Situation Skit
Given a Situation I Created a Brief Skit:
Situation: Two close friends are trapped under the rubble of a 6 story building, and only one of them can be saved.
Characters:
Narrator 1 (God of Discord and Strife – Eris) – Reem
Narrator 2 (God of Harmony and Concord – Harmonia) – Sara
Victim 1 (male) – Khodor
Victim 2 (female) – Sarah
Rescuer – Aisha
Props:
White Sheet
Microphone
Spotlights
Stage
Blackberry
Setting:
Dark stage, 2 spotlights (one off to the side for the narrators and one at center stage for trapped victims).
Script Color Coding
(______) = Emotional Guideline or Change
(______) = General Guidelines
Scene 1: The Prologue
Open Scene: Side Spotlight on Narrator 1 Dressed in Toga
Narrator 1: Humans. So easily manipulated, not like us gods…look how simple it is to tear apart your world and rip your friendships apart. Chaos! Glorious chaos…all I need to do is trap two close friends in the rubble and chaos erupts. Haha! Oh what fun it is to be Eris. To destroy and adore the rubble. Only one shall live, as you watch their friendship die. (Wicked Enjoyment)
End Scene: Spot light dims on Narrator
Scene 2: The Rescue
Open Scene: Single Spotlight Opens on Victims Sitting Together at Center Stage – Rescuer’s Voice Comes in From Off Stage
Rescuer:Hello?! Hello?! Can you all hear me?
Victims Together: Yes, yes! Oh thank god. We’re here! It’s been hours…(Relief)
Rescuer: Can you ID yourselves?
Victim 2: I’m Sara Natafji and my friend KhodorSabeh-Ayoun. Is it our turn? How much longer till you can dig us out?(Happy)
Rescuer: We have a bit of an unusual situation…with how volatile the support systems are we’re afraid we have only one extraction capability…(Formal)
Victim 2: I don’t understand…
Rescuer :(pause) We can only save one of you…(Edgy)
Victim 1: WHAT?! What do you mean you can only save one? We’re friends you can’t just save one of us! We’ve both been trapped under this RUBBLE for hours! Waiting…and now you say you can only save one?!(Suddenanger)
Rescuer: Yes – (interrupted)
Victim 1: – That was rhetorical! (Anger)
Victim 2: Listen… we can wait…yea…like, we can find a way to get us both out…maybe both in one extraction? (Positive Desperation)
Rescuer: I am so sorry Ma’am, but we can only extract the weight of one person through the rubble without disturbing its stability. I’m sorry but if we try to take you both out we will lose both. You must decide who will be taken out…
Victim 1: – and who will be left to DIE?!
(no answer)
Victim 1: Hello!
(no answer)
Victim 1: I can’t believe I pay my taxes for this SHIT (screams up at whole)!
Victim 2: They have to be wrong…listen we have rubble, we can use these rocks to dig ourselves out! Come on!
(starts trying to dig and Victim 1 stops her)
Victim 1: Are you crazy?! Didn’t you hear what they just said? This entire mound of rock it unstable, do you want to pick at it so it falls on our heads?! (speaks to himself) as if he hasn’t already fallen on our heads once before…
(creaky noise – victims look around at the walls spooked)
Victim 1: See what you did!
Victim 2: I was just trying to –
Victim 1: Don’t! We are in enough trouble as it is without you trying to find the bright side!
Victim 2: FINE. Well what do you suggest brainiac?? (Sarcastic)
Victim 1: I don’t know…
Victim 2: Oh, (smug) you don’t know…
Victim 1: Yea I don’t know Sarah. Apparently one of us is gonna DIE in here and instead of trying to figure out which one that is gonna be you’re trying to kill us both!
Victim 2: Oh you want to decide do you…ok mr.smartypants, seeing how you’re in such a good mood, I assume you would choose yourself!
Victim 1: Of course!….not….
Victim 2: Ah HA! You would choose you.
Victim 1:Noooooooo….but you know I take care of my mom and brothers and sisters. They’re probably worried sick about me right now.
Victim 2: Oh and my family isn’t worried about me?
Victim 1: Of course they are! It’s just….well I’m a man Sarah, I have more responsibility than you, I take care of my family while…lets face it, your family takes care of you…
Victim 2: Oh really and how are you going to support them as a mechanic? I’m going to college, I’ll be able to support my family AND yours better than you will be able to in a million years! If you want, that’s exactly what I’ll do…
Victim 1: What you’ll do? What you’ll do?! How is it that you think you can DO anything? HA! Who’s fixed your car, gotten your groceries, given you rides, and gotten you out of sticky situations? Hmm? Was it your woman’s intuition???
(pause)
Victim 1:Haha. No. It was me.
Victim 2:Pft who cares. That’s all learnable.
Victim 1: Are you implying that I cannot learn? I’m not third world!
Victim 2: And how many times have you been arrested?
Victim 1 :(points to her)Watch it
Victim 2: Some name we’ll be preserving with YOUR rescue…(to herself)
Victim 1: My name?! Well FINE then “the-whore-of-Pasadena” Isn’t that your nickname? Ha. You can’t hold a stable relationship for 3 minutes, not to mention long enough to be rescued. And by what age have you acquired this nickname?
Victim 2 :(Victim 2 Hits Victim 1’s Shoulder – Victim 1 grunts in pain)
At least I’m younger than you! You want them to save a man who will die sooner?
Victim 1: We have like a 2 month difference! Damn it! I’ve already dislocated my shoulder once in the fall!
Victim 2: Still counts…besides, men die sooner than women. And you’re already damaged APPARENTLY.
Victim 1: Oh really
Victim 2: Yea! AND women are more compassionate than men.
Victim 1: HA! Where did you hear that load of crock?! Look at yourself, what a COMPASSIONATE women YOU make…
Victim 2: I didn’t need to read it, I’ve seen it.
Victim 1: Oh where, in your infinite library of chick flicks you watch on Valentine’s Day every year with me when you don’t have a date? Pft.
Victim 2: No. (pause) Five seconds ago when you didn’t even try to see how we could both survive but signed your best friend’s death certificate instead…
(pause)
(Victim 1 walks over and sits next to Victim 2)
Victim 1: I suck don’t I…
Victim 2:haha (coughs – Victim 1 offers Victim 2 his sleeve to wipe her nose in – Victim 2 blows nose in sleeve) we both do
(both laugh)
Victim 2: you know that saying…about best friends?
Victim 1: The one you always profile on your blackberry?
Victim 2:haha yea. I never really thought I would get to experience it. But I can’t remember how it all goes…”A good friend will come and bail you out of jail…”
Victim 1: “…a best friend will be sitting right next to you saying, ‘we really fucked up.’”
(Both Laugh)
Victim 1:So do you know what time it is?
Victim 2: ugh. No. the battery went out I’m guessing about 3 hours ago…
Victim 1: Please don’t tell me you were updating your bbm status to “trapped underneath the earth with evil-ex-best friend”
Victim 2: No of course not!!…..
(Victim 1 stares down Victim 2 humorously)
Victim 2: I was playing Sudoku…
(Both chuckle)
Victim 2:So Hey…so are we still friends?
Victim 1 :(sighs and begins to laugh and shakes head)What a pair we make, an uneducated criminal, and the sophisticated whore of Pasadena
(both laugh)
Victim 2: Maybe we can both get out of here still, maybe if we just wait, maybe –
(Victim 1 looks at victim 2 with harsh look then softens face)
(Silence for a while)
(Victim 1 hugs victim 2 and sighs)
Victim 1: Maybe. Maybe our friendship is over either way, you die, I die, we die. Either way, we’ll wait.
End Scene: Light Dims on Victims
Scene 3: Closing Monologue
Open Scene: Spot light on Goddess Harmonia
Goddess Harmonia: To every goddess is her opposite and so discourse becomes harmony and anger contentment. War shrivels to peace and impatience is postponed. Who but the gods decides who lives or dies and whether hell or heaven awaits. But you wait to see how we play with your lives, and through your waiting exist.
Albert Einstein Quote
Treating a Burn with a Lit Match
Marketers may soon experience a change in their targeting strategy following a tough online policy. “Europe is considering a sweeping new law that would force Internet companies like Amazon.com and Facebook to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data, delete that data forever at the consumer’s request and face fines for failing to comply.” This excerpt was taken from the New York Times article:
Europe Weighs Tough Law on Online Privacy
This article that explains a new radical business law that may soon be sweeping Europe and that anyone within the marketing, business, or advertising fields would be interested in reading. While the policy is set to protect the rights citizens (treating the burn), it creates a need for marketing agencies to find new means of obtaining customer related information and fast, as well as basic businesses whom collect information for their customer data bases as they both would have regulations as to their collection process (the lit match). If approved, such a strong and quick upheaval of the entire market’s online-global customer strategy will be an historical alteration.
This proposal will answer the many of the gray area questions of our online community era:
- “Who owns personal data?”
- “What happens to it once it is posted online?”
- “What the proper balance is between guarding privacy and leveraging that data to aim commercial or political advertising at ordinary people?
On a personal level, as a student in the marketing industry this law will drastically affect the strategies I am learning today versus the strategies I will be allowed to use tomorrow. Anyone within this field should definitely be keeping an eye on this proposal, I know I will.
Power of Words
The persecution of the poor is an issue that has arisen over the centuries. The rebellion against the elitist is noticed currently in countless countries across the globe, in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria. In the past the fire of such controversies has been passed along through the written word and now with advances in technology, such fire is passed on much more rapidly. Jonathan Swift was one of those authors in the 18th century that pushed for the rights of the unfortunate through the written word. His main focus was on the inhumanity of poverty in the Anglo-Irish era, producing one of his most famous pieces, A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public (1729). This unanimously published work became one of the most prominent satirical works of its time.
A Modest Proposal begins its first six paragraphs with the author’s observation of the Anglo-Irish situation of the 1720s. This description takes on a melancholy, detached, economical tone in which he illustrates the poverty stricken environment. Swift uses detailed calculations on the lives and prospects that the bulk of the Irish population is condemned to for the first six paragraphs in order to bring the reader into the atmosphere of the time. Arriving at the seventh paragraph, Swift shocks his readers with his proposal, or thesis of the essay. He states, “I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one forth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the person of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good tab le. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter (Swift, 1729).” As previously noted, Swift uses detailed and emotionally detached economical analysis his thesis paragraph as he proposes cannibalism to the state of Ireland. Swift continues on providing abundant detail of the cost of child rearing, portion of population affected, the number of servings a child might provide, and how this type of meat would be considered a delicacy to both English and Irish landowners. These details bring not only his obvious use of satire but also insert the concept of political satire aimed at the Irish and English landowners. In the next eight paragraphs the author lists the advantages he sees in such a venture; he states the advantages to be: the lessening of the number of Papists, the poorer tenants will have increase in valuable goods of their own (the meat of their year old children), the nation’s stock will increase by fifty thousand pounds per year, the breeders no longer have to care for their offspring after the first year in addition to the monetary increase they would receive, the new great customs that taverns would receive, the great inducement to marriage, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation, and finally a decrease in the population of Ireland. After listing eight advantages of his proposal the author introduces his true purpose while using the tradition of Roman Satire, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them. The tradition of Roman Satire is shown in paragraph eight of A Modest Proposal, Swift requesting that “therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it (Swift, 1729).” The author uses this satirical tool to transition from the pride he has in the cold logic of his proposal to a call to action of those in power. The purpose of the proposal continues on till the end of the piece, explaining that until a country’s people can be treated better than the agricultural, they may as well be treated as such. He defends his proposal with the fact that none have attempted to create a solution to “let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, ‘till he hath at least some glimpse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them to practice (Swift, 1729).”
In order to fully understand the necessity of Swift’s call to action, one would need to understand the situation of the Irish plight in the 18th century. While much of Europe took part in the industrial revolution, English taking part in it in the yearly 1700s, Ireland was plunged into agriculture in response. Ireland depended on the exportation of agricultural good in order to generate national income, such as meat and vegetables (potatoes). “Nevertheless, the poorest classes did not see much of this money because the benefit of higher export prices was cancelled out by the rise in food prices. In some ways, this polarization towards food production increased the poor’s vulnerability to crop failure. As the farmers got poorer they were forced to sell more of their crops (usually oats) for money while eating more potatoes (a crop that couldn’t be transported easily) (Prelude to the Irish Famine: Economics).” It was a time of poverty in which elitist of the Irish landlords and English landlords thrived at the expense of their tenants. At the time of A Modest Proposal the country was on the brink of the infamous Great Famine (Potato Famine), so while Swift’s call to action went unheeded, the famine reduced the population twenty to twenty-five percent.
There are scholars who have argued that Swift’s proposal was largely influenced by Tertullian’s Apology. “While Tertullian’s Apology is a satirical attack against early Roman persecution of Christianity, Swift’s A Modest Proposal addresses the Anglo-Irish situation in the 1720s (A Modest Proposal, 2011 ).” The scholars point out the similarities in the central themes of cannibalism of infants as well as a stylistic similarity of the two authors in their sarcasm, language, times and use of irony. The “justification of ownership over the subject of sacrificing children – Tertullian while attacking pagan parents, and Swift while attacking the English mistreatment of the Irish poor” was another similarity that caused scholars to link these two pieces (A Modest Proposal, 2011 ).
There are many reasons Swift’s proposal has gained such merit. What is most discussed within the piece is the author’s many uses of satire. Satire is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly (Satire, 2011).” Nearing the end of the piece the sarcasm of the author becomes more and more evident as he aims his satirical remarks at both church and state. He logically proposes cannibalism to be the solution of the “melancholy object” to those elitist. The narrator uses details of poverty and his cool approach towards them to create “two opposing points of view that alienate the reader, perhaps unconsciously, from a narrator who can view with ‘melancholy’ detachment a subject that Swift has directed us, rhetorically, to see a much less detached way,” this strategy allows the audience to pity the poor and detest the narrator and all his accessories through his sarcastic rationalization (political satire). The reader notices his political satire in many places within A Modest Proposal, but a prominent satirical statement of Swift’s takes place in the ninth paragraph where he states, “I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it (Swift, 1729).” Successfully this statement illustrates to the reader the cannibalistic treatment that England had of Ireland; to England the nation was nothing more than poultry. As previously defined, satire is meant to expose and discredit the vices of others, and through political satire of neighboring England, the religious satire of the mistreatment of Catholics (although the majority) of that era, and the overall satire of desensitization towards the lack of human dignity towards the poor of Ireland, Swift successfully portrays the necessity of change by the closing of A Modest Proposal.
While the diction of 18th century Ireland presented difficulty in the analysis, once deciphered provided a blow that was the original intention of Swift’s work. It was the last two paragraphs of the piece in which Swift of the piece that drove the most impact into this reader as the mask of satire is stripped and the author reveals the true message of the piece: the need to treat his fellow Irishman with dignity, no matter their monetary value or lack thereof. With the poverty in Lebanon evident on the streets with beggars of its own, this satirical essay allows us to open our eyes to the treatment of the unfortunate and to create our own call to action. While this reader noticed that there was no true proposal that was projected, it only showed the complexity and difficulty of a solution.
A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public (1729), while being originally published unanimously it became one of the most prominent satirical works of its time; with the chaste pursuit of humanity of the Anglo-Irish poor, Jonathan Swift was one of those authors in the 18th century that pushed for the rights of the unfortunate through the written word. The persecution of the poor is an issue that has arisen over the centuries. And as technology has evolved it does not necessarily take the same form. But throughout the eras we see, hear, speak, and feel the rebellious words against the elitists. “For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Their articulation represents a complete, lived experience (Bengis).”
Works Cited (n.d.). Retrieved from Prelude to the Irish Famine: Economics: http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/famine/economics.html A Modest Proposal. (2011 , July 20). Retrieved from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal Bengis, I. (n.d.). Retrieved from Classic Literature: http://classiclit.about.com/od/basicsliteratureintro/a/aa_words.htm Satire. (2011). Retrieved from Merriam-Webster Dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/satire Swift, J. (1729). A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them benefical to the public.
“History teaches us that it teaches people nothing.” – Hagel
Statistically only 6% of the worlds population attends university, however our generation is blessed with so many more means to knowledge than those of the past. So with all of the political and social issues of the world we would assume that we would revisit the world’s historical records and try to find a solution to many of our current and potential problems from our past. Unfortunately, even with our growing global knowledge we condemn so much of the world to the same predicaments that were experienced centuries ago.
I know this seems like the typical “learn from your past” lecture, but perhaps if a lecture is this many times, from various sources, it may just have a point. Maybe you’re just not listening. Now to get into the debate between the differences of what hearing and listening are is a completely different tangent.
Now before continuing on, I have to be upfront and admit that to all of this ranting and raving I have no solution. I do not pretend to be a woman with extensive social and economic knowledge to be able to find a solution to our current global predicaments through analysis of past civilizations. I am merely a woman with the basic knowledge of what my past history courses gave me.
When studying ancient civilizations, my freshman year of university, my professor began the semester telling us “If you take nothing from this course, just remember these 2 important lessons:
- Underestimating your enemy is a fatal mistake
- “History teaches us that it teaches us nothing.” – Hagel
I was reminded of this second point when writing an analysis of A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public (1729) written by Jonathan Swift. Jonathan Swift was one of those authors in the 18th century that pushed for the rights of the unfortunate through the written word. His main focus was on the inhumanity of poverty in the Anglo-Irish era. Famous for the satire used in this “proposal” of Swift’s we notice very simliar issues of poverty and income that many countries are suffering from today or find themselves in the fast track towards due to the recent (and current) global recession.
As I stated before, I do not pretend to be a woman with extensive social and economic knowledge to be able to find a solution to our current global predicaments through analysis of past civilizations. However, what I am pointing out is that with the world at our fingertips we can surely be able to link the best historic, economic and social minds of our time to find one. And maybe then we can finally look to the past and learn our lessons.
Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder
Wiz Khalifa Quote
Stop Broadcasting Your entire lives.
No one cares if you are taking a shower, walking to class, or feeding your cat. You’ve killed the mystery, the thing that makes people wonder about you enough to inquire after you for a 3 second glorification that everyone on your contact list will recieve the update that you are eating Macaroni & Cheese.
No.
Instead of showing empathy for the families of the deceased you continually place “R.I.P.” for any distant acquaintance or celebrity you can think of who has kicked the can within the past 5 years. Micheal Jackson is dead, if you’re not a relative, wipe your tears and get the hell on your way. Stop looking for the online pity party. Now, if you happen to know the one you are R.I.P.-ing, then stop degrading that person’s death to no more than tabloid news. Whatever happened to private things remaining private?
You want attention? People to ask after you and to know who really cares? Quite marketing your private lives and selling every thought for not even a penny a piece on the online social black makets. Yes Facebook, BB-Messenger, and Twitter I’m talking about you. Maintain the mystery! Give your rants value and worth through scarcity; do not remain silent but also do not smother the internet with 10,000 updates a day; no one has that many things of worth to grace our lives with.
Now I am not a purest, having a blog obviously makes me a participant in this online black market and I have had a few miscellaneous posts on my Facebook account. Who hasn’t?
No one needs to say everything they are thinking...sometimes it's nice to maintain a bit of privacy with your thoughts.
All I ask is that you grow up a bit, stop begging for attention and say what you want people to read and NOT because you have nothing better to say. Don’t post every picture you have ever taken on your camera; post the ones you won’t mind if people see. Don’t call people stalkers if they look at your POSTED PICTURES. Remember, you have posted them on a SOCIAL
NETWORK….
Practice a bit of scarcity, instead of status update suffocation.
Alabama Trip (Fall 2008)
Alabama State Crimson Tide
Car rides always seem to be longer when you’re agitated. Have you noticed? The awkward silences, pin-sized comments submerged in insulting double meanings threatening your control and sanity, and the urge to violently assault one of your fellow passengers. However the dilemma for me now was that I could not decide which one of my fellow passengers I wanted to assault most; they all seemed to be equally deserving of a good thrashing in my mind.
Alabama was our destination. The purpose? To view the state college in Tuscaloosa, being a senior in high school it leaves an excess amount of decisions to be made and with the possibility of going down south for my education, one has to do their research. However, my age did not leave me naive enough to believe that my parent’s only reason for going down south in a 15 hour car ride was for me to take a peak at a college in the middle of the school year. No. They were also going for the heat. Although Wisconsin had not reached its worst, or anywhere near, anyone whom had lived in Wisconsin knows how quickly the weather adores plummeting. Sure, it will give you a warm day to start out the week, but as soon as it sees you enjoy it, old man winter snaps it back, a maniacal laugh encompassed in the subzero winds it swirls at you. Yes, my parents were going to the college to let me get a feel for it, but secretly we all knew it was a race to the last time they would be able to feel 70 to 80 degree weather for the next half year.
Our trip started as it was to be expected. Late. I had been informed the night earlier to be “packed and ready to go” when my mother arrived home from teaching her last class for the weekend, around 11 pm at night. So that is what I did. I had gotten ready in the fastest way possible, running around in incoherent circles, looking like a cat hooked and searching for the catnip ball, trying to find the deodorant that always seems to disappear before any trip, or that one comfortable pair of sweats to wear in the car; realizing too late that you stuffed too many clothing possibilities into your gym bag. So then you are not only searching for the deodorant or that one pair of comfortable sweats, but now you’re looking for a bigger gym bag to place all of your other cloths in.
However, misinterpretations are commonplace in families. So when my father had told me, “be ready packed and ready to go when mama gets home” in a tone implying absolution, what he really meant was to “be packed and ready to go when we wake you up out of your exhausted slumber at 10 am when we ourselves wont be packed.” Go figure. So as I haul my gym bag of cloths and full backpack to get in the car I notice my younger brother Adam sitting in the middle of the back seat, a peculiar place to sit since he loves the window seats. Shrugging it off, I placed my gym bag of clothing in the overly stuffed trunk and carried my backpack full with my schoolwork to the back seat with me, however if there was going to be room after looking in was iffy.
“Oh, no.” Was the phrase that came out of my mouth as I examined the image before me. My younger brother decided that the 15 to 16 hours in a car was too long to go without all the comforts of home. So in the back seat of this compacted five-seat car Adam stuffed two covers, three pillows (one being the size of two pillows on its own), a TV, two game systems (because the variety of one obviously would not suffice), video tapes as well as DVDs, and finally his backpack if by some chance he did not have enough to do to, becoming bored, he might have tried his hand at homework. All of this took up 2 of the 3 back seats, leaving one seat for both Adam and I to squeeze into. Well, I could tell that all the comforts of home were about to make me very uncomfortable. I began to implore each of my family members to remove at least one major item. A cover perhaps, they seemed on the thicker side for the frigid, tundra conditions of Tuscaloosa Alabama. Or perhaps the TV and videotapes, with the variety of DVDs we already had in the car as well as the laptop to watch them on it seemed an unneeded commodity. I would have even settled for one game system. Nevertheless, I should applaud my younger brother; he had the parents wrapped around his little finger. We kept it all.
So as we all finally got in the car my parents realized that they felt too crowded, so they began to hand back bags of who knows what. All I knew was that before the trip even began I was ready for it to end. But it was too late to turn back now as we pulled out of our driveway. Only we did stop sooner than I had thought we would. Apparently we were going to rent a car for our trip down south, less risk. So now not only did we have an over stuffed car but we had to switch everything from one car to another. Ok. Fine. I could handle that.
What I couldn’t handle however was my mother’s surprise. As my father was in the car rental office and my mother, brother and I were waiting in our car she turns around with a smile saying inane hipper comments such as. “HERE WE GO!” and “ALABAMA HERE WE COME!” and occasionally reverting back to her college cheerleading years and would begin her excited chants, pausing occasionally to let her memory catch up with the speed of her animation. I barely paided attention. I all that came to mind were blazing insults to spew in my brothers ear for the confinement I was in. He was at the top of the list at that moment of people of whom I wanted to assault. Then I hear a gasp and my mother twisted in the front seat as far as she could to enthusiastically utter, “Oh Aisha, this will cheer you up! Guess what?”
Why do people ask you to guess anyways? Do they really think that there is any way you could pull the answer some place out of the universe? That the bubbly look on their face will give way to some hidden secret, or perhaps that you are Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew with a fetish for seemingly impossible questions. Or perhaps they just enjoy seeing you struggle. Who knows? So I dispatched the urge to give some ridiculous or insulting answer and responded with the typical, overly exhausted sigh of “what mom?”
Her smile widened in anticipation as she asked yet another question in hope that I would guess. “You know how I went to Alabama State?”
“Yes mother.” I responded. Of course I did. It was the only reason why they were even considering allowing me to go to such a far college. Both of my parents had gone there. They were alums.
“You know how we are going to be there for their homecoming? Well we got tickets to go to the game. It’s a big thing.” I had already known this as well. It had been the repeated statement for the past couple of weeks. So I responded with the phoniest upturn of my lips ever imaginable, it might even be viewed by some as far as being sarcastic.
“I used to be a cheerleader and cheer at these kinds of games, remember?” There is no way I could “remember” however if I remember her telling me and showing frequently throughout my life is a different story. I think everyone within a hundred mile radius of our grocery story would know this fact. The frozen foods seem to have an effect on her and her mind. The tomatoes got the high kicks, and the apples got the palm palm swirls and the bakery got the chants. But you couldn’t be embarrassed, it was too funny to be embarrassing, she would just being have the time of her life in the grocery store. Transforming it to the stadium she remembered.
But I had a bad feeling about the direction of her questions. I started to figure it out but I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it. So when I stated my tentative “yea…” I paid attention to her expression and comments more than usual.
“Well since I am an alumni. I made some phone calls…AND YOU ARE CHEERING ON THE FIELD WITH THE CHEER LEADERS AT THE HOMECOMING GAME!”
I couldn’t tell you my expression at that point. My mind went blank. I think I heard myself yell “WHAT!?” but I couldn’t be sure.
Was this supposed to be the surprise? Some kind of joke? Please be some kind of joke. If she thought that was going to make me “feel better” she had to be out of her mind. And then I realized she lost it completely when she said:
“And it’s televised. YOU’RE GOING TO BE ON TV!” I could have strangled her. Now THAT would have made me feel better. Much better.
It didn’t seem to bother her that she knew about that small detail for a month, or that the entire town would be there, or that the entire country was watching, or that I had no clue what any of the cheers were. No. None of that bothered her. But it sure as hell bothered me. And I should have known better than to state the fact to my mother that I knew not one cheer, because from then on the car was overflowing with cheers and cheer lessons that I was just scowling over. The only joyful thought that passed through my mind was that karma was going to get her for this. Eventually.
So we switched and began our trip. Not ten minutes into the trip does my father realize that he had forgotten his cell phone at home, so the rule he made of “if you forgot something, too bad” went out the window as we turned around back to our home, only to have a rock get thrown back from the truck in front of us to crack our windshield. When I made a comedic comment about hypocrisy however I was scolded severely by my father, my mother who had been agreeing with me instantly silenced as well. So what do we get to do? SWITCH THE CARS AGAIN, the only difference is that this car was even more compactly built. By this time it is 3pm and my mother takes me out of the car to teach me the moves of her cheerleading career in full as my father once again switches the rental car. After about another thirty to forty-five minutes of car trouble we are on our way for real. And after sixteen hours of family time in a cramped car with all the comforts of home, that were never used. I still hadn’t decided whom I wanted to violently assault the most, but let me tell you it was a tight competition.
“The School” Poem
After reading “The School”, I picked a paragraph or section in order to write a poem from the point of view of the students.
I wonder where they go.
When they melted as if tainted snow
Seasonal as the now dead leaves beneath our feet
That blossom and bloom in summer’s heat,
Only to fade then fall at fated summers retreat.
Was it because they belonged to us that the same end they all meet?
I wonder where they went,
My trees,
My salamander,
My tropical fish,
My Edgar,
My Papa,
My Mama,
My Matthew and Tony,
Will they all fall until I am left lonely?
I wonder where they leave.
A terrible curse or moldy walls,
Mind numbing assignments,
Or the pain of watching our tears fall,
I have thought of a million reasons that make no sense at all.
Could it be Perhaps they simply tired of us all?
I wonder what they learned.
If after death they know the meaning of life,
Of our great struggle and vice,
Of all the joy and ultimate pain.
To stand in the sun, waiting for the rain,
Or is it to stand in the rain and hope for the sun?
Can this pain be undone?
I wonder where they end up.
Up top,
Or down bellow,
Is there a place where only our classroom goes?
