a trivia game

(played with 9 year olds)

What country do we live in?
-Ohio!
No, what country
-(different kid) Ohio!
That's still not the answer.
-(yet a third kid) Ohio!
That's a state. What country do we live in?
-Alabama?
Noooo
-(smug kid, waiting as he sees his peers be wrong, says with condescension) Columbus
What? No. That's a city
South America!
That's a continent. What country do we live in?
Ohio?

this is a true story.

Absurd

I just want to throw this out there:
Someone got stabbed in my community over a fight about a firefly
yeah, a firefly. as in lightening bug

I mean, a firefly?

A FIREFLY for goodness sake

how does catching lightening bugs escalate to a stabbing?
I do not know.

absurd.

there was a shooting while I was at work

gang wars. maybe twenty shots fired between three guys as they ran all the way across the complex, including the playground which, by a miracle of God, was clear of the 40-50 kids that are normally swarming it at that time. Nobody was hurt.

But I don't want to talk it. I want to talk about something else.

I want to make it clear that I get all the arguments for capitalism and the capitalist-like mentality that is applied to social issues- if you cannot change on your own, why should the government intervene. I really, really do.

It's probably the hardest part of my job, balancing these voices in my mind saying that people have personal responsibility with the ones that say they are also victims of a very real, very flawed system; a system I can help undermine a little if I love people enough. Maybe I can help a few people, or one neighbourhood, change for the better. Maybe I can't, or I can but it's not worth the cost. Maybe I can if I can just believe that it's worth it, that there is a point.

Perhaps it's true that capitalism, like chaos, is the natural way of things, that to which all things fall in the absence of socially constructed order. Maybe, like death and disease, it is inevitable that people suffer because of a fallen system.

I do not believe, however, that this means we shouldn't fight against them, or that it's right.

I am not an idealist by naiveté. I am an idealist by choice.

And I believe that in the end the greatest argument for hope is that without it, we don't stand a chance.

tl;dr version: this got a little political, I'm sorry

I have like 4 posts half finished. Instead I'm doing this.

"I figured out what I want to make a poster about nonviolence say: 'real men don't fight or sag'"
"I don't care if you sag. I just don't want you to fight."
"Really? because in my school there are signs all around that have that slogan."
"Yeah, I really don't care, as long as you can walk or run without them falling down and I can't see your underwear."
"It doesn't make me bad?"
"As far as I'm concerned, your choices and actions make you bad, not what you wear."
*stunned silence, then:
"I have to tell... everybody."

secondary trauma

There’s a term for it, apparently. It’s called secondary trauma.
The trauma experienced by working around and hearing about trauma to those you are emotionally invested in.

I’ve had some hard weeks.

Made harder by the fact that the superiors in my organization have a distinctive tendency to respond in unhelpful ways. There’s another term for that too. It’s called condescension. Implying that I don’t know what I’m talking about, not listening to what I’m saying anyway, verbally patting me on the head to say “I know this must be hard for you sweetie, you look like a super emotional type. You must not understand your limits or know how or when to refer to others”. I’d say they can shove it, but it actually really gets to me, particularly when all I ever do is ask for help.

If I quit. It is because the second makes it impossible to feel supported when dealing with the first.

I experienced a lot of secondary trauma, particularly in a packed into a single week a few weeks back. The stress made it so I couldn’t really eat but now I can mostly keep food down which is awesome because it’s a preferred hobby of mine. I mean, it’s just that it’s all so sad-making. And very overwhelming. And very much like a flood. And, seriously, what on earth makes people think I am qualified to come to and tell all their saddest and serious-est and wisdom seeking things? I don’t just still like dinosaurs and dragons, I sort of wish I was a dragon. I bite shoulders to show my affection. As a child I thought that humming bird cake might actually contain humming bird… and I still ate it. Shouldn’t this tip you off to the fact that I am not the type of person who is all with it?

I was going to write about it, but then I looked through my recent posts and they are all SO SERIOUS and besides what if that’s exposing you to, I don’t know, tertiary trauma or something. Why keep spreading the sad? It’s not fair to you. It’s not really helpful for me, at least not in this forum. And there’s something weird and voyeuristic about it, no? Because there is nothing redemptive about that week. So it would never come around, there would never be a point. I feel like writing about it in detail would just be feeding into cynicism and, like I’ve said before, I feel like cynicism is a cop out. It takes no energy, no imagination. It also leaves no hope, and without hope we have nothing.

So in lieu of that, I am going to write the ideas for dealing with “trauma”

Unfortunately, after 3 weeks of working on this trying to make it funny all I came up with was this pathetic attempt at a post, which is not funny at all and more a list of what I actually do:

1) put the word “trauma” in quotes, mostly because I still think it’s weird and unfair that I get to claim trauma by being surrounded by other people experiencing legitimate trauma and I have yet to come to terms with the fact that I can’t necessarily handle everything with which I am faced.
I like this method because it delegitimizes the whole situation and amuses me into making it easier to deal with. I have decided to start using air quotes in more situations where they may not necessarily belong to add excitement and amusement to otherwise dull situations.

why yes officer this is my “valid” drivers license
That dress looks “great” on you
I think you two make a “great” couple, “of course” you should ask her to marry you.

2) Totally deflect : I’ve said it before, but my fight or flight mechanism is heavily weighted towards flight, and as such I tend to distract myself. This means that my days are filled with finding ways to avoid thinking about what is actually happening in my life. I have started looking at jobs in Australia because I figure as soon as the rest of my friends/siblings get married there will be nothing left for me here. I’ve also started learning to play soccer because there are some awesome people let me hang out with them sometimes. What up. Because if I can’t be sane, at least I can be awesome.

3) I think I’m going to start lying about my work. When I leave, I just don’t want to think about work anymore, In fact, I’m fairly certain it would be more healthy for me if I could somehow rest from work a little better by not having to think and talk about it for more than the 50 hours a week I do already. However, that’s often what people want to talk about. Why is that? I don’t know. I’m going to pick something insufferably dull so that they will not ask follow up questions.



` Ideas of insufferably boring jobs that do not lend themselves to follow up questions:
Private Middle School Librarian
Nighttime file alphabetizer
Spell Check Quality Assurance Specialist
Safety Card Artist

4) Cling to the good things. Say them out loud, as if they are real, as if I am real, more real than this feeling of falling. And hope to God there’s a point.



tl;dr verson: "Les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs." (times are hard for dreamers)
-amelie

a genuine question

There was a girl today that I was trying to get to read. She wouldn't, and I wouldn't let her have snack until she did. Finally, after much teeth pulling (of the metaphorical kind) she relented and together we read about the Civil Rights Movement, something she- as an 8 year old- is very interested in.

The torrents of cold water kept most of the people away today, allowing me to sit with her alone for a bit while she ate her snack after finishing reading. She was quiet, presumably because she was eating, but actually because she was pondering this question. She looked up:

"Miss Kirsten, I've been meaning to ask you. Did you used to do those things to black people?"


Hilarious. Adorable. Hilarious.

I just want to repeat that so the magnitude of how awesome and hilarious a question it is to be asked out of the blue will sink in. Here I am, expecting something along the lines of "Do I have to read everyday?" or "Can we make necklaces" or "I like oranges" or "Have you seen that Sundrop commercial?" and this is what follows
"Miss Kirsten, I've been meaning to ask you." I've been meaning to ask you Brilliant. This is something she's thought about. Wondered. Looked for the appropriate moment. Felt comfortable bringing up.

"Did you used to do those things to black people?" Yes, yes I did. I was a raging racist who perpetrated both intentional and passive hate crimes decades before my birth and protested the change of establishment towards a more just and free society. And now I work with inner city youth. She wanted to know. It seemed like a reasonable question to ask, and I seemed like a reasonable person to ask it to, probably being the only white person she knows. Or at least the only one she can approach informally.


I love everything about this moment. No sarcasm.




As a separate thought, it's kind of a profound understanding of racism and social pressures. She likes me, so she thought that even good people were capable of great evil. I explained that I had not, nor had my parents. Then I asked her if she used to do those things to white people. I thought she would take it as a joke.
She paused and then answered seriously "No. I try not to be mean to white people just because they are white. I don't like it when I see people do that."

We talked about why things like that happen. She said it's just like bullying. Then, she gave a real life example at school, where SHE IS THE BULLY and doesn't stand up for the nose pickers because everyone else would think they are gross.
She idolizes Rosa Parks, not like most kids do (because she started a movement) but because she grasps the weight of Rosa's actions as being something so brave because Rosa had every reason to believe that the whole world disagreed with her and yet still chose to do what she thought was right. The craziest thing is that this girl gets it all from inside her own head. I mean, I know her family and see her homework and hear what they teach. She's not repeating rhetoric. She is just interested in civil rights and thinks these thoughts on her own.

Sundrop it.

For about a month, I was asked daily "Have you seen that sundrop commercial..."

this was inevitably followed by being told that I look EXACTLY like the girl in the commercial or that the commercial reminded them SO MUCH of me.

I have also noticed an increase in Sundrop consumption. Compliment? you decide.