...it was the worst of times.

I don't think the world is ending in four days, but people are certainly acting like it.

A few days after a guy shot up a movie theater in Colorado this past July, my brother and I went to see that same film at Clackamas Town Center in Oregon. For someone that enjoys frequent solo dates to the movies, I underwent a certain amount of anxiety that evening. I treated everyone as a potential threat-monitoring the subtle moves of others in the theater. Why did they get up and leave? Are they going to refill their already extra large popcorn or are they coming back to spray the theater with bullets? Should we leave before that happens? I always feel safer with my big brother, so unless he moved, I felt we would probably be okay.

Five months later, no more than a few hundred feet from that theater in Clackamas Town Center, a guy did walk in with an automatic rifle and killed 2 people and himself. My big brother was again there, but not seeing 'The Dark Knight Rises' with his little sister. He was helping people evacuate a terrifying situation and I'm sure they too felt safer by having him there.

Two days after that a guy wakes up on the other side of the country and murders his mom then heads to an elementary school to spend the last moments of his life killing 6 adults and 20 children. In an elementary school.

Movie Theater.
Mall.
School.

I spend a significant amount of time in each of these places.

I have no control over these types of things happening. I can't confine myself to my apartment and wait months for movies to be released to Netflix, or do all of my holiday shopping via Amazon, or not go to work and make a living. I can't live in fear. I refuse to live in fear. And I actually like people; I smile at them as I pass, compliment them on something they are doing or wearing, or have a conversation with people within my proximity while waiting in lines or sitting at adjacent tables at the coffee shop.

The day after the Clackamas shooting, I was grocery shopping with my niece. She was pushing her mini-cart along asking her Aunt T-T what else we needed, when an older man stopped to chat.
"My wife says they tend to eat better when they are involved in the shopping."
At this point, Olivia was between the man and me. Before responding, I quickly made myself the in between [wo]man, shielding Olivia from this probably okay stranger. We chatted quickly and Olivia and I continued shopping. Nothing happened. Everything was fine. But the way I treated that stranger wasn't in the normal way that Teela once had; he was near my niece and I was going to protect her from his nonexistent threat.

We are currently in a hypersensitive state and have climbed up and firmly placed our feet on our Facebook soap boxes and once there, have written paragraph upon paragraph about gun control. On one feed their gun control discussion went from that to abolishing slavery; the analogies have been ridiculous and endless:
"Are we going to get rid of cars since there are drunk drivers?"
"Are we going to get rid of knives since people can kill with those?"

First, all of these items have a primary purpose. The former, to travel from destination A to B, sometimes to C. The misuse of the car would be when a drunk driver operates that vehicle. The latter would be that we use knives to slice strawberries and to cut carrots. When a knife is misused, it can kill someone. But that's not the primary purpose of my butcher knife; I'm making dinner.

When we look at guns, what is the primary purpose? To kill. Whether you are hunting in the woods or chasing a bad guy, you shoot to kill. Even if you are shooting for "fun" at a gun range...what is that target shaped as? A coffee cup? An iPhone? No it's a sketch of a human being and you are aiming for that human's head. Their heart. There is no other purpose of a gun, like there are for my knives and our cars. That is a fact.

We have this second amendment right to protect our property and family. The not-so-subtle subtext of protect would mean that there is a potential threat and that threat would be answered with your gun. The reason these analogies that people are reaching for fail, is because there aren't enough common like things between guns and cars and guns and knives. These commonalities must exist in order for an analogy to carry any power. That's how an analogy works.

[Don't worry. I am not going to discuss gun control, there's enough of that at your reading disposal]

The deeper issue we should not just be having a conversation about but doing something about, is treatment. How are we treating each other? How are we treating that child who shows signs of mental illness? Will we continue to only care when another tragedy transpires and discuss them as "off" or a "loner" instead of being proactive? Are we helping and giving adequate attention to them, or handing them a pharmaceutical drug as a way to curb their tendencies? Are we ostracizing them at school and in cyberspace? Parents, if you can't do it yourself, seek help. There is no shame in talking to a professional and asking for help. If that thought brings you shame, I'm confident that it is more manageable than the shame in the aftermath of a mass shooting. That is if you are not the first victim and live to remember the story.

One of the most powerful things I have heard from one of the grieving fathers that lost his sweet little Emilie was about whether he felt anger toward the man who took his daughter's life. He said, "From what we've learned he was someone that was struggling with something that was very, very dark and something that he struggled with mightily.  He struggled with something different than the struggles I have in my life and so I can't have any judgement toward him for those things he might have been fighting."

I don't think it was time for his sweet Emilie's story to end. Nor was it for Grace, Benjamin, Noah, Josephine, Olivia and their classmates.

We have to do better.

Obama speaking at Vigil

The Perception Check.

I know a lot of people that hate their job. They don't get paid enough, they work long hours, their co-workers suck, they don't get paid enough, they hate what they do, their boss is the spawn of Satan, they don't get paid enough, etc.

I think we know which one of these complaints I am guilty of making.

For the most part, I enjoy what I do. And note to any of you that makes any of the aforementioned statements of discontent...stop bitching. You have a job.

This past week I was informed I was being a 'Negative Nancy.' This annoyed me. First, because my name isn't Nancy, but mostly because I hate cliches. But it was true. Bad week(s) tend to bring out the side of me that is angry that the beer is only half full.

[I. Hate. Cliches.]

I understand that everything is relative to our own experience and therefore we are limited in what we consider to be real problems. In fact, to account for this conditional state, we have added the term "first-world problems" into our vernacular as if this compensates for us whining. Although not as bothersome as the incorrect and overuse of the term "epic," this phrase is still starting to become problematic for me. I'd never use a term like that in say, the title of a blog. 

What snapped me back into the realization of my pretty swell life were three things (in order of occurrence):

(1) A reunion with some of the best women on Earth. How our lives led us to be in the same place, at the same time, so we could be apart of each other's stories, is so fantastic.

(2) An assignment I gave my students on their identity that is blowing my mind.

(3) Having story time with my niece. I do the reading, she does the page turning. Backwards, forwards and back again...I'll read these pages forever to her.

All of these is a blog in itself, but I'm going to talk about #2.

In an intercultural class I teach, I assign an Identity paper to my students. They're challenged with picking two of their many identities (ie: age, sex, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, race, etc) and writing about the ones they consider to be the most influential in their lives. They must talk about their experience, a historical event within this culture, and stereotypes they've dealt with. Two of these papers shattered my heart.

[Paper #1-An Indian Woman:] "This paper was really hard for me to write because I don't feel like I have an identity." She goes on to explain that she was arranged into a marriage to someone she didn't love by her parents and her husband controls everything; including what she "likes" or is "interested" in. Therefore she feels like nothing is just hers.

I try and live my life on the basis of originality. How terrible it must and does feel for her to have nothing be your own; feeling you have nothing to separate you from another person. She goes on to explain that she did love someone at one point that validated her, but this man was from a lower class and was unacceptable to her parents.

[Paper #2-Korean Woman:] She is a lesbian that can't come out to her parents because in Korea, homosexuality is not an option. She said she felt comfortable in the states because this lifestyle was acceptable. In reading that, I immediately wondered if we were living in the same times as this is a constant point of political contention. But for her to make that statement, I realized that hers was a much different reality. And it was. If she were to come out to her parents, she would be disowned by her family.

There is literally nothing I could do to have my parents disown me. I haven't tried [all that hard] in finding ways, but there is too much love there for me to ever fathom this fate. 

From knowing these stories, my perception changed. Just like my friends stories intersecting with my own, I believe these women are sitting in my classroom for a reason. Maybe just for opening my eyes to another reality or for me to at least have been an outlet where someone would listen to their stories. How liberating words can make us feel; even if you're the only reader of them. I write to myself all the time.

I'm not saying that it isn't valid to be upset over things that happen to us just because somebody out there has it worse. Because frankly, things are crappy sometimes. What I am saying is that we all need to expand our limited perception and consider what somebody else may be going through if only to serve them with a smile or to hug someone we care about a little tighter.

I try to make people laugh. I have one student that comes into class everyday and his face is always so stern. He volunteers quotes from Nietzsche, will ask an occasional question, and is a very intelligent student, but his face is full of stress. I make it my goal in the two and a half hour class that I have with him to make him laugh at least once. If I get him twice, well, then I think I've done my job as an educator. Or maybe just as a human being.