Hell's Market: My First Job As A Metaphor For Life

When I was 16 years old, I got my first job at a local grocery store. The best thing I can say about it is that it helped me realize certain things I didn't want to do with my life. I can say that about most jobs I had through my 20s, though, so I guess the best I can say is that it could have been worse. 

Then again, this was my worst job ever. Huh. Well then.

Every experience is meaningful and imparts a certain amount of wisdom if you can appreciate it as a learning experience. It was hard to do that with this job, but if I couldn't find a deeper meaning in what I was doing, all of that miserable shit would have been for nothing. 

So here we are. 


Below are a few things I did at my first job that either have a much deeper meaning than what appeared on the surface, or they were simply awful experiences of a young teen being taken advantage of by a cutthroat business owner. It may not matter to you, but believing in the former helps me cope with the latter. 


Dumpster Jumper

[Hell's] Market is a small, family owned grocery store with a great deli section and an excellent selection of fresh fish, veggies, fruits, and salads. A cherished, adorable little neighborhood market in West Hartford. Fanfuckingtastic. 

The local landmark had one dumpster in the adjacent parking lot. It was emptied once a week. It should have been emptied at least twice. But that would cost money. So, along with whichever other minimum wage teenager was on shift with me at the time, I spent late afternoons jumping on and stomping down the week's garbage. Garbage pick up was usually Thursday mornings, so Wednesday evenings were the worst. 

Me. Every Wednesday. 5-6pm.

And this was trash from a market, so all the discarded fish and veggies and cheese and everything else was in there, for a week, piling up. 

To save our shoes and some of our dignity, we would lay large pieces of clean cardboard down on top of the pile. Standing on the edge of the dumpster like it was the top rope in a wrestling ring, we then jumped onto the cardboard and stomped the yard out of that pile of garbage until we could fit the rest of the day's garbage on top without it overflowing.

Deeper meaning: Life is full of bullshit. Just keep stomping that bullshit down. And always have a designated pair of work shoes. 


Cockoach Killer

A week into my new job, I was told I would have to work every other Saturday morning, when the lowest workers on the totem pole (me...always me) had to help organize and clean the basement. A lot of that involved taking items from storage and restocking shelves. Sometimes we had to clean out the basement meat locker. Most of the time, though, I spent every other Saturday morning of the summer of my 16th year spraying Raid cans into dank corners and stomping hundreds of fleeing roaches. 

It was never this much fun. Jack Blanchard, you lied to me!

Incidentally, I came to dread Saturday mornings. Sadly, weekdays weren't much better, as the roach raids occurred on a daily basis. To be fair, the owner called in exterminators once a month to help stem the tide of roaches. But they were either incompetent or incapable of accomplishing that mission, so any time an employee was working, part of their job was to spot any roaches and remove them before customers saw. The aisles, the produce, the register; no place was safe. 

One day when I was working as cashier, a roach ran across the register, onto the counter, and down to the floor. I don't know how, but the woman purchasing her groceries didn't see it. Or she was just used to it. She might have been a regular there. 

Deeper meaning: Job descriptions are never complete. You will be asked to do some disgusting, degrading shit that will make you reconsider the entire concept of work in exchange for currency.


Meat locker/Fish shelf Cleaner

There were two meat lockers in the building; the aforementioned basement locker, where most of the meat was stored, and the upstairs cooler, where meat was brought before it was prepared to sell. Both were cold as hell, obviously. Downstairs had the bonus of cockroaches. Well, there were roaches upstairs too, but downstairs was ground zero. We cleanes out the downstairs locker once a week and the upstairs locker at the end of every day. 

I used to be a voracious red meat eater but I had never been so close to so much uncooked red meat. The bags were tightly sealed yet blood always managed to find a way out, onto the shelves and eventually the floor. The stench stayed on my clothes well after my shift ended. It was like crawling up a frozen cow's asshole. I finally understood how Han Solo felt. 

There was a wet-vac that we used to clean up the blood,. Emptying the wet-vac was proof that people are punished for things they did in previous lives. Nobody in this lifetime deserved experiencing that stench. 

Cleaning the fish shelves at the end of the day may have been worse, though. The shelves had a drain system, so once everything was removed, we took a hose and sprayed down the shelves and protective glass. Then we had to clean the trays that held the fish all day. The hose didn't work on those so that was done by hands. 

I love fish. All types, all styles of preparation. Sushi. Grilled. Fried. Shellfish. Whatever. And I've been to docks and fish markets so I've encountered pungent fish aromas. Nothing prepared me for the pungency of these shelves and trays at the end of a long summer day. There was no amount of scrubbing that got the fish odor off my fingertips. They smelled like I fingerbanged a dead mermaid.

Deeper meaning: Some things that you love can hurt you. 


Financial Abuse Victim

As this was my first job, I wasn't cognizant of the ins and outs of contract negotiations. I started working at $5, which I believed was minimum wage at the time. It may have been for a little while. But at some point, the minimum wage rose to $5.50. Unbeknownst to me, of course. When I finally found out about 6 weeks later, I asked a few people, and miraculously the next paycheck reflected the increase.

If this was the only case of cutting corners and taking advantage of employees, I would have chalked it up as a simple oversight or accounting error. But this was intentional. The owner knew I wouldn't confront him directly. If I never mentioned it to anybody, I would have never seen the extra 50 cents an hour. And the only reason word ever got to the boss was because the whole family worked there. The wife, at least three daughters, and a few cousins and aunts all had key jobs. The older family members basically set their own schedules, too, so they would go long stretches without showing up, then return whenever cash was low. 

The owner was rich, and he stayed rich because he barely paid anyone else. Half of the employees were teenagers working for minimum wage. These kids, including myself, were the hardest workers. We truly kept the place running because we didn't want to lose our jobs, plus the owner and manager ensured we were always working diligently. The other half of employees were the owner's family members. He didn't have to pay these employees very much, on the books anyways; he would just give them a "company" Benz or a handful of undeclared cash.

Deeper meaning: You will be taken advantage of if you don't pay attention, ask questions, and assert yourself. 


All in all, I'm not bitter about the experience. I mean, I did just write a whole blog post about it, and I have never set foot in the place in the 19 years since I left, but I'm not bitter. 

Nope, it was a learning experience and I'm glad I went through it. Not bitter at all. 


I Love You All (Except For My Former Boss Who Can Lick the Bottom of My Dumpster Jumping Shoes. I'm Not Bitter)...Class Dismissed.

Mildly Traumatic Childhood Events

Childhood is traumatic. 

And not just because of the hats.

Even the best childhoods are rife with embarrassments, injuries, heartbreak, or a combination of all of those. The world is terrifying as a child...and not much better as an adult to be honest, but hopefully by the time you reach adulthood you have learned some ways of appropriately dealing with the terror that is daily life. 

We create sayings like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" to ease the burden on children and make them feel like all this suffering is actually benefiting them. The truth is, sometimes what doesn't kill us scars us for life, but try breaking that to little Jessica as she's looking for a reason why her older cousin threw her pet hamster out the 4th story window. 

Children are amazingly resilient though, and sometimes they easily shake off what should seemingly be a traumatic event. Other times, some event that seems rather meaningless and minor is the very thing that shapes them as a person. 

The following incidents didn't necessarily shape me, but I do remember them clearly, and that says something right?  

Thankfully there was nothing too traumatic (that I can remember). In fact, these can all be summed up as "first-world problems." I come from a loving, middle class family, so my privilege was very high from the beginning. Hartford wasn't the greatest city (still isn't) but I lived in a nice house in a safe neighborhood. Regardless, there's always incidents that leave their mark on you no matter how great your life is overall. I wouldn't say I was traumatized or defined by any of these events but they definitely made an impression. 

The first one happened on a cross country trip with my family when i was about 11 or 12 (again, privilege on high). At Bryce Canyon in Utah we went hiking in the canyons. At one point I was near a cliff, which dropped down hundreds maybe thousands of feet. There was one area where the ledge was on an incline. I walked up and looked over the edge, acting carefree. As I started to come down the incline, my foot started to slip. I crouched down, yet kept sliding, so I dropped on my ass. I continued to slip downwards, towards the edge. 

I envisioned a long fall to my rocky demise.

I probably stopped 5-6 feet away, but that vision of slipping over the edge  stayed with me long after I had stopped all movement. I didn't tell anyone and I tried to forget about it, but the memory never left. I was shook. It was traumatic in the same way touching a hot stove as a child is traumatic. It didn't give me a fear of heights (I've gone sky-diving several times after all) but it gave me a new respect for heights. 

The next moment was traumatic in a different, grosser way. Lying in my bed in Hartford. In the state of consciousness right before sleep sets in. I hear a "poof" next to my head. A few seconds later, I hear another one, as if something light was landing on my pillow. In my dream state, I pictured Tinkerbell or the Indian from The Indian in the Cupboard jumping up and down on my pillow. The beautiful naivete of youth.

Something tickled my ear. I brush it away. Then something falls on my neck. This wasn't fucking Tinkerbell. I jump up, throwing my arms around, slapping my neck, and shaking my entire body. I jump to the light switch. 

When the light turns on, I look on my bed to see big, black, squirming ants. 

As I swallowed hard to hold back my dinner from spraying all over my room, I rubbed the skin off my entire body and ran to my parents room. These were unacceptable living conditions. My room was above the garage so the ceiling was sloped, and a wooden beam at the apex had become infested with ants. There were so many they had started to fall out, right on to the sleeping adolescent underneath.  

I have flashbacks to this scene any time I feel something on my body at night or if I hear some slight noise near my head. Not only that, this experience completely ruined Honey I Shrunk the Kids for me.

That scorpion is a hero.

Absolutely traumatizing.

Finally, probably the most traumatizing event from my childhood. I think I actually repressed it for a good portion of my life. 

My family was at our friends' house up the street. The kids were playing while the parents hung out and talked. As the sun started to go down, my brother and I were still playing around outside with our friends. For whatever dumb kid reason we had for it, we started jumping on the outside cellar door. 

It was an old, rusty metal door that we had run over and jumped on many times. Nobody bothered to tell us to stop because it was so common. What was not common was crashing through the doors to the concrete stairs beneath, tumbling and falling all the way down to the landing. 

Dazed and confused, we sat there while our parents came rushing down the stairs. My parents, caring individuals that they were, took one look at our beaten, bloodied bodies and said, "Ok, time to go home!" So instead of the ambulance ride to the hospital and several stitches that we should have probably received, we walked down the street and went home, screaming our heads off the whole time. To their credit, our friends' parents asked my parents if they were sure we didn't want to go to the hospital or treat the wounds at their house. Nope. We'll just walk the 300 yards home, go to sleep and forget it ever happened.  

I'm not one of those "if that happened now" guys, but...if that happened now, we would have sued, DCF would have intervened, and I would have owned that damn house. Instead, I have mental scars and an irrational fear of cellar doors to this day. Thanks mom and dad!

I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

You Might Not Mean To Be Racist...

...but you are.

Nothing's funnier than watching a racist get mad for being called a racist. And if you let them talk long enough in an attempt to defend themselves, you'll see just how racist they really are. The denial always makes it worse.

The fact is, we all have subconscious or unconscious biases. Test yours now! Racism is and has been rampant in this country since its inception (and even before that). It is not just individual racism either; the most insidious form of racism is institutional. The pervasiveness of racism over time seeps in to everyone's conscious, somehow someway. Even the victims of racism can internalize racist beliefs. 

That's called "Uncle Ruckus Syndrome."

Having these unconscious biases is not wrong necessarily; even when we have good intentions, we often act on our unconscious biases. The problem is when we deny their existence and continue to act on them, consciously or unconsciously. If large groups of people are offended by what you say or do, figure out why, apologize, do better and keep it moving. 

Overcoming these biases takes a conscious effort. People need to acknowledge these biases first, and then consciously work through them. What makes me laugh/cry is when people deny the possibility that their views could be taken as offensive; they get offended that anyone dare to be offended and they completely miss the irony in that perspective. Or worse, they just deny that racism even exists, which takes a cognitive dissonance that I will never fully understand.

A lot of the actions I describe in the videos below are micro-aggressions. Taken as a single, solitary incident, a micro-aggression (an unintentionally racist/sexist/homophopic statement or act) is, well, exactly what it says: micro. Not that big a deal. But imagine being on the receiving end of these acts, multiple times a day, over the course of your entire life. Any single act could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. That's why it is important to be conscious of your thoughts and beliefs and especially your actions. 

These acts in and of themselves don't make you a bad person. Ignoring or denying them does. You should understand or at least make an attempt to understand the reality of what you're doing. And if you still think you're doing nothing wrong, then yes, you are a bad person.

The purpose of this series of Vines is to bring awareness of those unintentional, subconscious moments of racism and discrimination. Honestly, it has turned into one hell of a social experiment. Check out the comments on some of the vines to get a better look at the mentality of "The Unconscious Racist." It's funny, sad, scary and pathetic all in one!

Actually, the real purpose of this series of Vines is to make me laugh and hopefully a few other people laugh, too. It's good, and necessary, to laugh at ourselves and at serious issues; that is, if we can learn from it and attempt to do better. 

Some of the acts or beliefs described are much more serious than others. For example, calling the children of immigrants "anchor babies" is way worse than saying, "I don't see color," but both stem from a similar mentality of reasserting the status quo. "You don't see color" means you don't see the realities of racism, which in turn means you must think people complaining about racism are liars. Calling people "anchor babies" is clearly more hateful, but denying the existence of the different treatment of people with darker skin in this country is insulting. 

Although I take this subject seriously, it's all in good fun and it's all love. Enjoy!

 
I Love You All...Class Dismissed.

The Bigotry Industry and Its Diminishing Returns

Kim Davis and Annie Wilkes. Wait, no. Annie Wilkes and Kim Davis. Or is it...

One of the best things about the social media era is people's ability to identify with groups of like-minded people and take down other individuals and groups they believe to be immoral. We see some piece of shit like Kim Davis (the Kentucky county clerk who refused to process same sex marriage licenses) trying to impose her beliefs on others and deny them their civil rights and we can unite against her.

One of the worst things about the social media era is people's ability to identify with groups of like-minded people and take down other individuals or groups they believe to be immoral. People see a person like Kim Davis standing up for her beliefs in the face of an unjust, immoral government, and they can unite in her defense.

This happens all the time. Some horrible person does something horrible, the internet and the majority of society at large is outraged. We get them fired or jailed. We shut down their business. We make their life miserable for a little while. A few days (sometimes hours) later, a group of people comes to their defense, claiming it is actually their rights being violated.  Davis is being championed by some as a Civil Rights hero, on par with Rosa Parks. Certain Republican presidential candidates have flocked to her side. Mike Huckabee said God came down in the form of Kim Davis. 

Damn, God, you couldn't choose a more flattering vessel?

As an American, you have a right to be an asshole, but not if it impinges on other people's rights. That's a very basic principle. Your rights and beliefs are no more important than anyone else's. Kim Davis has a right to feel any way she wants about marriage. She can claim she is defending the sanctity of marriage despite being on her 4th marriage. She has a right to be an idiot and voice her opinion. She does not have a right to deny other people's rights. This is not a case of "an unjust law is no law at all" and the fact that someone would think to compare her to Martin Luther King is disgusting. She is upholding the unjust law that we, and the Supreme Court, overturned; the one preventing gay people to get married.  Davis has every right to disagree with it, campaign against it, and protest it, but as a civil servant, it is her duty to follow through with it. Do your job. And don't take a job you know you might object to. If I'm Muslim or Jewish, I'm not going to work on a pig farm. 

That sort of sounds like I'm comparing gay marriage to slaughtering pigs. Not cool, man. Point is, if you feel that strongly about something, don't take a job that will require you to go against your beliefs. 

The reality of this situation is that Kim Davis was happy to become a martyr for her bigoted, misguided cause. She knew she would receive plenty of support. This was her one chance to do something meaningful with her life, even though it was illegal, hateful, and essentially pointless. How else could she make it on tv and come out to Eye of the Tiger and meet presidential candidates and receive thunderous applause from hundreds of people?
  
This is far from the first time a horrible person has been hailed as a hero. Davis is essentially Pennsatucky in Orange is the New Black, the hillbilly who killed abortion doctors (after having several abortions of her own) and became a hero of the Pro-Life/Anti-Choice crowd.

Anti-Choice Christ.

Memories Pizza in Indiana caused a national outrage when they said they wouldn't cater gay marriages. People bombarded the store with calls, emails, and probably angry letters and tweets or something. We made life so very difficult for their little business. 

So difficult that 29,000 people chipped in and raised damn near a million dollars for their bigoted little business. 

No matter how you feel about Mike Brown and Darren Wilson and Ferguson, it's hard to justify raising over half a million dollars for a guy for killing an 18 year old, particularly when that guy was already in a Union that paid his legal fees and was on paid leave after the incident.

There will always be a diverse array of ideas in the world, including hateful ones. Any activism for one side of a cause gets balanced out or overpowered by the other side. Progress is always met with resistance. Hate is powerful, and hateful people are usually the loudest and most persistent. 

Although it is an unintelligent, backwards way of thinking about the world, bigotry can be clever, too. This new ploy of claiming "religious freedom" is definitely a clever response to the changing social atmosphere, but it should be called out for what it is: an excuse for bigotry. Kim Davis, or Mike Huckabee for that matter, is no Martin Luther King. Or Martin Luther for that matter. Huckabee is trying to score political points and Davis is trying to score a payout from gofundme or a future speaking tour at megachurches all over the country.

So what do those of us with a modicum of empathy and humanity do? Stop calling out bigotry? Every time bigots get called out, some will rush to their defense, yes, but that just lets us know who the other bigots are! Despite great progress, we have a long way to go, and calling out the ones holding us back is the only way we will move forward.

In Kim Davis's case, the group Survivor is threatening to sue for unauthorized use of their song, so maybe this time the asshole won't get her payday. She has become a martyr, though, and that is enough for most of these bigots. They finally feel like they matter.

On a larger scale, though, what it really means is they don't matter anymore. Their bigoted way of looking at the world is becoming less and less common, which is why she became such a big story in the first place. That's actually a sign of progress.

If a few bigots benefit from their outrage inducing hate, we are still better off as a society for calling them out. Even though she has become (the ugliest) poster child for her outdated cause, the people's lives she was interfering with are happier now, and that's all that really matters.

William Smith, Jr. and James Yates after finally getting married in Rowan County, Kentucky, on their 6th attempt.

I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

Through Sickness & Health & False Assumptions

We all have moments when we question the sincerity of others, especially when it comes to sickness and health. I've learned that when most people say things like, "I don't understand why I can't lose weight, I work out all the time and I barely eat!" it really means, "I occasionally walk around the block and skip the 8th piece of pizza." I know this because I do this. When really thin people say, "I eat all the time!" what they usually mean is they nibble on a small amount of food throughout the day or eat a normal amount and exercise obsessively. We all share these slightly fabricated visions of our own realities at some point. 

A similar thing happens when it comes to sickness. I usually tend to think people exaggerate their conditions, especially when I've never had that condition and don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. A friend's mom used to have wrist pain and carpal tunnel syndrome from her job as a secretary. She'd miss a lot of work because of it. I always thought she was being dramatic. When people complain about migraines and miss work because of them, I always used to think that was bullshit. It's a headache. Go to work. That was of course until I experienced my first migraines and wanted to crawl out of my own skin and jump off my balcony to ease the pain. 

You just don't know until you've gone through it. Even then, it may affect someone else in a completely different way. As I experienced more, I learned not to judge and that I really don't know what others are going through. I still had (have) moments of stupidity though. A while back, one woman I worked with had a hypersensitive sense of smell. She always complained about barely perceptible scents in the office and she once asked my boss to tell me to never wear cologne. I took offense because I barely wore it and who was she to tell me I couldn't smell how I wanted? It was not like I had a cloud of Curve following me. Get over it. 

That was the mentality I had going into an adjunct instructor meeting a few years back. A woman in her 50s comes in and sits close to me. She was holding up a white duster mask over her nose and mouth. She explained to another adjunct that she had a hypersensitive sense of smell. 

Here we go again.

She said how difficult it can be when there is a class full of students, all with different chemical compounds in their hair and on their body and clothes, in poorly ventilated classrooms. And some of them with their damn cologne!

Ugh. I hated her immediately.

She went on to explain that she had worked for a company that didn't properly protect its employees from a certain chemical they used and she was basically poisoned. The chemical got into her system and caused her allergies to go into overdrive. She was currently in a lawsuit against them. She had to quit her job and could only work part time as an adjunct. There were times when she could barely breathe. 

Huh. This didn't sound like the whiner at my old job. In fact, it sounded like I rushed to judgment. It sounded like I was an asshole.

As the reality of my assholeishness started to set in, she said the name of the company that poisoned her. It sounded familiar. I had seen it somewhere. 

I looked down at the bag containing my books and other school supplies laying by my feet. There on the bag, I kid you not, was the logo for the same company that had poisoned this woman. 

What. The. Hell. 

I slowly moved the bag underneath the table with my foot as I continued to nod my head, listening to her awful story and wanting to disappear.

 

Kinda like this.

So that incident helped me realize that I can't possibly judge other people's health situation. I still have doubts about that lady at my old job (she called out and complained constantly) but even then, how do I really know? After the poisoned lady shared her story, there were still times I doubted people who complained about allergies. Recently I discovered the horrors of many allergies, in particular Lavender allergies, and I now thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster everyday for not giving them to me. I get bad headaches sometimes and I think about how much of a jerk I was for questioning other people's toughness in dealing with headaches. Yes, there are certainly some people who blatantly lie about their conditions, or play up their conditions for sympathy or financial gain, but for the most part, there's no way to know how a sickness or an injury affects each individual.

I see this a lot with mental health especially. People with severe depression are told to "get over it" or "shake it off." People don't understand it is a chemical imbalance. The brain is just another organ, and sometimes it doesn't work properly. You don't tell someone with kidney failure to get over it. You tell them to get treated. People who have no experience with depression have no frame of reference. Just because you were sad once when a family member dies doesn't mean you know what depression is. Same with anxiety. Just because you get nervous before you have to speak publicly doesn't mean you understand what someone with an anxiety disorder goes through. It's not something you can just think about real hard and will it away. 

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, don't be an asshole? Yeah. Don't be an asshole. Stop judging or trying to "fix" people's illnesses. 

And don't ever carry bags with any type of logo, ever. Just to be safe.  


I Love You All...Class Dismissed.

Plato's History Recalled

The older I get the more I understand and accept Platonic epistemology, the idea that everything we know, we have already been taught; each soul existed before birth, so we aren't learning, we are relearning.

I don't really believe in reincarnation, per se (I believe in the tranference of energy; another subject for another blog post) but the part about learning what we already know rings true for me. I think humanity as a whole constantly forgets and relearns advances made in medicine, technology, engineering, and more, which affects our level of progress as a species. Entire generations forget or ignore the wisdom from previous generations, either out of stupidity or pride. We never learn from history, and as the saying goes, if we don't remember history, we are doomed to repeat it (I can just picture the elderly librarian who coined that phrase, looking down her nose past her spectacles at the arrogant little pricks that ignore the history section and only take out friggin Divergent books or whatever the equivalent was at the time). That's the pattern humanity has mostly followed. We don't remember history, so any improvements in society come very slowly (if at all) because we have to spend time relearning the same damn things over and over.

The ego of newer generations is often devastating. "There has to be a better way!" Well, not always. In Australia, bush fires have ravaged the land for centuries. Over the last few decades, however, they have become much worse, largely because officials have decided to forgo the techniques used by Aboriginal Australians.

There are countless examples of solutions to problems/inventions/structures that confuse modern generations because of the seemingly advanced technology or engineering involved. Some people go so far as to claim "aliens" must be responsible because nobody could have been capable of such achievements in the past. The pyramids are a prime example. How could they possibly be made by humans without modern technology? Even nowadays, such a project would take years! How could they even move those giant stones?

Turns out, pretty easily. Yeah. We should have figured that one out a while ago.

Medicine is another field that often ignores lessons from the past. There are literally books about "forgotten cures". So we discover cures for diseases, or ways to prevent diseases, and once they are almost eradicated, we get lazy and overconfident. When the diseases inevitably come back, we have forgotten how to defeat it. Let's hope that particular cycle doesn't continue. 

So much of humanity's knowledge has been destroyed, sometimes willfully, sometimes accidentally and many times out of necessity. There's no way to keep every document or record forever. Historical artifacts are lost or ruined. Entire buildings, societies, belief systems are all wiped from existence and our collective consciousness all the time. Data storage is a huge market and there's good reason why; maybe computers will one day be able to store, and therefore access, the accumulated knowledge throughout history and make decisions or create new ideas and solutions based on that knowledge. As long as the technology doesn't turn on us, which it might when it realizes how stupid we all are, we could have real progress.

To look at this on a micro level, have you ever helped a child with their homework? How much of it can you do from memory? It's the idea behind Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? It's not that they are smarter, they are simply being actively taught; the knowledge is fresh in their minds. Adults forget most of what they learn in school, and once most people are out of high school or maybe college, they don't do much active learning. Many simply become stuck in their ways and content with their level of knowledge. Of course, the world moves on and they are often unable to adjust. These people become Conservatives (jk kinda).

Entire generations are like stubborn little kids, insisting on doing everything their way and not listening to elders trying to teach them. Sometimes this leads to great breakthroughs and new, more effective, creative solutions, but it often leads to new, unexpected problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm a postmodernist and I love tearing down old structures and systems, especially when those systems are corrupt or broken, but we can never be so arrogant to think we can not learn from the past. 

It doesn't help that some people go out of their way to erase or rewrite history for their own benefits or warped reasoning. When people in positions of authority sincerely claim the Holocaust never happened, or that Iraq was behind 9/11 and had Weapons of Mass Destruction, or that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, it's hard to progress as a civilization. 

History is ugly and brutal, and we only learn from it when we face it head on. We can't attempt to bury it to make ourselves feel better. 

Own it. Learn from it. And do better. 

Also, save everything on a flash drive. 


I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

Prof Thug's Books Review

In literacy education, there is often a heavy focus on finding books that kids can relate to in order to encourage them to read. I understand the thinking behind it, and it can help kids get into reading. I certainly enjoy some books (or movies/shows/music/etc.) in which I can relate to the characters or the situations. But I also love to read about things and people I can't relate to. That's what got me into reading: learning about other people, places, and times I wasn't familiar with. Of course, I didn't view it as learning, it was just interesting. Reading about people just like yourself gets old.

When I was a kid I read "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret." It's about a little girl getting her period. I read it when I was 12. I was fascinated because I didn't know anything about that. At all. Yet it gave me valuable insight into many important aspects of life. It also prepared me for watching Carrie.

I find that when stories are different from my own, I tend to search out the similarities. How can I relate to this young girl going through puberty? How can I relate to this woman who left an arranged marriage in India and started a new life in Iowa? Answering those questions helps to build a connection with people who don't look or act like you. It helps build empathy.

So here are two books I recently read that I enjoyed a great deal. The first one involved a story that most people, especially myself, can not relate to, which makes it interesting and even important. The second book centered on a character who I could relate to almost too much.

Maus

This is a long-form comic/graphic novel. Art Spiegelman tells the tale of his father's life before, during, and after World War II. In the story, Jews are represented as mice, Nazis as dogs, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. His father is a Polish Jew who spent part of the war as a prisoner in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Fortunately, he (and his wife) survived and eventually move to New York.

The story is told from the perspective of the son (Art) who is interviewing his father. We get a personal perspective of Poland before the Nazis came as well as an inside view of the concentration camps. We also get the perspective of a son who has to endure the almost unbearable personality of his Holocaust Survivor father.

The self awareness of the author puts the reader in his shoes, and he addresses most of the issues or questions readers may have. Nothing is taboo; there is no other way to tell a story of the Holocaust.

The fact that it is told in comic form makes some of the events and complex themes easier to take, but it doesn't lessen the impact of the story. In fact, it  magnifies the impact because it's such an unfamiliar way to tell a familiar story. The contrast between the medium (usually reserved for children or light-hearted comedy) and the horror which it depicts heightens the feelings of discomfort. We have all seen Schindler's List or similar movies and we have become desensitized to the tragedies of the past. This book makes us look at the horror in a new light.

It is impossible to truly comprehend the atrocities of the Holocaust. We know people starved and were worked to death or put in gas chambers. Many were forced to dig their own graves or the graves of their loved ones. There's no way to truly understand the psyche these experiences must have created in survivors. Spiegelman was able to give a glimpse into that psyche when his father talked about Jews who turned over other Jews to the Nazis, hoping for preferential treatment. Even within the concentration camps, some Jews would sell out others in order to get in good with the guards. That is the corrosive mentality created living under an oppressive regime.

Because of the weight of their oppression, some Jews started to believe that Jewish people as a whole were inferior. Except for themselves of course. It's similar to Samuel Jackson's character in Django Unchained. This is another effect of being oppressed for long periods of time: the tendency to take on the mentality of the oppressor. It is impossible for me to truly comprehend that mentality, but Maus captured how prevalent it was and helped me understand how and why that mentality existed.

Long after the war, in New York, Art and his wife take their father for a car ride. They see a hitchhiker and decide to pick him up. The father loses his mind and starts yelling at them. His problem? The hitchhiker is black. Surely, this black man will hurt them or steal from them.

Art and his wife are dumbfounded. The wife asks how he can be racist after all that he went through. Art tells his father he sounds like a Nazi talking about Jews. The father is outraged that he would compare Jews to blacks. As bad as Jews could be, they are never as bad as blacks!

It's an upsetting scene that perfectly illustrates the lasting, damaging effects of systemic racism and mental/physical trauma. The realities of the Holocaust are almost inconceivable, so its effects are unimaginable. The book was depressing, but only because life can be depressing. We shouldn't hide from the horrors of the past. However, we can not let the past control us either. The father served as a reminder that letting the past dictate the present can be detrimental to our health and the health of those around us.

The book tells an important story without being pedantic. It's educational and entertaining. I honestly believe it should be taught in school. This is a work of art in which children can learn about the atrocities of the war without having the visceral brutality of it shoved in their faces.


Lucky Jim

The other book is far more light-hearted, despite the fact that it doesn't have cartoon mice.  I could relate (sometimes scarily so) to much of the protagonists' thoughts, feelings, and desires. His actions were much more outrageous than mine, though. Mostly. It reminded me of Confederacy of Dunces in that way.

The titular Lucky Jim is a professor in England a few years after World War II. He doesn't particularly enjoy the subject he teaches, or teaching at all. More importantly, he doesn't appreciate the stuffiness and the pretentiousness that he sees in university life. He is an anti-academic academic.

He avoids his students and most of his responsibilities. He pisses off other instructors, especially Professor Welch, the department head. Jim woos Welch's son's girlfriend. He gets drunk and ornery at Welch's house during an employee function.  And when he finally is required to perform something resembling his job, he mocks Welch in front of a full auditorium before passing out drunk.

After all that, he ends up with the girl and the job he wants because of his honesty and his disdain for the establishment. The story is basically everything I want my life to be.

This book was enjoyable because the main character was so relatable, and not just for me because he was an ornery professor; he is the "everyman". Moderately successful but not very hard working. Charming at times, awkward at others. Friendly when he wants but not overly outgoing. Several vices, but nothing crippling or unusual. Although it takes place in England in the 1950s, his anti-establishment stance is a trait individuals of any era and area can appreciate.

It's written in proper British English, which makes the insults and shenanigans even funnier to me. Since I mostly just read tweets and articles on Cracked  nowadays, it took a little while to adapt to the style, but it paid off. The contrast between the writing style and the ridiculous actions of the main character is hilarious in itself. It's very much British humor. A middle class man working in academia ridiculing upper class elites in their own homes? Yeah. Peak British humor. I don't always love it, but when it's done right, it can be brilliant. Kingsley Amis nails it, which, considering his name, isn't that surprising.


I Love You All...Class Dismissed.