.  If hiking is to be part of our adult identities, we must transition from whiny kid to prepared adult.  No one’s there to bail us out when our water bottle’s dry or to offer us peanut M&M’s and a piggy-back ride. 

This story has plenty of morals, most of which you’ve probably gleaned. Basically, if you’re planning on cultivating an outdoorsy identity that would make your parents proud, bring plenty of water.  

Second Helpings

Second helpings are a perpetual mixed bag of emotion—the fleeting corporeal pleasure of more food versus the knowledge that you are doing the opposite of losing weight just for more of the same. Sexual seconds are also a mixed bag, sometimes a happy improvement from the first and sometimes an unpleasant realization that the first should have been the last. The second drink is typically a good idea, but is often the scapegoat for the less advisable third, fourth and so on.  My second year of teaching, in its fledgling third day, is far more straightforward than seconds of aforementioned basic pleasures.  My second-year of teaching is an undeniable improvement on the first. 

The director of the teaching program from which I graduated in Boston shared in an email yesterday that the first day of his second-year teaching was the best teacher-high he ever experienced.   While he has hundreds more highs from which to draw, so far I agree: It’s the highest I’ve felt in the classroom.

I had it good last year. Thanks to many long Saturdays in Boston, I was prepped in classroom management.  I was painfully familiar with the feel of 5:15 am on a snowy Monday morning.  My preparation far exceeded the TFA summer institute, and I’d already quaked under the eerie pressure of 48 expectant eyeballs on me.  To supplement what I had going into my first year, I landed in a school that is high-functioning and supportive in a way that unfortunately does not resemble all charter schools.   Everyone had my back. Really, I had it way too good to complain. 

And yet.  Being a first-year teacher sucks in a lot of unavoidable ways.  There are things you must endure that every educator before you has also endured—an empathy that improves very little. I was constantly confused, a step-behind my colleagues when we discussed school procedures, schedules and expectations—a never-ending game of catch-up, a bitter learning curve.  Despite everything, if a kid was making farm animal noises it was most likely in my class.  Teenagers sense fear and were two steps ahead of every misstep I took.  As a person who tends to be pretty type-B about things, I felt a new sense of pressure. I charted new terrain like a partially-prepared Marco Polo. 

Starting professional development three weeks ago was awesome. I knew everyone’s names; I knew how to finesse the copy machine and my document camera; I knew which novels kids would adore and abhor.  While not easy by any means, there’s no underestimating the confidence of the familiar. I stepped into class on day one and felt my muscles loosen rather than tighten; perhaps, I would not have to reapply deodorant by 9 am.  I relished a sense of easy confidence, a complete 180 from a year ago. I made lame jokes and turned my back to 25 kids without once fearing revolt.  When I fumbled, I laughed and let the kids laugh with me.   The class ended with positivity and confidence. Destiny told me reading class was her favorite of the day. 

I know a good high when I get one and, baby, I’m a kite.  

Lunchbox

Every August, Majken’s mom and my mom (both named Robin) discussed the budget for our annual back-to-school shopping trip. Being next-door neighbors and vaguely competitive best friends, equity was the only option. So much for discretion or individualized parenting, our block was socialist territory. The parental pipeline ranged anywhere from $100 to $200, which easily trumped anything we made babysitting for four bucks an hour.  Special years like ninth grade tipped the scales closer to two Benjamins, but only after much pleading: “but momuhhh, we’ve outgrown everything, and no one wears baggy jeans anymore. Don’t you want me to have friends?”  Brilliant persuasive reasoning, or so we thought. 

Before hoofing it to the mall, we plotted our spending and asked our dads for an extra $20.  The day was spent contemplating two for one corduroys from the Gap, five for $25 Abercrombie and Fitch underwear with weirdly sexual slogans meant to emblazon pre-teen butts, short denim skirts for imagined parties and tee shirts in one size too slutty.  Spare change scored us brightly colored folders and a fruity scent of Bath and Body Works lotion to keep in our shared locker.

We wanted the most bang for our buck because this was the stuff of fresh beginnings— materialistic armor to protect us from first day of school anxiety while simultaneously aiding in our tireless climb up the social ladder.  Items purchased with our funds gave us something to hold onto as we compared schedules, talked summer and tried to look cute in muted corduroy that seemed all wrong off the rack. We planted our converse-clad feet on the ground while social groups formed from nothing. Middle school and high school are the time-lapse photography version of real life: act quick or you might sit next to a weirdo in biology. 

Several Augusts later (and for three more after that), I drove my blue Subaru from the top of Oregon to the bottom of California just in time to slap sheets on my twin bed, buy a new Norton Anthology for about the same price as my former budget and head to class.  College is about playing blasé, acting like first days are child’s play while trying desperately to make all the pieces fit together without the help of parents.  Share your summer break escapades with floppy boys. Throw on a carelessly perfect ensemble that you definitely did not spend twenty minutes selecting.  Once clad, mine your post-modern vocabulary so you can spit something smart in American Lit. 101b even if you failed to complete the summer reading.  Feel the build-up of newness and the letdown of sameness as you slide back into routine.  But relish these last first days because once college is over, you’re done. 

Or not.

In a turn of events I never saw coming, my life still cycles around first days of school. In fact, I haven’t not had a first day of school since I was two and enrolled in Jewish preschool.  As a teacher, I’m mostly immune to the social pressures of the first day and probably spend too little time contemplating my outfit and doing my hair. I am pleased to say I have grown past inappropriate slogans on my butt, transitioned I hope to something less overt.  Somehow, though, the first day anxiety is still there, laced with pressures even more urgent: crafting seating charts, rolling out procedures that determine classroom functionality, remembering which periods I teach and that it’s important to eat something and pee during the ones I do not.  I must give off the impression that I am stern and no nonsense when in reality I’m scared shitless that I might mess this one up. Learn 75 names in a day or two.  Smile at children, but not too much.

At this point, I’m not sure what it would be like to lead a year-round life like most normal people. While I hesitate to describe the first day of school as pleasant—on either side of the educational fence—it does have this adrenaline that most other days of the year lack. So here we go again: my lunch is packed and my outfit is lying in a deflated LEL shape on my dresser. There are 75 photocopies on my desk, and I’m sleeping in my teacher stare.  Let’s get there.