baby gangsta

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I should mention that if I am ever working in a similar environment to this one, in the future I am making St Patty's a yearly vacation/mental health day. What sick person decided to tell kids to pinch each other? Do you have any idea what happens when kids who are taught they must unequivocally hit anytime they are touched by another human, whether on purpose or on accident, feel justified in pinching each other? Mayhem. Mayhem is what happens.

Onward!

There have been several surreal moments for me recently. Times when I think, really? I mean, SERIOUSLY? This is probably not happening.

I realize that this should happen to me almost every night because, and this may sound like I'm bragging so I hope you don't get too jealous but, I may be one of the world's awesomest dreamers. I'm just saying. Some of you have the unbelievable privileged of getting messages in the morning describing my dreams. Most of them tend to follow complex and fancy-filled story lines with a definitive beginning, middle, end plot. Last night I solved a murder mystery in my dream. That's a true story.
Occasionally they just involve things like me spending the better part of an hour holding onto the string of a blue helium-filled balloon, floating around kroger holding my legs up so I was about two feet off the ground, giggling uncontrollably. Also a true story.

I know it sounds odd or petty or like an exaggeration, but I would be legitimately heartbroken if this ever stopped. Maybe this is why instead of dreaming being difficult for me to believe, almost every morning I think "Where am I? What is happening? Wait...Seriously? Really? AGAIN? WHY IS IT MORNING AGAIN?"

and then I say NO real loud and thrown the covers over my head and stick out my arm and sort of feel around for my cell phone until I find it, then I bring it under the covers and hold it like I'm a squirrel while I look at it and I turn it on snooze and try to go back to sleep but because I pulled the covers up so fast my feet are in the air and they have decided to start wiggling. Silly feet.

But there have been other, much more surreal moments. Ones that cause me to pause and not believe for a moment what I heard or saw, and walk away not sure if I should tell someone because I feel I cannot be entirely certain that I did not make it up. Like if you've ever seen a UFO. Here are five surreal moments from the past two weeks during which I thought "Yeah, this is probably not real" in reverse order:

5) This conversation:
"Lady, you are always getting in people's business"
"You punched him"
"Yeah, and that's not your business."

4) My roommate said something about her housemate to someone who had met me once, the person said "Oh, the housemate with freckles and punk red hair?"
I mean, this can only refer to me but... punk red hair? Is the color punk red or is the cut punk and the color regular red or is it an overall impression of punk red hair? Also, this is awesome and I think I should feed into this image of me. I'm going punk. Unfortunately the only think I know about punk is the couple of people I was friends with in high school with gaged ears and safety pinned clothes and from watching the movie SLC punk and listening to the Sex Pistols and from my brief obsession with googling Steampunk. Since I don't have a lot of time to do more research, I'm going to have to combine my current knowledge and assume it's all an accurate depiction of punk culture. Anarchy. Safety Pins. Time Machines. Got it. That plus my punk red hair and I'm going to be queen of the punks. God save me.


3)Once, when I thought the kids were out of the building after a particularly stressful day, my coworker and I were cleaning up. She said "ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGG. Why are all these kids so demanding and entitled?" and I shrugged, laughed and responded "I guess they feel they deserve everything based solely on the fact that they were pushed out of their mother's vagina." Unfortunately, some of the older kids had snuck back inside the building (we have a problem with kids sneaking back in while we are locking up) and heard. Was it an ok thing to say? No, probably not. But they weren't concerned with the fact that I was complaining they were entitled. They go "OOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SHE SAID THE V WORD" So I explained (and apologized) that while I used it in an inappropriate context, there is nothing wrong with the actual word blah blah blah they weren't listening. About a week later, in the sociology class I teach one of the girls asked me if I ever cussed. "Not here" I answered. And the girl who had been there a week before said, very seriously, in a whisper "Once, she said the word vagina" A cuss word? A CUSS WORD? This from a girl who drops the f bomb like it's crumbs to find her way home. I tilted my head and looked at her. Huh, because, I mean, here's the thing:

Vagina is not a cuss word.

And I understand a little better why they have friends their age getting pregnant

2)I was talking to some young teenagers and they started talking about domestic violence (they changed the subject, I went with it). And the conversation went something like this"
"Miss Kirsten, you ever been hit by a man?"
"No, have you?"
"Yeah, I had a boyfriend that hit me." They are 13 or 14 year olds.
"I've only had two boyfriend that hit me." Yeah, that's right only two.
"I watched my mom beat my dad with a hammer in the backyard, so I guess that's backwards from how it works most of the time." She said proudly.
"My mom beats me sometimes, but only when I'm bad."
"My mom beats me for no reason, that's why I live with my grandma."

So we talked about why do you think men hit women? Why do you think women hit men? What other kinds of abuse and violence are there? What can you do to help people who are in it? How can you stay out of them? Why do people stay in abusive relationships?

Then, why do you think people, particularly women, go back to partners even after being severely beaten or hospitalized?
"I don't know, why do you think Miss Kirsten?"
"I think it's probably because the other types of abuse run deeper, they've probably been emotionally abused for a lot longer. The person told them that they aren't worth anything, and they believed him, so they go back."

And then in the middle of our loud conversation one of the girls looked into the distance and got really sad and the others got quiet and she said softly "I just had a vision. I can see that. That is going to be me someday. I can see it happening just like that. Some guy is going to tell me I'm not worth shit, and I'm going to believe him, so he'll beat me and I'll just end up going back." And my heart broke, because she was being truthful about what she saw as her future. She could perceive and feel and imagine how it would all fit together. So we talked about supportive community networks.

Seriously? Really?
This. Is. Not. Real.



1)How do I describe this last occurrence in a way which will accurately depict it's surreality to me? I mean, it was the whole purpose of this blog post. I called like... 8 people to tell them. That is an exaggeration, I called like three. I may exaggerate a lot here because I get so excited and overwhelmed by what happened that my imagination keeps kicking in and taking over and make me tell it so that you get it how I FELT it, even if it wasn't strictly how it was. I'll try to stay honest if you promise to have some imagination and agree that this was SO crazy and SO hilarious and SO absurd. I cannot account for the overuse of superlatives.

I was getting into my car after work. It was a nice day outside and so a lot of people were out. As I looked out the front window of my car, I noticed a tiny boychild walking. I mean tiny. This kid was two, maybe three years old. Tiny. I think two because he didn't look old enough to form sentences yet. And he was completely alone. Ignoring for the rest of this post the calling child services aspect of that statement and consider my shock to see a tiny child walking around alone anyway, then imagine him dressed, as he was, as a gangsta. The baby was dressed like a straight up gangsta! Walking in his little baby hiphip toddle/gangsta walk. He was sagging his pants and had his tiny chain and a big coat over his long shirts. All clean and pressed with shiny white shoes, just like a real gangsta. Obviously someone had put a lot of effort and care into dressing baby gangsta, but the effect was that he was the worlds smallest hood. So he was swaggering towards me as I watched in shock. He walked his two foot self all the way up to my car and stopped. I rolled down my window and smiled "Hi! How are you?" He did a chin tilt. A. Chin. TILT. Wud up. "How old are you?" He stared. "Where do you live?" He pulled his pants up by the crotch, flicked me off and scurried away.

He didn't really flick me off.

But he did start scurrying across the street. I got out of the car to, I don't know, catch him or something? Make sure he doesn't pop a tiny cap in someone's ass? You can't have babies walking around unsupervised even if they are dressed surprisingly enough to have me in stunned silence for what was easily the first 5 minutes as I watch them walk towards me. Then react by hitting my window and waiving my arms like a mad woman to get my coworker's attention. She was texting in her car before leaving and did't hear or see me "LOOK AT THE BABY LOOK AT THE BABY HE'S GOT SWAG."

I don't know what I thought I would do with him when I got to him. Clearly he wasn't going to talk to me. And apparently you can't just grab children and take them with you. There's a name for that. Arson or something. Learned that lesson the hard way. Regardless I paused because a kid on a bike cut me off and when I looked up baby gangsta had dissipated into the mist.

There was no mist.

But there were cars in the parking lot and I couldn't see him.

It is my wish that all of you pick a stereotype and meticulously dress your children as them on alternating days. Make sure you teach them the appropriate matching walks and gestures. Thank you.


tl;dr version:
The truth lies in man's dreams... perhaps, in this unhappy world of ours where madness is better than foolish sanity.

-cervantes