You Say You Want to Change the World?

It's mesmerizing that a few simple words, when paired with the fervency of the human spirit, can truly change the world.


No, I am not suggesting that they literally shake the foundations of the earth - we'll leave that up to aliens, asteroids, and - dare I say it - atomic bombs. But words do have an incredible power to change a silly little thing we call perception - and as our perceptions are changed, our passions are stirred, which eventually boil over into change.


Granted, at times this change is arguably for the worst, as in the example of the French Revolution. Robespierre used the atomic bomb of his rhetoric to infuse the mistreated of France with an urgency to destroy the current (and all future) monarchy. But 20,000 deaths later, we wonder if Robespierre should have spared this make-shift Hiroshima and simply kept his mouth shut.


As with everything in our humanity, though, inspiration is bound to occasionally backfire. Examples like Robespierre cannot and should not keep us from using this amazing, simple power to influence change. One of the greatest change-producers (and I am not talking about a mint, here) of all time explained it this way, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King Jr. didn't spare his words, and if we truly want to make the world a better place... we shouldn't either.


Here's the real reason I started writing this blog post: My beautiful, fun-loving, intelligent, 21-year old cousin Johanna was recently diagnosed with Stage IV lung and arm cancer. She, of all people, does not deserve to have her entire future crash in a matter of a few months. But reality, unfortunately, is much harsher than loving Jo is. Although I undoubtedly mulled over her diagnosis, I didn't cry over it. (And I cry over everything.) I pushed it to the back of my mind because it was too painful to consider losing her. And, from a selfish perspective, it was too hard to think that her loss of vitality could have been - and someday could be - mine.


It wasn't until I read her boyfriend's heartfelt tribute to Johanna's strength that I started crying. Not a little trickle, oh no. I am sitting at a table in a coffee shop bawling my eyes out. His words, together with his enduring love for my cousin, is what brought me to this place of stirred emotion and passion, which lifts me out of apathy and into a desire to make her life a little better. To join the fight against this terrible annihilator we call cancer, to make the world a better place - or, at least, Johanna's world.


 I am no MLK. My words here aren't much. But if I can inspire just one person who reads this to start using yours, I've been worthwhile.


 You should have learned by now to never trust science fiction. Don't leave it to extraterrestrials to crash into earth and shake our foundations.

Saying Goodbye to Small Talk

Here we go with another Hastings story! Ohhhh boy.

I have to preface this by pointing out that I am truly terrified of talking. (I should totally insert some epic story about how I almost had my tongue cut out when I was seven or something here, but I promise, this isn't quite that intense.) However, I have good reason because I am the worst conversationalist ever, and thus I embarrass myself often. Add a terrible sense of comic timing to a smidgen of shyness and BAM! There goes my shot at being a politician!

But today, I realized that maybe I am only freaking myself out. Of course I was reading in my little bookstore oasis (This time it was Mockingjay - see my previous post to get more info on this newfound hobby) when I coincidentally came across my best friend Emily. She informed me that she and a few other Student Council members were designing t-shirts, and I agreed to help them out. (Our t-shirts are really legit, by the way!) At the conclusion of the meeting, though, we came to that awkward part of the conversation where no one really knows how to politely say goodbye. ...Do you hug, or nod, or run out before anyone notices you're gone? Yeeeeah... So we all just kind of stood around, twiddled our thumbs and made small talk. Cooper and Emily eventually faced the maladroit farewell, but Katie and I couldn't quite bring ourselves to part.

Thank goodness.

In the middle of Hastings, in the middle of the African American fiction section, Katie and I had the most engaging conversation I have had in some time. We talked about school, about our favorite people, about our future plans, about our fears. There was no stress, no small talk about the weather, no trying. Just talking.

Three hours later, we got kicked out of Hastings because they were closing.

Maybe the problem with talking is that we are so worried about how we appear, we forget who we are.

Thanks, Katie, for reminding me.

I might never have the conversationalism of John F. Kennedy, but I'll always have the spirit of Angela Kettle. And maybe that's more important than silly conversationalism anyway.

Finders Creepers!

While devouring Wuthering Heights in Hastings bookstore today, I observed a 50-something man, slightly grungy-looking, walk through the door. "Ugh, he comes here every day. Does he even have a life? What a creeper..." I thought.


Then, it dawned on me. If I know that he has been at Hastings everyday... doesn't that make me the creeper?


Yes, folks, it does - and all of the employees who confusedly watch me trudge into their store nearly everyday, plop down on a comfy couch, order a small caramel macchiato, and commence reading whatever suits my fancy most likely agree that I have maybe even outranked the strange, old man in creeper status.


Total epic win! The world could use more creepers! Here's my reasoning:


 Creepers are observant, but they don't need you to acknowledge them. They are content to watch from a distance. Granted, they usually have incentive in this (A.K.A. not being discovered and having some insecure teenage girl text all of her friends saying, "OMG so dont EVER talk to the creeper in Hastings! He asked me if my cafe latte was good!!") But beyond that possible hindrance, maybe creepers just want to study human nature. Maybe they want to see if petty girls and cafe lattes are somehow correlated. Being a psychology-lover myself, I feel like you can never have enough opportunities for naturalistic observation - studying people in their natural environment without disturbing it. How better to get a holistic view of the world than to remove yourself from it? Yep, that's right. There is no better view. As Marshall McLuhan put it, "We don't know who observed water, but we know it wasn't the fish." Not that I am suggesting you quit your job and spend the rest of your days contributing to your caramel macchiato debt... because frankly, that role is already taken. But perhaps taking a creeper-vacation of sorts every once in a while can add some dimension to the 2-D routine of life. It can remind you that people are out there beyond yourself - people who have a family, a favorite book, maybe an abhorrence toward cats. Creepers can see things non-creepers can't because they aren't looking for anything in particular - just at whoever comes sloshing through the doors next.


The ultimate creeper? Alexander Fleming. Whoa now, you are starting to look a little feverish after hearing of my ostensible mislabeling - perhaps I should get you some... penicillin. We almost all know this little story of how Fleming untidily left some Staphylococci sitting in his lab one weekend and came back to unearth one of medicine's greatest discoveries. Finders may be keepers, but they're also creepers. He simply observed what had already taken place, just as it is a creeper's creed to do. He wasn't looking for an innovation - he was simply looking at it. And if he could find something noteworthy in some mold, how difficult can it be to find something noteworthy in a human being? Serious props to Mr. Fleming for outcreeping us all.

On a side note, you never know what interesting characters you might encounter while creeping. Just today, I met a woman who had a medical dog that could tell when she was about to have a seizure. I didn't even know pups like that existed. I also conferenced with an outdoorsman who thought my intense highlighting of Wuthering Heights was legit (if a good book isn't completely marked up, it probably wasn't actually very good,) and a sweet, elderly woman who told me the story of her grandson becoming an automechanic for NASCAR. Sitting silently on a couch is what brought me to these people, not joining a new club or getting an eHarmony compatibility test. Just waiting to see whose stories life was going to lend me to read.

So, maybe I have completely gone off the deep end. Maybe I am hopelessly entrapped in the whirls of a bookstore with no hope of regaining a social life. Either way, though, I am glad I have finally plunged into the depths of creep. Because you never know what or who you will discover when you just stop looking and start really seeing. Hey, maybe I'll even strike up a conversation with the grunge-guy I mentioned earlier! After all, you should never judge a book by its cover.


Creepers included.

Sometimes, you just have to embrace your inner white van.

Red Sharpie Blues

Incompetent. Multiplied by 32.

That's how many times I scribbled that nasty, hurtful word on my waitressing pad during my dinner break at the local pizza place. The red sharpie penmanship still stings to look at. I listlessly sipped my water and tried to de-stress, but I still couldn't help but feel like I was a little Matilda being trapped in the Chokey by a big, mean Miss Trunchbull.

Only I was both Matilda and Miss Trunchbull, and with or without Miss Honey, it was a sticky situation.

See, I am one of those crazy overachievers who strongly feels the need to be good at everything. Underwater basket weaving? No sweat. (Do people sweat underwater anyway though?) Honors classes out the wazoo? Got it in the bag. But waitressing...

I can't learn it from a textbook. It's not a concept that I can contemplate about late at night when I can't sleep. It's practical know-how, an insane ability to focus, and a channeled skill for multi-tasking. It's the real world.

Yeah... could I have a one-way ticket to Mars, please? I'm not ready for the real world...

I spilled someone's drink all over their table, I made some customers 20 minutes late to their meeting because I couldn't figure out how to split their ticket, and I stained all of the artifacts of my apron with blood-red sharpie because I lost the lid. With every pity tip I collected, I felt like they should have given me a tip more like this: Become unemployed.

Thank goodness they had the kindness not to leave such a tip, though, because 1) I might have actually, in exasperation, taken their advice, and 2) I feel like I have finally figured out what it means to persevere. To keep going when I want to quit. To tell myself I can when my broken ego screams that I can't.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I lost that sharpie lid because now I will never have the ability to sting myself with "incompetent" again. That word dried up long ago. Now all I have is an empty waitressing pad and one simple question:

"What delicious pizza can we make for you today?"