Now what?

I started taking night classes in 1992, after my divorce and through the next 12 years of single parenting. When I think back on all those years of night school, I mostly remember walking through the parking lot at the community college after a long day of work and my kids off to Wednesday night dinner with their dad (sometimes, when he wasn’t too drunk or “working late”) or a babysitter (more often). I remember that the wind always seemed to bite into my bones and I’d wonder what I was doing, trying to get a degree by one class a semester, when I’d be so old by the time I was done. I felt old already.

My co-workers all assumed I had a degree like they did, and I was so ashamed of my high school status that I always deflected questions about it if I could. I was working in a corporation with good pay and great benefits, which is what every single mother needs, and my night classes fed my insatiable need to know and think about things. I was originally going to major in Business Administration because you know, that’s the smart career for someone like me already in corporate communications, but my heart fluttered when I saw the course load for Literature and Creative Writing. I tried to convince myself to be practical, because while the world really doesn’t need another novel, people always need to know about new company policies and they’ll always need training on new software systems.

But someone would then pop up and encourage me to follow my dream.

Two years ago was a low point in freelance communications, and instead of sending out more business proposals, I sent out applications to universities. The University of Illinois at Chicago accepted me and offered me a full scholarship if I went to school fulltime. And on Sunday, I graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in English. My whole family came to celebrate with me and shouted from the far reaches of the UIC Pavilion when I crossed the stage.

I should be happy. My family wanted me to be happy. We all wanted it to be one of the most triumphant days of my life. And there are times when I think my God, after all these years of hiding, I can finally say I’m a college graduate. I can be proud of my effort, sure. But there are so many other feelings seizing me that I’m unable to rejoice. I miss school, debate, discussion, analysis. I miss taking the train out of dull suburbia and into the heart of Chicago every day. I hope that someone will buy my stories and people will love them and be touched by them and they will somehow change the world. I want so much to be able to make a living at writing, but when I told this to my writing professor he said, “Don’t quit your day job.” To paraphrase this in my old friend Ron’s words, “People in hell want ice water.” Unfortunately, I don’t have a day job.

It’s hard to tell people about these feelings. Nobody wants anyone to be unhappy, so when I tell them my worries and this sadness, they try to get me to focus on something positive: “Surely you’ll get a job with your degree and all that experience;” “This is only temporary;” “You can always go back to school.” They get upset when I reiterate what I’m feeling now: “What’s the matter, you want to be unhappy?” “Why do you focus on depressing things?” People don’t want me to hurt, they don’t want me to be sad.

But I am sad, and a little lost, and I wish for something to look forward to. I don’t know what to do with myself and I don’t know where I’m going. I want to believe that wonderful things are going to happen next. I just hope the good things in life don’t take too long in coming to me.

Leave me alone, I’m reading!

This girl is not me. This extremely hip reader was photographed by o5com.

Ever notice when you’re right in the most exciting part of a story, someone wants to talk to you, or feed you, or, I don’t know, give you a blood transfusion? Multiply that feeling by 1,000 when you have to read a 200-page novel (The Age of Innocence) in one week – somebody made the resulting frustration into a video. This goes out to all my book-lovin’ friends!

JULIAN SMITH – I’m Reading a Book

Bonus:  the video includes a gratuitous bagpipe player!

Just calm down!

What is with all the impatience lately? Today I was leaving a parking lot and was stuck between a car backing up and a car coming towards me, waiting for the backer-upper. When the car left, I thought it would make sense for me to drive on and get out of the way.  Silly me.

This lady apparently thought I was stealing her parking spot (of course, it was clearly HERS) and zoomed left into it, while glaring at me and saying something that obviously I couldn’t hear but I’m sure made her feel better. Then she did a series of backwards and forwards to get her minivan into the space. All the while I could see her looking at me and muttering. I’m glad I don’t read lips. I kind of wished she could see me leaving the parking lot, but I guess I don’t need to prove to anyone that I am not a vicious parking space stealer.

Later in another parking lot, I pulled in and waited for a pedestrian to cross, though there was no stop sign. After all it was 22 degrees and snowing, and I was in a heated car. The driver behind me thought this was completely out of line and honked at me to get moving, which I could not do unless I ran over the poor old lady and her shopping cart.

You know how they have those breathalyzers on cars that determine whether or not the driver is sober enough to drive? Someone should invent an angerlyzer to check whether people are calm and patient enough to be behind the wheel. The life you save may be your own.

What shopgirls can’t say on Black Friday

There are a couple of things that retail workers would love to tell you about Black Friday. They can’t, without losing their jobs. I was once a shopgirl, and it sucked much of the love of humanity RIGHT OUT OF MY SOUL. So here are a few things retail worker would like to say to those badly-behaved people who come out during the US Consumer Orgy, also known as the Christmas season:

1. I am your minimum-wage cashier. I have not made the decision to have only one register open at a time. I am bagging as fast as I can with arthritic-stiffen fingers and I haven’t designed the policy that says I can’t giftwrap your packages for you. I also haven’t decided that if you write me a check, I will have to check your name against the list of bad checkwriters of the world, and then write your drivers’ license number and mother’s maiden name on your check, but I promise you I will do it as fast as I can.

2. I’m really, really sorry if you’re having a bad day or month or year. If you’re shopping in my rather up-scale store, I have a hunch that your life really isn’t that bad. In fact, I feel pretty sure my life right now sucks WAY more than yours does. But I’m smiling and cheerful and doing all I can to make your shopping experience a happy one. Knock off the attitude.

3. Maybe your Momma didn’t teach you how to behave in a store. Or maybe you didn’t have a Momma (I’m sorry if that’s true). I’m here to help you with a few basic concepts for proper store behavior.

a. Do not let your little children wander around playing with crystal stemware, glass reed diffusers, or porcelain. In fact, do not let them romp around unattended on our leather furniture and handblown glass ornament displays while you shop in another section of the store or chitchat with a friend you just ran into.

b. I understand that you may have run out to pick up those last few things that will turn your Christmas from misery into an orgiastic holiday, but studies show that the Saturday before Christmas, 92.536% of other Americans are also running around shopping for last-minute items. Please do not become impatient and rude to me because there are other people in the store taking up your valuable time.

c. When you read a sign that says, “The Line Forms Here”, the line really does form there. And when a cashier says, “I can help the next person in line,” only walk towards that cashier if you are, in fact, the next person in line.

d. Do not step on store employees that have been knocked to the ground by a stampede of shoppers.

e. If you pick up an item and then decide not to buy it, please put it back where you found it. Period.

f. Please do not appropriate a shopping cart from WalMart and wheel it around in our store, smashing into wooden furniture and knocking over candles, and then abandon the cart in a blind pillow alley in the back of the store. And then not buy anything.

g. If you come to a store late at night, read the sign on the door. When it says the store closes at 11pm, please do not come in at 10:59 and spend the next half-hour there. Believe me, every employee in that store has something planned after 11pm, probably involving some pain reliever and a good night’s sleep.

h. I assume that at this stage in your life, you’re familiar with the basic functions of bathrooms. I assume that you know the entire free world flushes ONLY TOILET PAPER and biological waste products down a toilet – not sanitary products, dirty diapers, mittens, black plastic yard waste bags, or the tags to merchandise you just stole from our store.

i. Hang up your phone when you’re asking me for help or when I’m ringing you up. I don’t talk on my cell phone while I’m serving you. Maybe you didn’t know this about ordinary etiquette, but talking into a cell phone while talking to a live person is utterly rude. Unless, of course, you’re talking to the police because you’ve just learned your house is on fire. Then you might just want to step out of the line.

j. Speaking of stepping out of line, we all learned in kindergarten that if you step out of line to go do something else, you do not get your place back in the line. You go to the end of the line unless someone gives you “cuts”. If you don’t believe me, ask your kids.

Thank you for letting me share. Please let me add one more idea for your holiday happiness and mine.

STOP SHOPPING.

You don’t NEED a darn thing I sell in Home Decorating Store. You don’t. It will not make your holiday any more or less happy than it might have been. You don’t need to buy all these things. Go home and spend some time with your family. If you have to give somebody something, write them a letter and tell them how much they mean to you. Go build a snowman or play a game with your family. Go online and read about a family in Somalia dying from the AIDS epidemic and civil war, and send your Home Decorating Store dollars there.

QUIT BUYING THINGS. If you don’t have it, you don’t need it.

We’ve come a long way, baby

TV commercials are generally irritating, but two recent ones have pissed me off more than usual. Whenever they come on, I start in on a rant; the Big Guy listens patiently but inside I know he’s thinking THESE ARE JUST STUPID COMMERCIALS WOMAN, I understand the concept of advertising reflecting current social reality but I AM AN ENLIGHTENED MAN WHO DOES NOT BUY ANY OF THESE PRODUCTS!

I will annoy you instead.

AT&T Think Possible – 57th President

You don’t have to watch more than the first 5 seconds for this commercial to be offensive. It shows the 57th president being announced…a white male, of course. His proud white parents hug each other. What a triumph for white males, who are the targets of their technology.

Do they seriously want us to think that in 50-something years from now the AT&T world has become so advanced that we have gone back to fully-white Presidents? What about a woman? Are we ready for an Asian-American president, or a Hispanic one?

Let’s consider, perhaps, India. Not exactly known as a haven for progressive femininity, yet Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister back in the 70s, when American girls were watching Nair commercials and trying to get their hair to look like Farrah Fawcett’s.

Grrr…

Colossal Volum’Express mascara by Maybelline

The message is clear. If you wear this mascara you will become an anemic supermodel who lives in a high-rise and takes a window washing elevator instead of the stairs, just for the sense of adventure!

There will be a constant soundtrack of “Mission Impossible” in your life, giving an air of excitement to every moment!

Even when you’re running late, you will still have the time and power to destroy giant robots, because you have put on your extra-powerful Colossal Volum’Express mascara!

And after you have killed the giant robot and run to the park in your high heels and designer dress, you will be thrilled to lift up your baby and swing him around in the air! THANK YOU, Maybelline!

I did try the Volum’Express mascara, which has added to my dislike of the commercial. Not only did I not encounter giant robots, skyscrapers, theme music, or babies, but the mascara did not give me the model’s fake eyelashes and it flaked off into my eyes all day long. If a giant robot HAD actually menaced me, I would have been too busy rubbing my eyes to protect myself.

The roles of women have come such a long way in America. At least we can FINALLY get mascara in a YELLOW tube.