Back to Work

Last week I started my new job at the Girl Scouts of the Deep South. It has its plusses. It has its minuses. I have to edit what I say about it because it's like, current. I can say though, that if I can get over the usual list of bureaucratic headaches and inconveniences (I'm thinking of the inevitable "dress code conversation" which happened yesterday, learning how to manage hyperactive personalities, figuring out all the forms I have to fill out) I will really love this job. The other thing I have to do is be really good at it. My job is to make some teeny tiny dent in a massive wall of negative influences that girls in poverty are forced to deal with. Some of the girls I'm working with (we're talking middle school here) are already mothers. Most of them don't have fathers. Their inner-city schools are run like prisons out of nessecity. They are surrounded by drug-dealing and hopelessness. Their faces light up when you give them a compliment.

Coming in contact with real poverty (The shelves of the school's library are half empty) is enough to knock me right off my usual soapbox. Environmental concerns seem like such a luxurious worry compared to the lives these girls lead. They are worried about surviving. They are wondering if they will ever have a life that's different from the one their family has been leading for four or five generations. I'd like to think that this country is still rich enough and powerful enough to apply some energy to all of our problems. I see no reason why we should have to choose between giving kids resources that can help them through the public school system and trying to prevent a totally preventable economic catastrophe. I guess what I'm saying is that one set of issues is not more important than the other, or more essential to remedy. Rather, this country just has a shit-load of problems.

Tonight I watched Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that, though a few years old, still has relevant things to say about this country's investment in violence. What if we actually took all tha money we're investing in building new nuclear warheads and actually paid teachers more than 30,000 a year? What if we used that money to support renewable fuel research or rezone cities so they wouldn't disallow good urbanism? What if? Would we really all get blown up the second we changed our priorities? Because that's what some would have you believe. That, essentially, we can't "afford" educated children. I'm not sure, but I do think that this outcome (the getting blown up one I mean) is almost assured if we keep doing what we're doing now. As a nation, I'd rather go down fighting for something worth having, like healthy kids and a healthy planet rather than global domination and a now-dwindling oil supply. But what do I know? I'm just a program facilipotater.

8th grade girls= toughest audience ever

So today I started my new job with the Girl Scouts. Yes, I can get you cookies. I will be in charge of "facilitating" a program about wise spending and saving habits. Facilitate is a long word that basically means "do". What I will "do" is hang out with some middle-school-age girls and tell them to be quiet alot and teach them how to make money by, what else, selling cookies. At first glance, this sounds manipulative, and it kind of is. It's also legitimately instructive though and the more I think about it, the more I wish the program was longer than the six scheduled sessions. I want to get to know these girls. I wish I could make some tiny impression on their lives at this critical age when they still have so many choices and second chances. The older girls- the eighth graders- sit on the edge of a precipice. Some seem already to have fallen over. They know everything, think in groups and revolve their energies around lusting after boys and expensive shoes and clothes. They have all the desires of women- some even have the bodies of women, but none of the wisdom. Pain and loss is in their future, whether or not I can get through to them, and I could see it in their eyes.

Today I watched the reactions of several classes ranging from 5th to 8th grade. The youngest were eager, attentive, impressionable. As they got older you could watch them grow less and less reachable. By high school, if they are not already motivated to become something other than a hood rat, most of their teachers will have stopped trying. The recess area was right outside our classroom door and two girls got in a fist fight during a break. I don't know which grade they were in.

I saw my middle school self in some of the girls today. I was the dorky one who wanted to answer all the questions- the easy sell. I was the girl shushing the loud mouths. For that reason, I don't know anything about what it takes to get the attention of the popular girls with the attitude problem. I'm terrified of them and suddenly a range of emotions comes back to me from some not-so-far-off place. "I hope they like me." "I hope they think I'm cool." I take comfort in the thought that their idea of cool: someone with Air Jordans and a pair of Apple Bottom jeans, is a fairly shallow construct. Maybe it won't be too hard to tear down and replace with something more substantial. Maybe I can start their, get them to talk about the kind of person they respect, and go ahead and admit that that isn't me. Maybe they'll appreciate that I'm leveling with them and take what I'm offering them more readily. Maybe they'll eat me alive.....

Mom and the Apocalypse

Sometimes my mom is really funny. Like today she calls me to tell me I have some "unclaimed property" being held by the state of Tennessee. Images race through my mind of 20 acres of beautiful farm land I forgot about or maybe, a treasure chest full of gold. It's actually more like a check for 23 dollars from this one stock my Mimi bought me when I was little. That's great. I'll take it. We're talking about it and Mom says that sometimes it's a person's last paycheck before they moved away or a long-lost relative a person never knew she had who left them a zillion dollars. "Wish I had one", says mom and I burst our laughing. She and I never developed that friend thing that, apparently, lots of girls develop with their mothers after they move out of the house and no longer have to confront mom with their burgeoning sexuality. We still essentially misunderstand each other all the time, so those rare moments of shared laughter are a treat. Sometimes I think about the future of the US economy and the impending petroleum crisis, an event in which I, for whatever reason, have a faith bordering on religious. I think about my mom and dad and what on earth they will do in a dog-eat-dog post-apocalyptic end-times economy. Shit, I barely know what I will do.

Today I was looking through the classifieds for a new job. Nathanael and I compromised yesterday and decided that, in exchange for him agreeing to join the peace corps with me for two years after we sell the house, I will work and try to make some actual money for the next two years while we do have the house and the bills and all that (oh yeah, and for the rest of our lives after we get out of the peace corps). I will have to put my entirely cash-less lifestyle on hold till we actually don't need cash anymore. Fair enough.

There is something communal in the experience of job-hunting I think. Where once all men knew what it was like to hunt a deer or a wild boar; now it is the stealthy decent job that tests our wits and reflexes. Where once every woman required the discernment to tell an edible root from a poisonous one, now we must be armed with the ability to recognized the distinction between "must have organizational skills and follow-through" and "must be good with hands and ambitious". The pages full of tiny boxes with tinier type seem so promising, so full of possibilities until I actually scrunch up my nose and read them.

I have a couple of good prospects, but the time of tense anticipation is upon me. I am mourning what will prove to be the loss of my blessed state of semi-employment. Time to write, clean the house, work on a hobby. I am sort of terrified by the choice I've just made. "Putting it on hold" is the death knell of many a dream of many an alternative lifestyle. What will happen? Will I forget what I wanted? Will I be bogged down till I'm 50-something and can't relate to my daughter and just wish to god I had a relative I never knew I had who I just found out died and left me a zillion dollars? Maybe my faith in a future economic chaos is the latest excuse to rebel against what must necessarily be a work-a-day life full of glum responsibilities and mediocre health. If that's the case so be it. I'll take any excuse I can find to maintain some small shreds of idealism as I get older.

Our reasoning is certainly different, but now that I think about it, Mom deserves a little admiration on the subject of choosing one's life's work. At 50-something, she's eschewed a career that made her pretty good money as an accountant and now works in a daycare with little children because that's what she loves. She doesn't make much money, a serious issue as she approaches retirement age, but she doesn't care. I see the charm in what she does. I visited the daycare once and was shocked by the bizarre, but pleasant feeling of being surrounded by short, curious, messy, adorable, 2-year-old people. Now that I think about it a little bit more, this experience has probably thoroughly prepared her for all manner of future chaos. Maybe I do have a relative I didn't know existed. Seriously though, it would be nice if she felt like giving me a zillion dollars.