bad metaphor

I mentioned earlier that I was going to Minnesota for a Christian ecology conference. I left last Thursday morning, groggy from lack of sleep and ill-prepared (I brought a shower poof, but no shower soap, durr). I suppose overall it was an okay experience. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I went with the boyfriend and a girl named Jessie whom I’d only met once before. We consisted of one half of all the people at the conference under the age of 40; most of the people that went were pastors and Church leaders (big surprise, huh). Despite being very very old and seemingly about to kick the bucket, most of them were pretty cool, and a lot were good old Minnesotans (oh, dontchoo know).

There was even a lesbian minister present who lectured. She talked about the different environmental movements and what congregations need to do to support a more ecological understanding of the world. I began thinking, ‘hey, if more Christians were this eco-friendly and justice-aware, I think I might consider converting.’ And then, during talk-back, some woman asked the minister ‘how abortion fit in this world-view.’ !!! Yeah, that woke me up to the fact that we were still in the middle of Catholic country, eco-social justice conference notwithstanding.

Overall, I didn’t really learn much that was all that new at the conference. Except for the fact that ‘dolphin-safe’ tuna isn’t necessarily always, uh, safe for dolphins. The Marine Protection Act has been significantly watered (hello, pun) down, during both the Clinton and (current) Bush administration. That’s a total bummer, especially since I have an affinity for Tuna Helper – hey, what can I say, it’s quick and tasty. I suppose I should give up tuna anyways, if only for health reasons.

One thing that did happen, however – I smoked pot for the first time. Interesting because while I often vociferously defend pot, I’ve never smoked before. You might ask why this would be. I think it has to do with me being a tremendous dork, and people automatically assuming that I’m a goody-two-shoes. Which I sure am, but I don’t consider pot bad (thanks to you, Eric Schlosser, and your reefer madness). Jessie had some with her, and it somehow came up that I had never smoked before. When she discovered that I wasn’t some anti-stoner conservative tight-ass, she offered me some. So it was that I found myself smoking pot on the roof of a Catholic university dormitory. Despite the added element of danger and, therefore, excitement, it was kind of a letdown. Maybe I wasn’t doing it right, but I just kind of felt less coordinated. And that might have been due to me being tired. I guess we weren’t out there very long, because neither of us really wanted to get caught and be homeless for the rest of the conference. Ultimately, I still don’t see what the big fuss is about.

The best thing ever that happened while we were in Minnesota, though, was witnessing the squirrels. They’re a lot chubbier in Minnesota, still retaining their ‘winter fat’ even though it’s summer now and all the other squirrels are off tanning and surfing and whatever. Anyway, we discovered another reason why they’re chubbier. We were walking around campus one day, when we noticed a squirrel darting into a trash can. We stood around for a bit, pointing at his little bushy tail sticking out of the can and going ‘tee hee,’ when all of a sudden he emerges – with a CHICKEN SANDWICH in his mouth. Not just a morsel, either; whoever threw it away couldn’t have taken more than two bites of it. Discarding the bun like a true Atkins diet devotee, he scurried off with the chicken patty in his mouth, at a distance from us so that we couldn’t snatch his culinary prize. Hee hee. Squirrels are the best.

The apartment directly beneath mine, which I’ve written about before, somehow houses a single mother with four children, two cats, maybe two dogs, and revolving-door boyfriends. Right now I believe there are three guys living down there with the family. Anyways, Beth (a roommate), the boyfriend and I were sitting around minding our own business last night, around midnight or so, when someone pounded at our door. Thinking it was Beth’s boyfriend, we answered the door to encounter the woman from downstairs, wearing a rumpled t-shirt, pajama shorts and a scowl on her face. Yelling over her shoulder “motherfucker, just wait a minute” at someone behind her, she then turned to us. “Did one of you call the cops and tell them that I beat my kids?” Stupefied, but completely unsurprised, the boyfriend and I denied that we had done such a thing. Sucking in her breath, she declared, “I think I know who did it,” and stormed off.

I mention that I was unsurprised. Occasionally, when the neighbors aren’t straining their subwoofers and our eardrums with the melodic strains of 50 cent, I can hear her screaming obscenities that shock even yours truly, at her small children. The youngest, I think, is five – a little too young, in my opinion, to be called “a dirty little motherfucker” (I think that is her favorite vocab word). Well, she is a single mother with four kids, living in a shitty apartment with approximately five-hundred other people. That’s enough to cause someone to flip out, even though that doesn’t excuse her behavior.

Anyways, as soon as the door shut, Beth turns to me and whispers, “I’m the one that called.” ! She told me that around 11:00 she heard the woman beating her kid several times and cursing at him. She deliberated awhile before making the call. Initially I was a little upset that she didn’t consult with us first (what the christ, wow), but then in retrospect it’s probably best that she didn’t. I don’t know if I could lie sufficiently well enough to trick a person as seething mad as that mother was. Beth and I told Kristen, who was dubious about the whole thing – how could she tell if it was abuse, anyway, without seeing it?

Fast-forward to 7:30 this morning, when I was awakened by someone repeatedly banging on the door – the next-door neighbor’s door (phew). It was the woman, yelling again – all I could catch were “fuck,” “cops,” “you assholes.” The boyfriend freaked out, told me not to get out of bed and hid the cats – I’m not sure why. I think he got a little paranoid at this point and thought she’d try to beat our cats or something. She pounded on the door for fifteen minutes straight, sounding like she was arguing with someone. Gah. Luckily, she eventually went to work; otherwise I might have skipped out on class and locked myself in the apartment for awhile.

I’m not sure if this woman is a child abuser or not, but she’s definitely a psycho on a rampage. I hope she doesn’t come after Beth (or me or Kristen, for that matter), but that would mean that she comes after one of our neighbors, who had nothing to do with it. I’m not sure what she would do, but it would probably involve a fistfight and hair-pulling, and I can’t imagine poor gentle Beth coming out on the better end of a scene like that. But it isn’t really fair to stand by and let her harass the neighbors either. I don’t know what to do if that happens.

I’m also not sure I agree with Kristen. Yeah, it’s true that you shouldn’t be nosy and interfering when you’re not sure what’s going on, but then I think of Kitty Genovese, or “A Child Called It.” Beth babysits a lot and has a strong mothering instinct. Plus I hate to be selfish and worrying about getting my own ass kicked when these kids might be getting abused daily.

One thing I am sure of, though, and that is that the cops were worse than useless in this situation. The cop even told the woman that the call came from above her apartment. Gee thanks, asshole cop. Let’s see – there’s only three units that could be from, and one of them belongs to her pothead friend. That leaves us, and the guys next to us whose door she was pounding on this morning. Now it’s only a matter of time before her horde of boyfriends come knocking on our door at night…

How old were you when you learned how to ride a bicycle? Five, perhaps? Maybe eight, or ten, if you were a slow learner. How old was I when I learned how to ride? Um, nineteen. How old am I now? Twenty. You know that cliched adage that people sometimes throw out – “x is just like riding a bike – once you learn, you never forget.” I’ve always hated that adage. It doesn’t really seem to apply to people who never learned in the first place.

You might ask why I didn’t learn. It was probably a combination of things – the fact that I lived on a dirt road, and my mom told me at one point that she didn’t want to give me a bike for fear that I would fall and scrape myself on the sand; or the fact that my sister and I were giant pussies about things like that (my sister, as far as I know, still does not know how to ride a bike). Whatever the reason, by the time I decided that I wanted to be like the cool kids and learn how to ride, I felt like I was too old. I was in middle school, a mortifying enough time without having to worry about being caught on a bike with training wheels. The ability to bike ride remained on my list of things that I had never learned how to do, such as play chess and add numbers in my head.

The boyfriend, however, wouldn’t stand for that, and taught me how to ride last year. I must have looked incredibly ridiculous, on a bike too big for me, helmeted and padded and looking like an enormous third-grader in my overalls. I certainly felt like an enormous third-grader; little kids with their parents zipped by me as I struggled to get on the stupid thing. Balance is not my strong point. I learned, sort of, and then forgot, as I didn’t have the money to get a bike of my own. Fast-forward to yesterday, when I got a bike for $20. “Great,” said the boyfriend. “Let’s go ride.”

Amazingly enough, that cliche is true – I still knew how to ride (well, sort of). We rode around campus with my roommate Kristen, cheating and taking the elevator when we came to a major uphill point. It’s not true what they say about Kansas being flat as a pancake; 50% of them just happen to be concentrated on and around our campus (the rest being the Flint Hills, of course). I did fine, despite the fact that I panicked every time I saw a car and hopped off the bike. Oops. Also, I managed to hit every pothole and bump in the ground – not because I didn’t see them, but because I panicked so much about hitting them that I ended up steering towards them. Again, oops. My bum really hurts now from riding, and I’ve got wicked monster mosquito bites from riding around at twilight. But at least now I can affirm that I know how to ride a bike – and therefore, am able to do something that my sister can’t (take that, Claire!).

This title feature, while cool at first, really just serves as a reminder of my creative bankruptcy. I don’t want to turn it off, though – that would be giving up. I think after this, I’m going to start using randomly generated words and stick them in.

As for this weekend – I told my friend Jess about the disappointing turnout at Bloomsday, and lamented the lack of whiskey and enthusiasm in the reading of Ulysses. Whereupon Jess came up with an idea – “I know! Let’s have a party at my place on Friday night, and we’ll get trashed and read James Joyce!” The theme expanded to become a drunken Irish poetry reading, and the boyfriend and I headed to the creepy library to check out books for the party (we are, indeed, that nerdy). It’s not so creepy when there’s other people with you, thank goodness. Anyway, we ended up only reading one poem, and spent the rest of the time just drinking and talking. I’m not much of a bar-fly; dancing is fun, but not when people spill beer on your cute shoes, and drunken frat boys come and accost you. Just drinking with a few friends is nicer; I had a lot of fun that night. And a raging hangover in the morning, might I add. I spent the rest of Saturday recuperating, for the most part.

Yesterday I went with the boyfriend to look for apartments in the fall. We drove by a place that had a “for rent” sign, and also a garage sale. It turned out the place wasn’t for rent, but the people were really nice – they’re leaving in a month, and are basically looking to get rid of their stuff. They said, “Name a price, and we’ll give it to you.” I ended up getting a bicycle, helmet and lock; a DVD player; and an office chair, for $35, all the money that we collectively had on us. Score. And all of this was cheaper than a haircut at Beauty Brands, too (bleh).

Thursday the boyfriend and I, along with another girl who we don’t know very well, are driving up to St. Paul/Minneapolis for an environmental conference called “Bringing the Church back to the Earth.” I’m going, despite the fact that I’m agnostic, because I’m the ecojustice coordinator at my local volunteering center. Hopefully they’re cool with that (they should be, if they’re progressive Christians). I’m excited, of course, because it’s Minnesota and that’s how I hooked up with the boyfriend in the first place (on a drama trip, which is a long story for another time). I’m a bit terrified, too, cause I’ve never even driven to Kansas City, let alone Minnesota. As long as we get on a nice stretch of highway, hopefully empty of people and deer, with cruise control, I should be fine, right?