Friday, January 29, 2010

The Life-Changer

(LESLIE, a forty-something woman with flowing blond hair and dressed in a fashionable white suit, stands behind a long counter against a backdrop of what appears to be an immaculate living room; standing next to her is a young man in his twenties, with rakish hair and expensive. LESLIE smiles while the young man gazes around at things off-camera.)



LESLIE: (to camera) Hello! I’m Leslie Dalton, and I’d like to thank you for tuning into the Home Shopping Channel’s “Celebs Sell Hour.” I’m live in our HSC studio here today with Hollywood’s hot upcoming actor Charz Breely, star of the popular Vampire Armageddon series. (turning) Charz, tell us briefly about your role.



CHARZ: I play Dmitri Smith, a teenager with a secret past who gets caught up in the vampire armageddon while dealing with pressing adolescent issues like, you know, love and social injustice and stuff.



LESLIE: Well, you’ve been receiving great buzz about a possible Teen Choice award. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who just turned twenty. How excited are you about that?



CHARZ: I’m, like, pretty excited, I guess.



LESLIE: Well, let’s get to our product, shall we? (to camera) Today we’re going to be showing you folks at home a great marvel of technology. Now, you can probably tell how excited we are about this product. (motions toward an object about the size of a shoebox; it’s covered by a piece of white cloth) Charz, you and I are both pretty hip on the gadgets, what with FriendFace and MeTube, iTelephones and the like. Now, if you think technology couldn’t get any better, this device will absolutely change your life. (looking over at CHARZ, who appears to be texting beneath the counter) Wouldn’t you agree, Charz?



CHARZ: What? Oh, yeah. I really want one.



LESLIE: Well, let’s give these folks a peek at (pause) The ElectroTron 3000! (reaches for the white cloth, touches the corner, and — )



CHARZ: Leslie, can I just take a minute to say something?



LESLIE (surprised and a little unsure): Um, sure, Charz. What would you like to say about the ElectroTron 3000?



CHARZ (looking down, his face a puzzle of contemplation): Leslie, this is about all those poor people affected by the earthquake a couple weeks ago. I feel like I should really mention all of those innocent men and women and children who are still without, like, homes and power and Internet, you know? As a celebrity, I feel like it’s my responsibility to bring awareness to issues like this. The crisis in Honduras is, you know, a major thing.



LESLIE (after a pause, confused): Do you mean Haiti?



CHARZ: Yeah, the Heidians. Like, can you imagine going through that, and, like, losing your parents or families or whatever, and then not even being able to rescue any of your things — I mean, like, I would have my iPod and my computer at home, but these people have, like, their elderly and their pictures, you know. Like in picture albums. That stuff is all just … gone now.



LESLIE: Yes, well, it is such a tragedy, and we’re all doing what we can to provide relief to the many thousands of people affected. HSC has, in fact, made — and continues to make — donations to the American Red Cross and other relief organizations, and what better way to help support us in our contributions than by dialing in and ordering from our convenient selection of low-cost products? Now, here’s an item that will make your life so much easier, you’ll wonder just how you got along without it. Charz, would you like to do the honors and let our viewers take a peek at this marvelous piece of ingenuity?



CHARZ (fidgeting now, shifting from foot to foot): But can we ever really do, like, enough? You know, Lisa?



LESLIE (trying to remain patient; forces a curt laugh): It’s Leslie, Charz. And, like I said, the Home Shopping Channel has been contributing to not just the Haitian disaster but also to —



CHARZ: And where is, like, the government? What are we doing to help this situation? We’re, you know, the number one country in the world, and we can’t even get food and medical supplies to some African island? (LESLIE starts to raise her hand to cut in, but CHARZ continues) We should be figuring out how to stop earthquakes, you know? Like, why do we always have to be cleaning up after these things happen? I mean, we should be figuring out the cause and, like, fixing it.



LESLIE (rubbing her forehead, obviously annoyed now): Well, Charz, there are so many things that don’t make sense about what you’ve just said. Even if I wanted to stand here correcting you, I wouldn’t know where to begin …



CHARZ (oblivious, talking over LESLIE): And to think that the people of America can spend their days not thinking about these issues is just appealing, you know. It makes me sick to think about the consumerist status of our society and stuff, you know? Like, how about instead of spending money on cars that get ten miles a gallon, we send some support to our African brothers and sisters when they need it? (turns to LESLIE, nods his head up and down as if searching for her endorsement)



LESLIE (after a silent moment, cautiously): How … true, Charz. (Her hand lumbers toward the edge of the white cloth) So, here we have the ElectroTron 3000, which will make doing things like cleaning a bathroom or getting your children’s hair cut so unbelievably simple that — (she pauses, looks off-camera, apparently listening to someone; she then looks back into the camera with a defeated look) Well, that’s all the time we have for our segment. So, call in folks, to get your very own ElectroTron 3000. Coming up next, HSC’s Kelly Landerpole will be continuing the “Celebs Sell Hour” with country singer Bucky Camden. So, stay tuned, folks.



CHARZ: Can I just say one more thing?



LESLIE (to segment producer, as she’s removing her mic): Just cut to commercial.

*BEAR-CHUG*

I would like to dedicate this week's SCATTERSHOT Blog post to a very special young lady, now living in the (supposedly) great-state of New Jersey.

Becky, this is for you:


*BEAR-CHUG*

I invent a lot of stupid, pointless things...but I never would have invented *BEAR-CHUG* were it not for Becky. You see, Becky and I do this thing where our Google Messenger status reads "Bears Are Texting." As far as I know, this means nothing, but cracks Becky up. So with that in my mind, at work yesterday I came up with *BEAR-CHUG*

It's a random greeting of sorts. I predict that this Internet Meme will not only take the world by storm, but make me rich* and famous!

To quote the late-great Mr. George Carlin: "These are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools."



*Order you *BEAR-CHUG* T-shirts now!!!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Get Your Tickets Here!

As with a lot of people I know, I get nervous around police officers. It doesn’t have anything to do with any past crimes or illicit secrets; my life, if it were used as the basis for a cop movie, would be entirely boring and would not make any money at the box office. In essence, I’m a boring person. And while I’ve never done anything that would warrant their tackling me in a crowded department store or chasing me down on a high-speed getaway, I still feel like I’ve done something wrong, that I’m guilty.



When I come across a police officer out in public, I’ll wonder what he’s doing or looking for. Most of the time, I’ll see him pick up mouthwash or a snack food of some kind, but still I wonder if he might be on the lookout for someone. An arsonist. A murderer. Thieves with their pockets loaded. And I’ll steer clear, imagining a scenario in which I’m mistaken for the culprit and brought down face-first for a meeting with the floor. Worse still is the mysterious notion I sometimes have that I’ve actually done something wrong and simply don’t know it. There are chunks of time I simply cannot recall — they’re hazy, translucent like a thick sheet of plastic — and I wonder, Was I sitting at home on the Internet, or was I out robbing elderly shopkeepers?



Part of my fear, I suppose, stems from the fact that I’ve already broken the law, so maybe I’m predisposed to criminality. What else am I capable of? I have to wonder. The other part comes from the various encounters I’ve had with men in uniform.



My earliest recollection of a police officer comes from a time, one afternoon, when I was with a few of the kids my mother watched as part of her in-home daycare. I was maybe nine or ten, and the kids I was with were around the same age. We were sitting in the car, waiting for my mother to pick up a few things from Venture, a now-defunct department store chain. She’d told me she’d be right back, and we’d been sitting in the car for no more than ten minutes when, in the middle of a bout of rowdiness, a police officer drove by and saw us sitting in the back seat. Less than five minutes later, the officer was standing at the window and asking where my mother was. Nervous, I told him that she was inside, and when he then asked how long she’d been gone, my sense of time vanished, and I had to think. I suppose in saying, “Um, thirty minutes?” I was slightly overestimating, and I realized this as the officer’s face tightened.



“That long?” he said.



He left for the building, and when my mother came back a few minutes later she was flustered and agitated. “When we get home, your dad isn’t going to hear a word of this,” she said, her eyes slits in the rearview mirror as she started the car.



Years later, when I was a teenager, my high school had a police offer that would stay on full-time to patrol the building and keep everyone in line. This was not long after the school shootings at Columbine and Jonesboro, and so not only did we students have the underlying fear that our small-town school might be next, we had a disgruntled, stone-faced man with a gun roaming our halls.



Even then, I felt awkward. Passing by Officer Ewing on the way to lunch or science class, I’d look at the floor, thinking that if we made eye contact he would maybe slam me into my locker before searching it. I imagined him calling me “Punk” or “Scumbag” or any of those other TV cop names for criminals. Although I had nothing to hide, and no secrets to keep except my brewing desire for any number of the varsity basketball players, I felt just as edgy as if I’d lent my locker to a known terrorist or drug kingpin, and whatever unseemly items they’d stored in there would be pinned on me in the next unannounced round of drug-sniffing dogs.



In reality, my run-ins with police officers would come later, once I planted myself in the driver’s seat. When practicing with my mother, it was my tendency to drive slow enough that I might simply step out of the car should something happen. The needle on the speedometer skirted the number twenty like a prom queen avoiding a member of the math club, and I sat hunched forward, my eyes always on the lookout for the loose dog or toddler I was sure I’d run down. Once I had graduated from practicing and bought a sportier car, the tendency to play it safe fell away, and, animals and children be damned, I would fly down the streets, passing cars as if I actually had somewhere to be.



Maybe the change had to do with my mother no longer being in the car with me, but regardless of her absence, whenever I would eventually have a close call with disaster — choosing the wrong moment to try and pass a car on a two-lane highway; misjudging the time I had to pull out in front of an oncoming truck — I’d fight the feeling that had plagued me when I was sixteen. I’d do my best to ignore the unsettling feeling at the pit of my stomach until I more or less forgot about it. Things got worse when I started my first year of college and found myself navigating the highways of a new state whose motto might as well have been, “You’d better keep up.” It took me a short time to acclimate, but once I got into the mindset of a Missouri driver, there was no stopping me. Suddenly, doing seventy-five down country roads was no problem. Changing busy lanes with only inches to spare? I could do it while swapping CDs from the player.



With such a quick rise to mastering the roads, it seems appropriately karmic that I should have been taken down a notch or two just as suddenly. For my twenty-first birthday, my friend Jessica took me out to dinner. At the time, she didn’t have access to a car, and so I drove the two of us over to St. Louis, and when we were done eating we came back to go see a movie. By the time we were done, it was close to eleven o’clock, and on the way home, we passed a parked highway patrolman. I had time to notice the glint of light along the side of his cruiser as we passed by at something close to fifteen miles an hour over the limit, and I watched through the rearview mirror as the point where we’d passed him slowly, eternally shrank into the distance. Just as I was starting to think that I’d somehow skated by unnoticed — maybe he was napping or my speedometer had simply been playing a cruel birthday joke on me — I saw the red glow of taillights, suddenly there on the skin of the darkness like a pair of bright welts.



Even as he pulled onto the road and started toward me, I clung to the notion that he was headed to a burgled department store. One might think that the flashing red and blue lights would have shattered such a notion, but denial can be a powerful thing for a young man who thinks he’s invincible. When I realized that he was coming for me, I slowed down, easing onto the shoulder of the road and wondering what to do. With something like panic I kept my hands on the steering wheel, not wanting the officer to mistake a move for my wallet for a try at a loaded pistol. In my head I went through every episode of Cops I’ve ever seen. I considered all the things that people in these kinds of situations tend to do — throw open the door and bolt out onto the highway; engage in an escalating argument with the officer about the truthfulness of his radar gun; find the most conspicuous place for a nickel bag of pot — and made sure that I did everything to differentiate myself from those people.



Next to me, Jessica groaned. “Aw,” she said. “Happy birthday.” I make a quick glance in her direction, and I noticed upon her face a look of grim solidarity. I’m not usually the kind of person to throw someone under the proverbial bus, but I couldn’t help wondering if there were some way I could pin this whole mess on Jessica.



“Officer, she took me out for my birthday, and I didn’t think I was going to have to drive. It’s been a long night, and I’m so sorry that I didn’t realize the speed limit was so slow through here. We were talking about the great birthday I’m having, you know? And I guess I just couldn’t wait to get back home.”



In the end though, once the officer, a man in his early thirties, took my license and shone his jumbo, cucumber-sized flashlight upon it, any bright ideas I’d come up with about betraying my friend dissolved. The officer considered my license for a second, and after stepping back to his cruiser to, I don’t know, scan a database for my befuddled mugshot or arm-length rap sheet, he returned and handed me my identification back. “Let’s slow it down a little tonight,” he said, in a voice that implied humor was an alien notion, and excuses would not be tolerated. “I’ll let you off with a warning. Consider it a birthday present from me.”



About a year later, I was on my own, driving to work, when I passed a police officer and was promptly pulled over for going something like seventy in a fifty-five mile per hour zone. The irony of the matter is that, that day, I was on schedule and actually had extra time before I had to leave. I’m not sure why I’m consistently late, but when I do manage to be on time, I’m elated and filled with a sense of accomplishment. The extra time came in handy, then, seeing as I would spend what felt like a half hour in my car, idling along the side of a road that seemed all the more popular today. While waiting for the officer to get out of his patrol car, I counted the number of passing vehicles, and once the pairs of eyes glancing over at me tallied up in the twenties, I just sat there and looked down at my lap.



When he tapped on my window, I rolled it down and smiled up at his weathered face with my best what’s-a-guy-to-say? look. He asked me how I was doing today, and I said I was doing fine. Then, like an idiot, I asked him how he was doing; maybe I was just being nice, but more likely I was trying to get on his good side.



“Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?”



I pretended to think, as if the image of the speedometer hadn’t burned itself into my mind once I realized I’d just shot like a bullet on meth past a cop. “Maybe … um … sixty-five?”



“Can you tell me where you were headed in such a hurry?”



“I was … oh … on my way … to work,” I mumbled, so low that he had to have me repeat myself. I said it again, croaking as if the past ten years had never happened, and I was twelve again. My name tag from work was lying in one of the cupholders, and I retrieved it, kneading it with my fingers and presenting it to the officer like an offering of proof.



“Well,” he said, “I clocked you at about sixty-nine. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give you a ticket.” And after asking me if I had seventy-five dollars, maybe stashed in the glove box or in one of my canvas sacks branded with money signs, he nodded when I told him I didn’t have enough cash on me to take my license back. Instead, he tucked it into an elongated black pad from which he tore a yellow piece of paper. On it were all the details of my embarrassment: my name; my car; the speed and circumstances of my illegality. After explaining where to go to get my license back and pay my ticket, he left me to the rest of my day, and I drove off feeling off-put and unmoored.



These days, while my nervousness around police officers is as strong as ever, I can say that passing by a parked patrolman is getting easier to do without breaking out into sweat. Anymore, I take to driving like a grandmother. It’s not as exciting as plowing down the highway, but it’s certainly cheaper. Though I’ve worked my way into a slightly better car, I drive it like a conestoga wagon, ambling down the streets and trying to ignore all the sighs, glares, and horn honks that try to push me along.



When I do pass by a cop, going all of thirty miles an hour, I’ll glance over and think, See, I’m obeying the law. I’m being good. As if they don’t have other things to do, bigger criminals to catch. Like the guy who torched the hospital burn ward, or the person stalking rest stops with his hidden switchblade. Or the anxious-looking man behind the wheel of a car, shambling along the highways with the continuous, pestering thought, Did I do that?

Pencil Mole

I’m sure you’ve heard of a “pencil mustache,” but have you ever heard of a “pencil mole”? There are some things you just can’t take back. Life isn’t done in pencil; it’s done in pen—un-erasable. A suntan, like the one I just got in Hawaii, fades over time…disappearing like swirling water down the tub drain.

Tattoos. I’ve never wanted a tattoo. Tattoos are permanent, like pen. You can’t erase pen, unless you get those cheap “erasable pens” that leave those smeary ripped pages at the bottom of your backpack.

A beanbag chair is neither made of beans, nor is it a real chair. It’s more like a Styrofoam pillow. My sister had a pink one. I remember bashing her over the head with it, repeatedly. She’s linked to me forever, like a pen mark. This is not something that you can see, but it exists…it is there. Just like my “pencil mole.”

How can I explain it? One day I had smooth white skin, and now I don’t. I guess that’s how I can explain it.

I was sitting in the beanbag chair. Amber was there. We were roughhousing because that’s what we did. It wasn’t a pen—it was a pencil. I heard it snap under my skin before I felt the pain. It had been lying near the swollen pink “chair.” There was bubbling blood, red and viscous. A warm streak of magic marker red.

I thought the mark would fade. I thought it wasn’t permanent—after all, it’s only pencil. But as the days drifted by I came to see—came to realize—that my new mole wasn’t going anywhere. So there it sits. It almost looks like a regular mole. But it’s not.

A pale, lead-colored dot on my left foot, my angry big toe. No amount of scrubbing will make it go away. And I guess, that’s okay.

toe 005 copy

Friday, January 15, 2010

Selected 2009 Titles from Uncle Dickie's Adult Video Bargain Bazaar

The Lovely Boners


Pubic Enemies


(500) Days of Hummers


Trannyformers 2: Revenge of the Fellas


In Glourious Basterds


Legs Up in the Air


He's Just Not That Deep Into You


Hairy Pooper & The Half-Inch Prince


XXX-Men Orifices: Wooly and Mean


Up

Milita!

"I’m so pissed! I’m joining a fucking militia"--Jason A. Wendleton (furious)

I’m pretty sure that the most insidious organization on the face of the Earth is the United States Postal Service. In general, the quality of service in this country is on the decline—but the Postal Service is the undisputed King of disservice. When I first started working I was a clerk at Walgreens. If I ever ignored a customer, argued with a customer, flat-out refused to help a customer…I’d have been fired (like the guy who rode one of those Razor flip-scooters through the Pharmacy Drive-Thru).

People who work at the Post Office seem to not be too worried about their jobs. I’m not sure what they tell these people when they’re hired, but I imagine it’s something along the lines of: “Congratulations! You can’t EVER be fired…go nuts!”

Like retail stores, some Post Offices are worse than others…and sadly the area the Post Office is located does seem to correlate with how crappy you will be treated. Poorer neighborhoods have the worst Post Offices. Growing up in the “digital age,” I had little use for the Post Office…until I moved to St. Louis to attend college. I lived on Campus and soon discovered that there are some things you just can’t email. The Post Office nearest the dorms I lived in was in a pretty crappy part of town. Luckily for me it was manned by some of the most racist people I’ve ever met.

I was ignored. People cut in-front of me (and no one said anything). I was berated once for using the wrong label/Postal envelope combination. There were never any pens in the waiting area—so you couldn’t fill out your stupid postal forms or envelopes. Once a Postal Employee made me sign my debit card before I could pay (I don’t sign my debit card, I write “SEE ID” on the back in red Sharpie, because I want to be carded in case someone ever steals my wallet). Whenever I had my arms full of packages or envelopes, it seemed like all but one window would suddenly close.

This is probably the part of bureaucracy I loath the most—four people behind the counter, eight people waiting in line, and only ONE person with an open window. I hate this at the bank, the DMV, the gas station, and especially the Post Office.

One day I snapped. One day I had enough.

What happened was a perfect storm of crap. I went to the Post Office to mail some paperback books for an online book swapping club that Leah and I use to save money on books. I had a small stack of pre-wrapped paperbacks in my hand. The second I walked in I took a number. The woman behind the counter saw me and sneered. She immediately quit using the number system, probably to discourage me. Soon it was a crazy free-for-all. After three people who arrived after I me had made their way up to the window, I was finally able to approach.

“Can I help you?” she asked in that surly, bitchy way that really says “Fuck off, I don’t want to help you.”

I told her that I wanted to ship my books, and she began to lazily drag the books across her scanning device. Each book was slowly keyed into her system. This whole visit had taken thirty minutes of my time. Not an eternity, but way longer than it should have. But I was feeling okay because I was about to be done. I was about to be free!

And then the moment came to pay.

I was given a total and I took out my debit card and swiped it on the credit machine at the end of the counter.

Nothing happened.

I looked up and the woman behind the counter arched a thickly penciled eyebrow and smirked.

“It’s broken. We can’t do debit or credit right now.”

“Are you serious?”

She nodded.

I sighed, “Ugh. What am I supposed to do? I don’t have any cash.”

“You can go across the street…I think they have an ATM.”

I had waited for over twenty minutes for nothing. Why didn’t they put up a sign? Why didn’t they let people know that they had to use Cash or check only today? I was livid. You know the saying “I was seeing red”? Well I was seeing it…and boy…was it red.

People love to tell me about my “anger problem.” Well you know what? I have a problem—it’s a “people-can’t-help-but piss-me-off” problem if you want to know the truth. I can handle some crazy shit. I know people don’t think that I can, but I can list examples. Like the time someone plowed into my car at work. I was totally cool. I didn’t yell and I wasn’t mad. It was out of my control. It happened, why get upset?

People can cut in front of me in the Post Office. They can sneer at me. They can make me wait 30 minutes to spend $15. They can even tell me (after the fact) that their debit machine is broken. My weakness is that after swallowing so many bites of the world’s shit-sandwich, I spit throw it back up.

I didn’t yell at the woman (though I did let her know I was upset). Instead, I swore right then and there to NEVER go back into that Post Office again (and I haven’t). I also got into my car and called Leah.


“Leah! I’m so pissed! I’m joining a fucking militia,” I spat at her.

Leah was clearly confused as to what I was talking about.

“The Government! They need to be brought down! The Post Office is a fucking joke!”

I truly believe that everyone is super-right wing whenever the chips are down…I mean really down. When the shit hits the fan, we’re not John Kerry.

We’re not even George W. Bush.

We are Dick Cheney. And we are going to bomb your fucking desert. We are going to shoot our hunting buddies head ALL THE WAY OFF.

I never did join that militia, and I never “took down the government,” though someone should probably get around to doing that…if for no other reason—than to close all those worthless Post Offices.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Poems You'll Never Read in English Class, Part 2

Ode to A Chinese Takeout Box


Moldy food, in my refrigerator,


You're taking up space for something greater.


You've stuck around for long enough


And though I hate to say it rough,


"Get out of here; I'll smell ya later!"




Tabby Cat


The tabby was an evil cat,


Who enjoyed watching kids go splat.


Off of swing sets or monkey bars,


She really liked kids hit by cars.


She prowled the playgrounds day and night,


Hoping for some severe crash sight.


Finding none, her options she weighed,


Then set her sights on a child who'd strayed.


At his feet she purred to gain his trust,


Wanting the sight of his head, bust.


She tripped him down some concrete stairs,


And, laughing, relished his angry glares.

(There's No Such Thing As) The Color Purple

Unless you know what they look like, colors are impossible to describe. A blind person cannot be told—with any degree of accuracy—what the color green looks like. Color is one of those immaterial, “all in our heads” kind of thing. Light strikes an object and bounces off. This light hits our eye and our brain takes this light and interprets color—in a way I so complicated that I may as well call it “magic.” The surfaces of objects determine their color. Simply: whatever color an object is—that’s the wavelength of light the object absorbs the most of, the rest of the colors trapped inside a beam of light is “scattered.” If a surface scatters all wavelengths we see it as white, likewise, if all the wavelengths are absorbed we see black.

There are some people who are blind and see nothing and then there the “color blind.” These people have trouble seeing some colors because of a genetic defect in their eyes. All of this is remarkable and hard to grasp at the same time—in reality an object’s color has more to do with the light that is shining on it AND the person viewing it. For some reason this always reminds me of the classic “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it” question. I realize that all of this is very Zen, and probably bores most people to tears so I’ll get on with it.
Purple.

The word “purple” is a very strange word to me. Besides the numerous connotations to the color (royalty, homosexuality, Easter), there are a number of ideas…concepts or feelings that purple instantly brings to mind. Swollen, vulgar, unlikely, comical, and unhealthy. I think about flowers, of course, and I think about a bruise. Then there’s Barney the Dinosaur and Grimace the…whatever the hell he is over in McDonald’s. Of course, no matter how old I get, I’ll never forget my crazy 4th grade Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername.

In my experience, 99% of all Art Teachers are insane. I’m not talking a “bit-barmy-he-enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors”…I’m talking “fucking-nuts-he enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors…umbrellas-made-of human-flesh.” My cousin’s wife is an Art Teacher in Kansas, and while she’s a nice, normal sort, I assure you she is the exception to the rule. Art Teachers seem to be living in another world. One where clay speaks (if you know how to listen) and colored pencils should all have names—real names, like Larry or Steve.

After spending five hours mindlessly toiling on worksheets, my 4th grade class would gather our supplies and head to the basement of our school to the “art room.” This room consisted of several long wooden tables, and a few thousand dollars work of Prang watercolors. Oh, and there were drying racks—whole endless rows of drying racks.

Our Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername, would cackle as we entered her domain, like a witch. She usually wore something “Earthy” (think neutral browns, and material made of reeds and burlap sacks). Miss Whatshername had long, grayish hair that was freakishly straight and always wrapped in a do-rag. With her long, bony fingers she’d point us to our seats as we filed into the room.

Miss Whatshername had many peculiarities, but the most startling one was her abject hatred for Purple. This became apparent during our very first meeting when my class sat down to talk about colors. We learned that there are three primary colors—red, yellow, and blue. These colors, when mixed in various ways, make all the other colors of the rainbow.

“What are all the colors?” Miss Whatshername asked us from her perch near the chalkboard.

“Orange,” someone said.

“Good!” Miss Whatshername said. “Orange is red and yellow mixed together!”

“Green!” another one of my classmates shouted.

“Ah yes, Green!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “Green is yellow and blue mixed together!”

“Purple.”

There was an icy silence as the smile faded from Miss Whatshername’s lips. She stood up slowly, like a dazed car-crash victim.

“What? What was that?”

No one said a word. You could hear a…crayon drop.

Miss Whatshername shuffled over to the chalkboard and picked up a hunk of white, furiously she began to scribble on the dusty white surface. I can still hear the shrill squeak of her chalk as she wrote. I can close my eyes and still see her flabby, middle-aged arm wobble as she angrily wrote one word, then another.

The two words were PURPLE and VIOLET.

“This,” Miss Whatshername said pointing at the word VIOLET. “Is a color, whereas this word…Purple…this is not a color.”

She looked at both the world Purple on the blackboard and us with a look of disgust. We were dirty and unrefined, and so was Purple. We began to murmur amongst ourselves, the venom in Miss Whatshername’s voice had both frightened and excited us. Was this woman serious? We’d been calling it Purple for years and no one had ever said a word about it not being a color.

And anyway, wasn't Violet a flower?

Someone got the idea to check the Crayon box—the good people at Crayola had our backs: the paper wrapper said “Purple.” When this fact was pointed out to Miss Whatshername, she became even more agitated.

“There is no such color as Purple and in my class, no one will use that term!” she shouted above the giggling din.

Was this woman insane?

“Purple…”

“No!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “No Purple!”

This was the first time I ever truly disagreed with a teacher. This instance was the first time a person in authority seemed completely stupid. It wasn’t just that I disagreed with what she was saying (she was correct in a way, “Purple” is a general, Old-English term…whereas “Violet” is the correct term for the color achieved by mixing red with blue), it was the manner in which she carried herself as she said it. What she was saying blew our little 4th grade minds. We’d been taught by both our parents and other teachers to call Violet “Purple.” The terms are essentially interchangeable in the everyday (read: non-art class) world.

This woman, this Miss Whatshername, was just being an intellectual snob.

Of course I didn’t know this at the time, but that’s what she was. Miss Whatshername was too good for the common “Purple.” Instead, the only word she’d “hear” in her class was Violet. Over the course of the year few of us would test her (those brave souls). They’d ask her for a Purple colored pencil, to see if she’d unthinkingly hand them a “Violet” one…thus establishing that the two were, in fact, one and the same. Or they’d ask her if they’d used too much Purple paint in their surrealistic lunchroom painting.

But Miss Whatshername never fell for it. She never took the bait; instead she’s just stare at them dumbly. Most of the time the question was asked twice, then it would be either abandoned or amended (“Violet” instead of “Purple”).

What scares me more than almost anything are people like Miss Whatshername. They’re infinitely more dangerous than people might think. Trapped alone with our children, they take impressionable minds and try to mold them, to bend them into their own specific worldview. Not by reason or explanation, but by the imposition of their dominance and authority.

There is no more reality to the word “Violet” than there is to the word “Purple.” Colors, after all, are really abstract concepts. They’re so abstract that one can’t adequately describe them to a blind person. The colors as we see them might not even exist were we not there to see them. That is how terribly tenuous these words (all words) are. My classmates and I weren’t saying “Apple” for “Rhinoceros,” we were using a less specific word to describe red and blue mixed together. One that was taught and accepted by most of the world—our teacher’s reaction was insane. Teachers should teach, not merely impose their knowledge upon their students.

There is no Purple. There is no Violet.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Resolutions

A girl named April vows to make it through the month of May.



A man named Stu vows to stop stirring the pot.



A man named Dick promises to stop jerking himself around.



A nun asks God for the strength to break her bad habits.



A timid cat looks forward to the day he won’t be such a pussy.



A lonely farmer tells himself that he’s going to stop paying good money for dirty hoes.