why i want to yell at other people

I want to yell things at drivers.

This is my confession, although it probably doesn't seem like a very worthy/juicy one, given that everyone wants to yell at other drivers at some point.

So let's call this more of my declaration of empathy with others, which sounds like something the United Nations would pass.

Here is what I want to yell at drivers: I am a person!

It is not because I'm feeling unsure of my personhood; it is because people in my town do not understand crosswalks.

When you're in a car, you're supposed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. This is the rule, as well as a generally non-mean-person thing to do.

Below is a list of mean people behaviors I want to yell about:

1. Ignoring the fact that if I am walking, that means I am outside in the elements, unlike a Mean Driver in their climate-controlled car. I know you may want to get to where you're going faster because it is starting to rain, but did you notice that I am in the rain and that my umbrella is not as sturdy as Mary Poppins' and does not give me the ability to fly home?
2. Glaring at me as I cross the road, as if I were a chicken in a bad joke. Why are you angry, Mean Driver? Is NPR telling you all bad news? Did your favorite song from high school just come on the radio and you were still able to sing along with every word—but then you realized it was on the oldies station? I mean, you can't possibly be upset with me for using the crosswalk. I'm not jaywalking. I'm even smiling at you. Please smile back; it'll make you feel better.
3. Speeding up when I have obviously started crossing the street. A block away from one of the crosswalks I use every day on my walk home from the train is a stop sign. I'm a smart pedestrian: I look both ways approximately 112 times before deciding it's safe enough to cross. The number of drivers who are sitting at the stop sign, see me start to cross, and then gun it through the intersection—if you knew how high that number was, you would yell, too.

I would like to warn you: If you do any of these things, I will yell* at you and put you on my Mean List.


*The yelling will be in my head. All this talk of yelling, and let's be honest, I would never actually yell at Mean Drivers. I mostly just smile at them more broadly and remind myself to be charitable towards others, even in my thoughts. And then I scurry across the road because no matter how Pollyanna/Anne of Green Gables your thoughts are, you still run a large risk of being run over in my town if you're in a crosswalk.

conversation tips from NPR

I heard this story on NPR about how we're always trying to figure out what our pets are thinking.

We talk for them and give them, usually, funny voices.

We ask each other, "Now, just what do you suppose she's thinking when she digs her face into the couch like that?" Whoever we asked may speculate on the dog's thoughts by using that funny voice. You'll both laugh.

It wasn't exactly breaking news, particularly for anyone who owns a pet, but that's what I love about NPR: sure, they do their share of newsy stuff, but when you don't have commercials taking up air time, you're left with quite a bit of what I like to call quirkiness possibility.

{At certain times of the year, they're also left with quite a bit of time for pledge drives, which, I'm sorry to report, by the second day reduces me to shouting at the radio: BUT I ALREADY SUPPORT YOU! Where's my secret bypass button on this radio so I don't have to listen to you beg?

By the sixth day, I'm tempted to coerce everyone I know into supporting, just so the pledge drive will be shorter.}

The quirkiness possibility is in those stories on things like, "We like to talk for our dogs." It's as if NPR wants to help you be a better, more informed conversationalist. Maybe they have a corporate goal of making all of us into Renaissance men and women, able to pull out information on nearly every topic.

If they do, I'm in support of that goal. We all need more things to talk about beyond what we did over the weekend, how the weekend was too short, the rain or lack of rain, how we hope it doesn't rain over the weekend, and what we had/will have for dinner.

Not that those aren't fine topics. Don't you find that the predictability of some conversations is reassuring? They are the equivalent of sitting by a fireplace on a winter's night; you know you'll be comfortable, and you might get a little sleepy.

But sometimes, you want to throw some lighter fluid on the fire, and that's where NPR comes in handy. Just pay attention to what's happening in your conversation and see where you can slip in your NPR tidbit about dogs, GMO corn, or how to make beef stock.

If all else fails, just say, "Yes, I had a good weekend, too. In fact, I heard the most interesting thing on NPR."

a non-political post {mostly}

Campaign signs the day after an election are like pumpkins the day after Thanksgiving: they look out of place.

The season has past, but there they remain, reminders of what came before, even as the world pushes on to the Next Big Thing.

In the case of Thanksgiving, it's Christmas, although let's face it, stores start putting out their Christmas decorations in what, October? I was at Hobby Lobby over the weekend, and all of their fall decorations were 50% off, as if the crispness was already out of the air and all the leaves were but distant memories of raking.

Heck, even some of their Christmas decorations were 50% off, and I half-expected to turn a corner and run into Valentine's Day.

So Thanksgiving already has become a bit of a jump-over holiday anyway, but by the day after Thanksgiving, we're all just over it. We're ready for candy canes and eggnog lattes and little elves. {I feel this so strongly that I even wrote about it before, this belief that by the day after Thanksgiving, the world should be all Christmas-y.}

Sidenote of a business plan: Invent multi-holiday decorations. Like a pumpkin in a parka. Or a scarecrow dressed like Santa. Then someone could decorate for Hallow-thanks-mas in early October and be good until after Christmas.

Sidenote on the sidenote: That's a horrendous idea, especially coming from someone who gets so excited by the thrill of each season. But don't you bet that somewhere, in a SkyMall most likely high above us on a cross-country flight, someone has already marketed this?

It's the same thing with campaign signs: up until Tuesday, they were bold declarations.

Statements in the yard, along with the pumpkins and scarecrows.

They were the hope of victory and a fervent wish for a better tomorrow {or at the very least, a tomorrow that didn't involve so many political ads and flyer and blood-pressure-raising debates}.

And then the election happened and now, the day after, those campaign signs are reminders that we're still a very divided nation.

It's not that I expected the election to sew us all together—oh no, I don't imagine that we are some literal version of Betsy Ross' first American flag that can be put together stitch by stitch {or swing state by swing state?}.

But this morning on NPR, there was talk of President Obama's victory speech and of Governor Romney's concession speech. There were interviews with elated people in Chicago and bewildered people in Boston.

The country took a moment to breathe—and then, we moved on the Next Big Thing: the fiscal cliff.

And I was reminded that we still don't agree on how to fix that looming problem. {I like how I say "we," as if I had an important role to play in this. I did my part when I stood in line at 6:10 on Tuesday morning to vote, surrounded by my neighbors in the lobby of the library—and accepted an "I Voted" sticker from a very enthusiastic poll worker. She was quite obviously a morning person.}

That Republican versus Democrat bickering so represented by the bold campaign signs in people's yard: that's what made me feel that the signs were out of place this morning.

The bickering must be done and we must move on, lest we all tumble together over the cliff.

Oh, sure, there's plenty of talk of bipartisanship, but have you noticed that a lot of it—from both sides—comes with a twinge of, "We're certainly ready to do this, so long as those other guys are. We've always been willing to meet in the middle."

Oh, really?

I want to say that to all politicians and then make them sit down and watch news reels {do news reels still exist?} of their speeches during the debt ceiling crisis and the Super Committee silliness.

I want to say to them, "Didn't your mother teach you to not lie? Don't say always when you know it's not true."

I was thinking all these things while on a walk this morning, and then I came upon this sign that did not look out of place:

The flag.

A little hope that God will be with us.

And you probably can't see this very well, but there's an "I Voted" sticker on that sign: a tangible reminder that we can all take part in this democracy.

This sign calmed me this morning and reminded me that even as we face the Next Big Thing, we can take comfort knowing that we'll face it together.

what lent is teaching me about distraction

For once, there was no music or radio going in my car. And in that silence, I heard a noise. A whir? A ping? {Is ping a word used to describe car noises?} Perhaps it's a scraping, metal-on-metal sort of noise?

After listening for awhile, I've decided it's really more of a creaking noise coming from the back of my car.

Is that a normal noise? Does my car always do that?

And here's where the panic/self-reassurance cycle sets in.

Panic: My tire is going to fall off, omg.

Self-reassurance: I'm sure that's a normal noise, and you've just never heard it because you always have some other noise distracting you.

Maybe it's Robert Segal on NPR explaining why the economy is recovering even though jobless claims are up for the millionth month in a row.

Or maybe you're distracted by singing along with Carol Burnett in Once Upon a Mattress. "Though a lady may be dripping with glamour / As often as not, she will stumble and stammer / When suddenly confronted with romance..." Don't you kind of want to sing with me now and forget your panic?

Panic: Remember that one time you went to the mechanic, and he said, "Now, I don't want to alarm you, but your hose {internal side note from the past: what hose? How many hoses are in my car?} could be corroding right now. And you'd never know it until something bad happens"? Remember that time? Your hose, one of them, all of them, could be about to explode. Or something.

Self-reassurance: But remember, too, how you figured out that that mechanic was just trying to take advantage of you? You with your 'girl alone in a new town and unsure of what hose he's talking about' look on your face? If there was something wrong with your car, your new mechanic would've told you when you got your car checked recently. You are all right; the car is all right.

Panic: My tire is going to fall off, omg.

Self-reassurance: Sigh.

My internal voices are no help when it comes to my car because my car is a mystery to me. A mystery that came with a very long instruction manual explaining everything, but still a mystery because I haven't read that manual.

When something goes wrong with my car, I do what any typical 20something with a liberal arts degree would do: I take it to someone who knows what a chassis is.

{Case in point: When I hear the word "chassis," I think of the Irish play Juno and the Paycock, where Captain Boyle, drunk and confusing his words, declares, "Th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis..." This is useful knowledge, I guess, when wanting to dig into literature, but it does nothing for trying to figure out my car.}

In short, when I'm in my car, I'm not paying attention to my car. It does its job, and I fill the time and space with noise, a little bubble of entertainment.

Except for right now.

Right now, I'm halfway through Lent, and for Lent, I have given up distraction.

Sounds deep, eh? I can make it sound deeper and more spiritual: I have given up what is distracting me from a fuller communion with God.

I'm not trying to be flippant {all internal dialogue above aside}.

I really am seeking a more connected time with God this Lent.

But it's one thing to sound deep, and it's another, more challenging thing to take a look at your day and pinpoint distraction so that you can figure out how to break the deep into the practical.

For this big Lenten idea to work, I broke the pretty rhetoric into practicalities {necessary for a perfectly practical girl like me}:

• no TV or movies when I'm alone
• no music or radio in the car

And so this leaves me in silence. A lot.

Ostensibly, this silence is to focus on God, to pray, to sing random church-y songs that are in my head {I have many of those}.

But as you can see, my brain usually takes the silence in the car as an opportunity to panic, which I wish it wouldn't do.

-----

I have more to say on this Lenten distraction fast, and I'll say it soon. In the meantime, I'll reassure you: my tire did not fall off. Yet.

what do you do with a BA in english?

The other morning on NPR, I heard this statistic:  English is the sixth most popular college degree.  Glad to know I was in the Top 10.  Although for all the jokes and charges of impracticality, I would think that fewer people would choose to study English.

Even I joke about it.  My senior year roommate was an accounting major.  “With an accounting degree, it's pretty obvious what you're going to be,” I told her once when I was mired in that fear-of-what-comes-after-graduation-when-it-doesn't-matter-that-you-can-recite-Wordsworth.

{“And then my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils.”  Name that poem, you non-English majors, you.}

“You're going to be an accountant.  But I'm getting an English degree.  What am I going to be?  England?”

{insert laugh}

I wasn't whining then, somehow blaming someone else—anyone else—for what I had chosen to study.  I had wanted to be an English major.  I'd wanted to explicate poems and understand why comma splices are bad and deconstruct Romanticism.

I was more pointing out what everyone already knew—and what, according to NPR {and they never lie}, is still true:  the English major, while a cool major, does not line up with one specific job.  And that can feel a little scary as you try to find one specific job.

This reminds me of a song from Avenue Q, a musical I've never seen, but the songs pop up on my Pandora station for Belle.

Belle as in “Belle” from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.  I don't understand why Pandora thinks songs from a musical with lyrics like “The Internet is for porn” should be played on a station built around Disney {Disney!  That bastion of good-upbringing and rosy-tinted memories!}.

But the Pandora algorithm is not for me to understand.

Besides, this way, I get to hear “Belle”

Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar.
I wonder if she's feeling well.
With a dreamy far-off look.
And her nose stuck in a book…

and I get to hear

What do you do with a BA in English?
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.

I have no monumental thoughts on this, besides to say that the English degree is not a useless degree.

My entire proof for that is that I’m not useless, and I have an English degree.  Not that my degree defines who I am {please see previous reference about how studying English does not make you England}.  I never was very good at those calculus proof things.

{My university had a class called Liberal Arts and Calculus; it combined essay writing with equations.  I remember very little from that class, except that my professor made a big deal out of the etymology of calculus. Etymology does tend to excite a certain brand of English major—my brand.  And calculus, for anyone who’s also etymologically excited, means “little pebble used for counting.”}

I really just wanted to share what I thought about on the way to work one day this week.

A musical.  Two, actually.

My degree.  I tried to remember where my diploma is.  I couldn’t.

My calculus class.

Etymology.

Wordsworth.  Daffodils.  Wandering like clouds.

NPR.

Oh, and driving.  I did think about driving, signaling, braking, etc.

But let’s face it, it’s more fun to try to follow the circuitous, perhaps random route of my mind—much more fun than following my practically-straight route to work and to my cubicle and to my computer.  To what my BA in English prepared me for.