Archive for January, 2010

It’s been a long time since I’ve accepted that a lot of stuff happens to me that I don’t think should be happening. In writer’s group a couple of years back someone called me “the girl whose life was one long emergency,” but believe me, by then I was was slowing down and thinking things over before taking action. You’d have to go back when I was in my twenties to find me amidst a chaos that seemed to reign supreme. The phrase stuck with me, though for a while I couldn’t remember where it came from. I knew it was a song, just couldn’t remember which. But then just this morning I dragged it out again on YouTube, somehow, without even meaning to.

The original song is For You, by Bruce Springsteen. I don’t listen to Springsteen much nowadays — among other things, Dean hates him and always tells the most unflattering stories about The Boss’s personal life if he hears his music — but I have, always, had a soft spot the tunes nevertheless. I was listening to “For You” this morning before the boys left for school, and one of them asked

“What happened to his voice?”

“He’s from New Jersey.”

“Yeah but — that raspy sound. It’s horrible.”  And this wasn’t even the infamous rendition of “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Well, you either like that voice or you don’t, you either accept his music style or you don’t. But what does the song mean? Looking at the words, they’re even less coherent than “How Does it Feel” by Bob Dylan but the overall sentiments are the same: there’s this girl, she’s messed up, she’s trouble, she doesn’t like the guy too much but he loves her anyway and he wrestles down his feelings of rejection by pointing out her vulnerabilities.  Some of the song is made of lyrics that Dean, the opera buff, would call “throwaway” such as “my electric surges free.” Now what does that mean? But other lines are pure genius. Even at the age of 15 I was struck by the image of the girl being carted off to Bellevue, which is the mental hospital, and the guy wanting to rescue her himself. It’s a repeated theme in literature, the story of the crazy girl.

I’m pretty sure I’m not as deranged as the original girl whose “life was one long emergency.” Nevertheless, I have felt that sense of continual emergency at times. I have overstated my own importance, too, I’m sorry to say. And overall, looking back, I feel a certain poignant sense of recognition when I hear this song.  There’s so much of youth and confusion and desperation in there, it makes it pretty nigh on to universal.

To appropriate a quote of Kirsten Dunst’s in Elizabethtown, “I don’t know a lot of everything, but I do know a lot about the part that I know about, and that’s anxiety.” I’ll talk about two aspects of that here.

First, there is what mental health professionals call, in a most unglamorous way, “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” This is when, basically, you walk around all day in a state of unrepentant, unremitting, unglorious fear. Note the graph at the right:

Imagine being “me” for about fifteen hours out of any given day. Not so nice. It gets old pretty fast, let me tell you.

However, that is not as interesting as a panic attack. Ah, that frontier of the paranoid, that haven for the irrational, that instigator of white knuckles and hyperventilation!

If that’s what a bout of anxiety looks like, well, a panic attack is off the charts. It is overwhelming, in the most literal sense of the word. Fear is all there is, rationality takes a flying leap, and there you are. Here is what a panic attack sounds like from inside the head of someone who knows it well: “CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPAAAHHHHHCRAAAAAAAPCRAPCRAPCRAPHOSH**OHS*

HOSH**F***************************************************************************……….”

Well, you get the idea. I’m not making that up. See, here’s the deal with a panic attack: You are going to die. That’s right, you, and not in the all-too-distant future, either. Who wouldn’t respond with an incoherent string of obscenities? Who wouldn’t go all Ray Bones on that s***? And, see, you  know you’re going to die. Because your heart is beating weird, and all of a sudden for no reason you’re dizzy, then there’s a pain in your chest.And you just know, this is it. This is no bonfire of the vanities, with all going up in smoke piece by piece, this is a straight-up firestorm, and you are goin’ to die.

Because. see, the deal is, you’re in a car. The driver is pretty good, but maaaan that last turn was sharp, and that semi, OHGOSH it’s coming this way, we’re going to go right over the edge, ARE WE ON A BRIDGE? ohnoohnoohnoohno we’re not going to make it, this is going to be it, wait – I just felt a little vibration – are the wheels flying off? I think they are going to fall off, or maybe the whole floor is going to fall, and me with it, this is it, hold on tight, no, tighter, close your eyes, (hyperventilate hyperventilate hyperventilate) this is it, the crash is coming, I just know it, this is bad, this is bad, this is SOO BAD because really, this time it’s going to happen, this time I just know it’s going to be bad, what if we hit that curb? Wait – what was that sound? Is that an earthquake? I think the ground is going to swallow us up, I just know it, I really do, this time it’s going to be bad…

Or maybe you’re on a plane, white-knuckling it, grimacing, sweating tears of anguish, as the flight attendant gaily ignores your misery – “would you like something to drink?” You give her one, pained, glorious look, and your steely glare says it all: “CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAPHOWINTHEHECKISDIETCOKEGOINGTOSTOPTHEPLANEFROMCRASHING

HUHHUHHUH???DAAAMMMMNNNAAAGGHHH.”

Yup. Because the plane is lilting a little – was that a dip?  – there was a noise in the engine and WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. How can all the other passengers be so oblivious? How can you read the newspaper at a time like this? I’d get on my knees and pray, except even if I could unlock my fingers from this armrest, well, I really wouldn’t because that’s all that’s holding me steady….

Yes. What? A plane is the safest way to travel? Those are all psychosomatic symptoms of someone who is having a panic attack, as delineated somewhere in that wonderful tome, the DSMIV? Well, see, you just don’t get it – I just know I’m dying. I AM DYING. Right now. If you felt like I did, you’d understand, and you would also be huddled under the covers calling your mother…

“Mom…mom….this is bad….I think this is it….”

“….what time is it?”

“I think I have cancer.”

“Cancer.”

“Yes, see, there’s this mole, and it got a little darker today, and ohcrap I just know it’s cancer and I’m going to die, and now I have this pain in my chest, maybe I’m going to die of a heart attack before the cancer gets me, it just won’t go away, and I can’t breath, and the room is getting small…”

“Tonia.”

“No, mom, it’s real this time I just know it, I AM GOING TO DIE. Tonight. See, I had this thought, ‘you are going to die’ and then, what do you know, I started feeling all this stuff, and I found that mole…”

“Tonia.”

“..And now ohgosh now I think my hand is going numb what do you think that means? I’m pretty sure – no really I’M DYING….(starts to hyperventilate)…”

“Tonia?”

“….(rapid breathing)…yes?”

“Take some Xanax.”

This endearing Bollywood film came out in 2007 and takes place in trains, homes and in the Himalayas, starring two fresh-faced young people with the high energy and lack of self-knowledge you’d expect from people their age.  As I write that, I rather shudder, thinking that calling them “young people” puts me outside that jurisdiction. And yet, I think that is how the film works, by allowing the viewer to feel like a more knowledgeable person, to sense the inner sentiments of the actors long before they themselves figure it all out. The audience has the experience of simultaneously knowing where this is all leading and watching it unfold. It’s like going through your own youth again, without the pain and uncertainty. Disapproving parents, mistaken feelings, song and dance numbers and beautiful costumes and scenery round out the usual Bollywood Calgon-take-me-away routine.

Aditya, a young man of great wealth but little happiness, is played by Shahid Kapoor. I don’t know why but I was completely won over by the spectacles he wore, which seemed to symbolize his emotional vulnerability and his ability to look out but not in. Kareena Kapoor plays Geet, a girl whose impulses are completely ungovernable, whose overdone eye makeup suggests that she does everything with over-great enthusiasm, an assumption not disproved in the film.

As the film opens, Aditya’s “true love” marries someone else and he leaves his friends, his business, and his home in Bombay and gets on a midnight train going, as the song says, “anywhere.” He meets Geet and finds her so irritating that he decides to get off in a whistle stop town somewhere in the Indian countryside — it’s dark, so you never know where they are — and she follows him against his wishes.  They wind up in a number of amusing situations, such as with a crazy taxi driver with dashboard cartoonishly embellished with garlands, or in a hostelry, the “Motel Decent,” which rents room by the hour, the significance of which Geet completely misunderstands.  By the time Aditya brings Geet to her family home in North India, they are friends but nothing more and Geet plans to elope with someone else. Nevertheless, her grandfather, when he meets the two, acuses Aditya of being Geet’s love interest, and says sternly, “When you’ve reached my age, you can always see what’s going on.”

In the rest of the film, the viewer gets to find out if the grandfather is indeed right. The movie seems to subscribe to the philosophy that “some things are just meant to be and will happen whether you want them too or not.” In this context, that’s a comforting, not a disturbing notion. I recommend this film to all romantics anywhere who can get subtitles in their language.

We have a wandering jackal in this house. It’s my dog, BT, who acts sweet and nice and pretends that if you let him in the front yard he’ll stay around the door and come right back but then when your back is turned he’ll take off. It’s happened not once but twice in the last 6 weeks.

The first time, I was in despair. “We’ll never find him,” I thought quietly. Another dog we’d had was lost four years ago in the same neighborhood and we never found out anything about her whereabouts.  How could I ever get this dog back?

We went to the shelters and there was a flier there for “lost pet dog tracking service.” It seemed that they would use a tracking dog to find out where your dog went. We considered for a couple of hours – the trail was getting cold – and then called the lady up.

It was impressive, the woman came out with the dog, a rangy red bloodhound, in a tracking harness, set him on the scent, and he put his nose down and began to follow a looping path just like a real wandering jackal would make down the street. In the end all the woman could tell us was that the scent ended at the intersection of Bilglade and Granbury and that meant the dog had been picked up in a car at that point. Although that was good for something – we knew he wasn’t shivering on the street somewhere – it didn’t explain where the dog was.

But BT was recovered, somehow. We put up signs and checked the shelters, as the dog-tracking lady had advised, and my husband found him in the Humane Society Shelter three days after his escape. The bloodhound lady had told us that if you do everything you can – check the shelters, put up posters, and hire the bloodhound – the recovery rate for lost dogs is about 85%. I wish I’d known that four years ago.

Dean had the dog microchipped at the Humane Society. We bought him a new collar and hung the microchip tag on it. And then, last Friday, the dog got out again.

I felt bad – but this time I didn’t go to the shelters. I figured if they had the dog they’d scan him and call us. And, in fact, we did get a call in the afternoon. The dog had been located about six blocks away, on the same route he’d been using the previous time. The man who found him got the Petfinder tag and called the number, and they referred him to us. I was so grateful.  I gave the kids a lecture about letting the dog in the front yard, of course. But I also realized that finding your lost dog didn’t have to be a hopeless case.

These are the steps to preventing a lost dog:

1. Have the dog microchipped
2. Have the dog wear a collar with the microchip company tog and a name tag with your phone number.
3. Don’t ever let the dog outside of a fenced enclosure.

If the dog is lost:

1. Go to the shelters.
2. Put up signs in the area where the dog was lost. Put “Reward” and “Needs medication.” If people think the dog needs medication, they won’t want to keep it. All dogs need heartworm medication, so you’re not fibbing.
3. Hire a dog tracking bloodhound if you can find one. It gives you a sense of having tried everything and you might be led right to the door of a neighbor who was planning to “adopt” your dog.
4. If at first you don’t succeed, go back to the shelters again. Dean found BT on the second visit. Dogs have been found at shelters as long as a year after disappearing.

This appeared to be the tag on an email I received this afternoon. “Wow,” I thought, “after all this time, someone had finally found out God’s email address and is passing it around, perhaps with an admonition not to break the chain or you will be struck dead by lighting.” On closer inspection, the email turned out to be tagged “submit your questions for the Golden Globes” a much less interesting proposal, since I barely know what the Golden Globes are.

I was so disappointed. I do have a few questions to ask God about. Some of them, not surprisingly, I can’t publish. But I think I could come up with a few that aren’t too personal:

Dear God, why won’t you just let us reach our goals and have some peace?

Is it really fair that those we love are free not to care about us in the least?

Why are there so many bad people in the world, anyway?

I mean, couldn’t we have gotten by with only about half the current number?

Could you at least get rid of half the bad people in my life?

And finally, could you just put to bed the question about whether there are dogs in heaven or not?

How about you, readers? Do you believe God may have an email address somewhere? If he does, do you think he had it ten years ago, before everyone else, or do you think he was a late adopter? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask God? If you do, would you dare to put them in the comments below?

I’ve been helping my mother with her new twitter account, which was an interesting experience since she knew almost nothing about the application. She had set up her account, written a bio, uploaded a picture and was following 2 people with about 20 following.

“Why don’t I have more following?” she said.

“For one thing, you haven’t got a full page of posts,” I explained. “You’ve only got 7. That means people don’t know if you’re serious yet. They want to see about 20 posts before they start adding you. Another thing is you haven’t added anyone. People tend to add you back when you add them. If you don’t add them, they may never find out about you.”

“So what should I do?”

“Add some people.”

“How do I know who to add?”

“Search on what you’re interested in.”  We did that. She has a couple of topics.  I hit the search and began scrolling through the accounts, looking for the live ones.

“How do you know not to add those first three people?”

“Anyone that talks about money or millionare or any other things that smacks of MLM is out. Large companies are out. You don’t want someone promoting a product. You want real people who interact. Look, here’s one.” It was a guy who was talking about the Cowboys game.

“Is that all I need to know?”

“No, you’ve got to know how to retweet and how to reply.” That has gotten easier since I joined about a year ago, I noticed. We covered that — just hit the keys beside the posts to retweet or reply.I showed her how she might phrase an effort to interact. For example, she might talk about the Cowboys game with the guy who posted on that.

“Of course, he may or may not answer,” I told her. “You can’t take it personally if they don’t. And retweet interesting posts. People will really appreciate it and you’ll build your network.”

She was getting ready to leave. “I hope this isn’t overwhelming.” I said.

“No, that helps a lot.”

She went out the door. I wondered if I had taught her enough. I will check back on her profile in a day or two. And that will get me back on Twitter, where I haven’t been since I started teaching.

I’d love to tell you what her account is, but I can’t for reasons of my own anonymity efforts. Just say she’s a lady about town in Cowtown, like ten thousand others, and leave it at that.

After a two-week break, it’s back to work this morning for teachers all over the country, including me.

For better or worse, I was not able to let go of thinking about the classroom while I was off. I spent much of my “vacation” doing planning activities, including doing careful lesson plans, diagramming a rearrangement of my classroom, reading books on teaching, upgrading filing and paper organization systems, and  making a stoplight out of construction paper (it’s to communicate noise level expectations in the classroom as they change from red: “silent — testing” to yellow “whispering only” to green: “normal voices and discussion.”)

Am I excited? Of course. And worried. The first year of teaching is a challenge, which, back in the summer, I was warned about by a lot of people.  I tend to assume that if one person tells you something, you can take it with a grain of salt, but if a dozen people give you the same caution, you probably need to listen carefully. It is hard to be a first year teacher, I will not deny that.

I now know a few things. I know that I love teaching. And that I can go to work without my household collapsing into itself. Those are good things. But there is always much more to learn. I have really only barely scratched the surface of what I want to learn about kids and teaching. The only way to find out the answers to many questions is to get out there are see. So this morning, I’ll go back to the school and start to discover more.

photo credit: ajagendorf25 via flickr photostream.

It’s funny, perhaps, but while I couldn’t care less about new Year’s Eve, when people go to parties, drink, sing “Auld Lang Syne” and cry and worry about getting old, I’ve always rather liked New Year’s Day, with its parades and its feeling of rest and renewal. After all, no one is so old, as the ancient Roman saying goes, that they don’t believe they could have just one more good year. And today, I feel optimistic, like I could have a whole string of good years, one after the other.

All through the Christmas break, resting and preparing, I’ve been looking forward with a kind of optimism. Some of that might be my job and that I love teaching. Some might just be that I’m getting a rest. But some, I sense, it that there are actual new reasons for optimism in 2010. Without going into them, I will simply note that we are in our homes, living our lives, doing our work, interacting with friends and neighbors. What more is necessary?

I think of Chinese New Year and its dragons and red envelopes full of lucky money. I wish we had lucky money to distribute. I feel in the mood to spread some of my optimism. The next best thing I can do is to list the following:

Actual Traditions Said to Improve Luck in the New Year

I look around for these. One is to cook black eyed peas (Hopping John is one popular way)  for good luck in the new year. Just yesterday I learned that some believe you should cook cabbage and eat it today, for good luck with money.  Finally, there is the red underwear tradition. Some say (my source was in Germany) that wearing red underwear on New Year’s day will improve your romantic prospects for the new year. I have been unable to collect testimonials on this for obvious reasons, but I put it out there for anyone inclined to try.

With that, I’ve got to go down to the store and get some more construction paper (I’m making signs for my classroom) and some cabbage (for money.) I wish everyone and all a Happy New Year, and thank you for reading this blog.