Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Breaking the (Blogger's) Block

Hey Guys,

Sorry for falling off the face of the blogosphere (is that what the cool web-savvy kids are calling it nowadays?). I’ve been at a loss for the funny—or, at least, anything funny enough to post. Although the return of Dexter to my on-demand menu has boosted my spirits slightly, I can’t shake off the cloud hanging overhead. Sojourner’s feeling a little off her game. I need another white valedictorian of a historically black college to get the world riled up or something.
As a woman of color and writer, I’ve learned that the only way to get over a writer’s block is to…write. So, in the spirit of breaking the cycle (of violence, oppression, and non-bloggery), let’s get warmed up. Here are some things I thought about blogging about, but couldn’t quite get off the ground:

Another female middle-school teacher was arrested for having an affair with a student.
Kelsey Peterson, a math teacher at Lexington Middle School, in Lexington, Nebraska, plead guilty to traveling across state lines with the intent of elicit sex with a minor on July 1. She started having sex with the student when he was 12 years old, and when rumors of their affair became public, she put him in a car and headed to Mexico.

I kid you not.

While there are many ways to look at this, I think you know what Sojourner would say:
If this doesn’t show you how hard it is to find a decent man, I don’t know what does. Year after year, gainfully employed, intelligent (and cray-cray) young women, faced with the bleak truth of single life in a small town, have no choice but to get them while they’re young and impressionable and try to make love work. So blinded by the need for affection, they ignore all laws and common sense, risking jail time and registry as a sex offender just so they can find a moment of true love—it really is enough to make the baby Jesus cry.

I’m suffering from Black Mama Drama to the Maxxxxx.
For those of you who don’t have black mothers, let me explain. While yes, all parents/guardians like to stress out their children and have trouble seeing them as adults when the time comes, the single black mother is a different, fiercer breed of parent. With the strength of Audre Lorde and other blacktivists she has raised her children, living a life of sacrifice from the moment she chose to carry them to term. Currently living in the house that mamadukes built, I have discovered I am damned if I do AND if I don’t. When I “stay out till 3am, keeping whore hours” (yes, this was said) I do not want to spend time with the family; when I stay in on a Sunday afternoon, I am treated to a torrent of anger over my “pigsty of a room”—I have to ask myself if slavery days were ever really over.

The Hunt for Bindi Continues…
With the aforementioned black mama drama, the decision to move down under is becoming clearer and clearer. My E.T.A. is October 21, 2008—just when springtime is coming. (I’m going to laugh in the face of god and nature by experiencing two summer seasons in one year) I’ve overcome the biggest hurdle yet: finding a place to get my hair did. Serengeti Hair and Beauty, in the heart of Sydney, will handle my nappy scandals for the low-low price of $90-$150!!! AAAAAHHHHH!
Um, the blacktress is going to have to start a haircare fundraiser, stat.

I think I’ll begin my search for the Emmy-nominated child-activist with the Taronga Zoo, in Sydney. Perhaps Bindi will be cuddling a koala, and will have her guard down so that I can swoop in and befriend her.


Pizza, Pizza, Pizza!
The rejection by the Biblical Teacher (that’s what I’m calling him now) is still hurting Sojourner, which shouldn’t be the case. While the first weekend of crying and watching Dexter was to be expected, I try my best to live by two mottos: Ass, gas, or grass—nobody rides for free; and Erase, replace, embrace new face. But for some reason, I just really feel like I f-d up a good thing, and I’m going to die alone, found only by authorities after the melted pint of ice cream I was consuming combines with the scent of my rotting carcass to create a smell so foul the neighbors had no choice but to call and complain.

What—too morbid?

I found myself thinking of another time I was jilted by a fella I really thought I had “locked down.” At the time I was ranting on the phone to a friend as I perused the Pizza Hut menu. I figured I had nothing to lose—certainly not pounds—since I’d already relapsed into old habits.
After she and I hung up, I turned my phone back on to order my trans-fat pizza pie for one, and I was suddenly struck by the almost maudlin words on the back of Pizza Hut’s flyer.

“At Pizza Hut we strive for excellence. If we do not give you your receipt or fall short of your expectations in any way, we would like to hear from you.”


Do you know my first thought?
“I wish men were like Pizza Hut.”
Unlike most self-absorbed guys, who say they are “working through some stuff” and/or “going through a lot right now” (striving for excellence in their own way), Pizza Hut is willing to be called out on it! If, Pizza Hut lets me down during their process of achieving excellence, they not only expect, but ask for phone call. As far as I’m concerned, that makes Pizza Hut more attractive than any man I’ve ever known.

Okay. Now I know that blurb was written by a team of clever advertising executives, most of whom minored in psychology, solely to inspire me to say, “fuck you, Dominos! You don’t care about me!” And yet, I felt like Pizza Hut was proving to be more comforting in two sentences than any heterosexual relationship I had ever been in. And that, I thought immediately afterwards, is a damn shame.


So, in summation:
When your black mama drama gets to be too much to bear, and the repeated viewings of your favorite tv show don’t get you going, apply for a work visa in a foreign country and be glad that you can buy pizza anywhere.

Friday, April 4, 2008

NEVER FORGET!!!!

In addition to being a writer, comedian, and blacktress, I am also a grader for an undergraduate film course at my alma mater (yeah, I got my learn on when I was allowed to). I receive papers written by students of all grade levels taking an introductory course in cinema, and I wield my red pen like a sword, cutting into their hopes and dreams—and dropping a little knowledge. What I love about this job is threefold:

1. I get a little extra income coming in (I’m just a freed squirrel trying to get a nut, y’all!)
2. I get to reaffirm my own genius by judging others.
3. I get to guide young Caucasian minds, teaching them how to write thoughtful analysis and become freedom writers.
(sometimes I’m tempted to ask about their great-grandfathers’ slave-owning past, but I remember that that’s inappropriate in academia)

But sometimes when I’m reading these papers, the young people of Diversity University teach me a thing or two … and then I know why Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank, and Dainty Deb find great joy in teaching. (Granted, it’s better when the kids are impoverished and brown--cause then you can really hold your head up high at dinner parties and art openings--but well-tended liberals are better than nothing.)

Take, for instance, the current topic of the papers I am grading. They are for a film course that combines philosophy and psychology (only at Diversity U!), and has students quoting Freud, Nietzsche, and other scholars as they discuss memory and identity in melodrama. Reading 4 pages that manage to analyze the acting chops of Bette Davis and Freud’s definition of melancholy is nothing short of brilliant. However, when I saw that one of the paper topics asked students to comment on the differences between males and females, my eyes perked up with excitement. Here’s the intro to one paper:

"It is not uncommon for men to be baffled by the amount that women seem to ‘obsess’ over details and events, analyzing every word of a conversation that was had a week ago. Beyond this everyday difference and constant source of fighting between the sexes, there is the fact that women are forced to remember, while men are allowed to forget. This is due to cultural expectations and physical realities that have always existed and will always exist, and can be seen clearly in __________ and __________."


Does this student read my blog? How do they have such a firm grasp on female “obsession” and analysis of conversations that were “had a week ago”? The idea of women being forced to remember and men being allowed to forget is the crux of the essay, for in melodramatic films, male characters get to be playboys—or suffer from amnesia—while women always have to remember the magical night, the failed romance, or….THE KID THAT THEY GAVE BIRTH TO.

Reading these essays, I wondered if this was the key to the differences between the sexes: why do I freak out over a random dude not calling me after a few dates? Why do I replay our conversations in my head on loop, wondering what I said that was “too much,” while he skips happily along, going on auditions and playing magic cards—wait, I mean, doing whatever else he does ‘cause I’m not still into Magic-card Guy anyway.

I digress.

Is the reason for my obsession biological? Is it because any physical union with a man could result in our love-, dislike-, or drunken-boredom-child? My DNA says that it’s in my best interest to remember a potential baby daddy, if not for the future health of my offspring, but for the sheer need to avoid appearing on Jerry Springer or Maury Povich.

The student then went on to explain how easy it is for men to forget, and how the display of emotion common in females is not seen as a male virtue:

"though there are some cultures that are more accepting of male emotion than American culture, it is a present factor in every culture to some extent, tracing back to the fact that the male cavemen hunted for food while the women picked berries and tended to the cave and children."

(I kid you not. This is a real excerpt from a college student’s paper. A student whose parents and/or the government pay $40,000 per year for him/her to learn and write such papers.)

That is so true!!! I mean, have you seen the Geico commercials? Those cave dudes are always hunting for food and fun. Where are cavewomen on our television screens? They are off picking berries and tending to the cave and cavechildren!!!! From the beginning of time, women have had to remember everything that goes down cause men have been too busy hunting and flirting with cave-tramps. And now, in the 21st century, instead of hunting (which may be an actually legitimate excuse, since it was key to survival), all a dude has to say is that “shit’s been crazy” with them, leaving it up to you to remember when their mother’s birthday is, or when they get out of class so you can casually bump into them, or when you took your birth control pill so that you don’t end up at PPNYC.

Men are allowed to forget, and women are forced to remember.

In case you were wondering, I gave the above student an A+++ and told them to call me.