My Literature Class: "Get A Divorce!" Girl

I know why this girl annoys me so much.  I'm pretty sure that at the age of 14, I was her.  I don't think I was her at the age of 18, but what do I know?  I'm not much good at self-awareness, even now, much less then.

She got a 102 on the quiz we had last week, which is annoying, but has not much to do with me.  Except she brings it up in every class.  Now, I got a 97, which is nothing to sneeze at - and I would have had a 102 if I hadn't completely whiffed on two questions that I should have gotten right.  (Reading for comprehension, people.  Is very important.)  But I know that the guy who sits right next to me did not fare so well.  He's a non-traditional student, too, and I constantly admire his self-restraint in this class.  Because if I were him, I might have done something regrettable by now.

It's not just this, and it's not just that she makes up jokes a three-year-old could come up with and then completely brings class to a halt to announce them in a voice that dares you not to give her the admiration for her "wit" that she thinks she deserves.  No, it's not just all that, although, none of that makes me want to love her.  The nail in her coffin is the stuff she blurts out in group discussions.

Now, I am totally a blurter.  I say things without thinking all the time.  It's a huge flaw, and I've been trying to correct it for probably the last twenty years.  I do it a lot less than I once did, but I'm still not great at shutting up when I should.  This girl, however, couples blurting with a complete lack of awareness of her surroundings and the other people within them.

Here are some of the gems from the last couple of weeks of classes:

• To address another student's legitimate concerns about what to study:  "Drink a Red Bull!"  I'm pretty sure she lives on a diet of these, because all this annoying "bubbliness" (her word, not mine) has to come from a chemical place.  It cannot be naturally acquired.
• In reference to a piece written by a Chinese immigrant:  "Just because he's from quote-unquote CHINA..."  (I actually have no idea what she said after that, because I'm pretty sure my head exploded.)
• With regards to a discussion on whether or not symbols about windows would have a different meaning to someone who lived in a shantytown:  "Let's don't talk about shantytowns.  That depresses me."  I'm actually a little impressed she has any idea what a shantytown is.

My very favorite thing she has said occurred yesterday.  We were talking about a piece that all the young'uns seem to think is about the death of dreams, but I think is about retaining your own culture and your own sense of self, and she dropped this one:

"Well, everybody knows that as you get older, your soul dies."

Spike said that I should have said "Well, it's a good thing I created all those horcruxes, then."  Which would have been awesome.  Except that I never think of that shit right in the middle of the moment.  I'm dying inside, not because I'm old, but because I totally wish I had thought of that.

What I did say:  "It's good to know that my soul is dead.  That explains why it's cold in here."

She went on to say that the reason she says that is because her daddy told her that she should always say exactly what she thinks when she thinks it and keep her "bubbliness" because as you get older, your soul dies and you're not bubbly anymore.  The error in this, of course, is that your soul doesn't die - you just learn manners.  I think her daddy is doing her a huge disservice by encouraging her to believe she's a unique snowflake who doesn't need to learn manners, but I get great satisfaction from the idea that eventually she'll figure it out.

So far, she has not persuaded me from my opinion that people under the age of 25 should just shut up and listen.  In fact, this particular opinion is getting cemented in a beautiful gazebo in my mind, with a great stone monolith proclaiming this opinion as fact.  I'm even mentally landscaping it with beautiful flowers and stately ivy curling around the stone monolith.  It will forever be an awesome monument to life experience.

My Literature Class: The Mumbler

Oh, where to start.

I mentioned in my last post not involving Mumford and Sons that there is an idiot girl in my literature class (the "Get a divorce!" girl).

She's getting better and better.

And by "better and better" I actually mean "worse and worse."

The good news is, other people are starting to talk in my English class, so I'm staying quieter.  Yay!  The bad news is, the other people who are talking are this girl.  And her buddy, the eighteen-year-old boy sitting next to her (the mumbler from the earlier post).

So, let's actually talk about The Mumbler first, because I can confine my comments to just two things he has said recently that were wildly misinformed and/or exemplary of any jerkish qualities he may possess.  Plus, GAD Girl deserves her own post.

Last week, we somehow ended up talking about the Border Fence that we have here between our state and Mexico.  He believes deep in his teenage soul that this fence will work.  I did not disabuse him of this, but then he uttered the words:

"Well, it worked in Korea."

Now, I am not very good at schooling my features into an emotionless mask when people utter idiocy of this kind.  I'm pretty sure I looked really, really shocked at the time.  I managed to get out "No!  Nonononono..." before the professor changed the subject.

There are just so many things wrong with that statement that it's so hard to pick just one.  I think I might just let it lie and let you all think over just the basic difference between a demilitarized zone and a fence that just stands there, not doing much.  You can ponder all the situational differences and the political differences and the consequences of each and all that on your own.

Yesterday, he told me I was wrong.  Just flat-out wrong.

I can handle being wrong.  I don't like it (who does?), but I can handle it.  However, this is literary criticism - it's a lot harder to be wrong when you're giving opinions about something you read.  Even if you don't agree, it's not necessarily that the other person is wrong, it's just that you don't agree.  I'm really great at saying "I see your point, but I don't agree" or something else that doesn't completely discount the other person.  Especially if the other person is older than me.

I have shifted from worrying about the future of the nation to worrying about what my household is going to be like when my kids are teenagers.  Is this what we're all like as teenagers?  This is horrible.

My Literature Class

I tried to title this post "My Lit Class" but it made me feel icky, so I got all formal with it.

We're all in luck!  My Algebra teacher went on vacation, so class was cancelled for today and I have time before Government to write.

I decided to take my Intro to Literature class from the same professor I took my quickie English Comp class from over the Summer.  My reasoning was thus: I got an A in that class, and once I got to know her a bit on e-mail, I liked her.  Also, I figured that she couldn't make me read "Battle Royal" again.

I was wrong.

Fortunately, I was only wrong about "Battle Royal."  She's still a really nice lady - a former hippie and Freedom Rider, harkening back to my days at the Liberal Arts Academy.  She likes to encourage discussion, which is where I become the asshole in the class, because I can't stand the silence.  She asks a leading question and everybody just sits there and stares at her, so I end up giving my asshole opinion just to make the silence stop.  So I come off as a know-it-all, and probably a brown-noser because everybody knows I had her for my Summer class.

She likes to show us movies.  The problem is, our tastes in movies, mine and hers, are completely divergent.

On the first day of class, she showed us a clip from Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan.

Did you know that Tarzan was played by Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame?  Or that Jane was played by Andie MacDowell?  And Jane's father was Ian Holm? 

No, you probably don't.  And nor should you.  Because it was a terrible movie.

A few classes later, she showed us a video a friend of hers had compiled, set to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  She made absolutely no comment before showing us the video, so I was completely unprepared for the film clips of Saipan, the naked children of Nagasaki, and the Chinese Army shooting a guy in the head, for reals, at the end of the video.  I held it together through everything, right up until they shot the guy in the head.  And then I started to cry.  In public.  If you're reading this, I probably don't have to tell you how much I fucking hate to cry in public.

Today, she showed us clips from The Lion King to illustrate the use of symbolism.  It was pedestrian, but it completely blew the fragile little minds of the teenagers in my class.  Which brings me to: the teenagers in my class.

On the second class day, we discussed "The Hand" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette.  It's a story about a newly-married woman who, after a whirlwind courtship and two weeks of marriage, starts a weird obsession with her husband's hand one night in bed.  She stares at it for hours and finally works herself up into a big old hysteria about how ugly her man's hand is, and how she's going to have to just resign herself to a sad, sad life full of pretense and nothingness because of his damn hand and her stupid feelings about it.  It is, of course, symbolic and a whole bunch of other things, but one of the idiot teenagers in my class burst out with "If she hates him so much, she should get a divorce!"

There are many, many things wrong with this statement.  Here are a few, in no particular order:

• This story was written around 1924.  You couldn't just "get a divorce."
• It's not about getting a divorce, idiot.
• Seriously, the girl in the story had been married for two weeks.  Is that how people deal with things now?  You think his hands are ugly so you get a divorce?  Is that how it goes?  I guess being married for almost thirteen years should be an achievement worth a fucking medal, then, because I'm fairly sure that my husband and I have both been irritated with each other countless times in our marriage.  And if annoyance = divorce, we should be lauded by the goddamn President for our personal committment.

Today, for some reason known only to herself and maybe God, the professor decided to ask if anyone had seen the Republican debates.  I had not, so for once, I could keep my asshole mouth shut.  There was a girl in class who clearly felt strongly about the issues in the debate, and she mentioned how upset she was when the audience applauded Rick Perry for his record of 234 executions while in office.  Some other idiot teenager (a boy this time), started muttering under his breath that they deserved it, they were murderers, etc., etc.  First off, if you don't have the balls to actually speak up and join the discussion, shut the fuck up.  Secondly, if you are under the age of 25 (and I'm being real generous there), your opinion is stupid, so shut the fuck up.

Yep.  I said it.  If you're younger than 25, you probably have not lived enough to have a credible opinion.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule - there are very mature, considered people under the age of 25, whose opinions are worth something.  It's just that there are none of those people in my class.  Or none that speak up.  Why is it that only the idiots speak up? 

And since I've already admitted that I give my opinion every time a hush falls in there, what does that make me?

"English 1302" Is Code For "Emotional Torture."

Speaking of starting off with a bang, my first paper (due on Sunday, but will be completed way, way before then, because: algebra) for English 1302 is a few paragraphs describing the characters, conflicts, plot and theme(s) of Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal," which also happens to be the first chapter of his book The Invisible Man.  Which is about symbolically invisible men, not science experiments gone horribly wrong.

This story is horrible.

I don't mean that it's badly written or anything.  I mean that it's actually, literally, horrible.  It's about a nameless guy who gives a great speech at his high school graduation.  The speech is so great that all the white dudes in the town want him to come to a special event for just white dudes and say it all again.  When he gets to the Great White Dude Party, they tell him he has to participate in a "Battle Royal" which at first seems like it's going to be a boxing match with a bunch of other dudes our narrator knew in school, but actually turns out to be the most bizarre free-for-all I have ever read, and I have read Anita Blake Vampire Slayer books.  There's a naked white lady with an American flag tattoo on her belly who dances to a clarinet song (???) while all the white dudes alternately tell them to look and not look at her.  I'm not exactly clear what happens to the naked white girl.  The white dudes do like a "hip-hip-hooray!" thing, throwing her up in the air seemingly without the use of blankets, (which renders any and all Winnie the Pooh stories I have ever read absolute bullshit - they're famous for using blankets to hip-hip-hooray people into the air.  Turns out you don't need blankets, Christopher Robin, you girl-shoed moron.) and then she seems to disappear or something.  So this bunch of black dudes with raging hard-ons and panic attacks are all blindfolded and then they have to fight each other.  After the fighting is over, the white dudes toss a bunch of money on a rug and tell the black dudes to go get it, but the rug is electrified.  WTF?  And then the narrator gets a chance to say his speech (most of it cribbed from Booker T. Washington, but apparently that's okay?), but he's all bloody from the fight and pretty much fucking miserable but for some reason really gung-ho to say his speech.  The white dudes make fun of him but then they're all naaah, we were just shittin' you and they give him a briefcase with a scholarship to college in it.

W.T.F.

I'm supposed to write about this?  I hate this.  It's horrible.  I realize it's metaphor, but I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody somewhere actually did this shit, and now it's a thing.  I feel like my eyes, and indeed my brain, have been violated.

I'm also supposed to write about "Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, which was boring as hell - a farm wife gets scammed by a tinker.  Well, duh, honey, that's what tinkers do.  And it took twelve pages to say so.

There were other stories I was supposed to read for this section.  Any one of those stories would have been easier to write about (I actually really enjoyed "A&P" by John Updike), except one.  There was one in the group that was just as bad as "Battle Royal."  It's called "The Lottery" and it's by Shirley Jackson.

It's about a small town that does a lottery every year.  Why?  Because they've always done it, that's why.  And what do you think that lottery is for?

IT'S TO FIGURE OUT WHO TO STONE TO DEATH, THAT'S WHAT.

I totally get the point.  Some people have stupid traditions that they just keep doing because it's always been done that way.  I get it.  But the fact that I was forced to read the anxiety of these people as we go through the lottery makes me want to spit on somebody in public.

Has anybody ever written a short story that is well-written and uplifting?  Does any conflict ever end with people shaking hands and maybe going to get ice cream together?  I completely understand that humankind is a cesspit, but for the love of beans, do they have to keep reminding me?  Can't I read about ponies or something?  Instead, we have a dude who quit his job at the A&P because some girls came into the store in their bathing suits and got the stinkeye and a comment from the manager, one where a woman finds out her husband is dead in a railroad accident and just as she realizes she's free, she finds out it was a terrible mistake and he's alive, so she drops dead from the disappointment and one about a little girl who can only afford Barbies that come from a fire sale.  I'm surprised none of the stories were written by Margaret Freakin' Atwood.  Or Eeyore.  What the hell is wrong with the American short story author?

Beyond all that, I have to keep contemplating horrible fictional (?) events while creaking open the rusty trunk in my mind that holds things such as "theme," "motif," "conflict," etc.  It's an uncomfortable fucking place, and it's making me wonder if I shouldn't quiz all of my potential professors before I register for their classes.  "True or false: 'I will force you to read traumatizing short stories on the very first day of class.'  Be warned that an answer of 'true' could lead to me finding an English professor with a shred of humanity left in them."

I will persevere.  I will write an awesome piece about this story that was scraped off the bottom of somebody's shoe.  And I will do it today, because I refuse to think about this any longer than I have to.