Twilight Zone, Part I
Soooo I’m sitting at the restaurant bar the other night waiting for my dinner companions, and I begin (not meaning to, of course) eavesdropping on a conversation between two of the bar patrons and the bartender. This barmaid was all of a sprite twenty years, I would guess, and the nice-looking, agreeably dressed couple probably averaged late sixties, early seventies. I could hear the two beginning to question the young, female barkeep about her voting proficiency—if she was “even old enough to vote,” if she was registered to vote, where she was registered, and finally how she should immediately obtain an absentee ballot because she was not from Athens. After the five minute interrogation about the act of voting, the couple moved into a fantastically wonderful tête-à-tête for whom this twenty year old should be casting her vote.
“I mean, we’re not saying we KNOW this for sure,” the southern gentleman stated politely while smiling at the young college student, “but we’re pretty confident that he is backed one hundred percent by the
“Yes,” replied the silky smooth voice of the gentleman’s confidant, “it’s true. And, no matter what you hear about him being Christian, we know for a fact that he is Muslim.”
(….um…..…..keep a lid on it for now, Hughes. This could get even better……..)
“You know, I’ve heard that somewhere before.” The barely non-teen mixologist replied with a really confused look on her face. “But I was watchin’ TV recently and they were sayin’ how he left his church after that preacher guy said all that bad stuff about our country, so I just couldn’t believe he left his own church after all that time. That doesn’t really seem cool to do.”
“Oh he didn’t leave the church,” the old crotchety racist man retorted, cutting the probable-future-manager of Long Horn Steak House off as quickly as he could, “he just ‘denounced’ the church. You see, that’s why we know he’s Muslim. And it’s up to you and your friends to make sure he doesn’t get elected. You don’t know what will happen to our country if he ends up in the White House.”
(Ok, Ok, I get it…so he’s a planted spy for the other team…because certainly no one would be delivering this kind of propaganda and actually believe it…so he’s obviously being PAID to say it, right?)
“Mmmhmmm, he’s exactly right.” The probable-mistress of the old crotchety racist man chimes in with confidence. “You can’t even imagine the harm that our country will endure if he is elected.”
…Soooo I’m sitting at the restaurant bar the other night waiting for my dinner companions, and I begin writing down everything these native inhabitants from the planet Mars are saying because I’m…well….at a loss for words, as I am …not…..right now. I’m writing and writing all over these bar napkins, basically, so I won’t get up, meander over to their bar stools, and knock them off, one by one. A smile is now spreading slowly over my horror-struck face as I am logging voraciously what these two really disturbed (human?) beings are pumping into one of
“Oh, I totally agree,” says the distorted old crotchety KKK man’s house-wrecking-mistress. “I mean, I’m not racist,” she continued—(and you KNOW I love when people begin a sentence that way, revealing themselves as absolutely racist)—“but can you imagine what would happen if a black man was elected president of our country? I’d MUCH rather a woman who has similar values to me and who is Christian to be in the White House.”
…..huh?
….what?
Oh, I remember, I’m in Mayberry. Hey Barney, arrest these ignorant Martian adulterers, wouldja? Oh wait, I’m not in Maayyyyberry! I’m in a “liberal” university town—one of the supposedly ‘blue’ counties in my predominantly ‘red’ (insert double entendre here for ‘red’) state. Dinner companion number one finally enters the Twilight Zone area where I’ve been apparently beamed to by Scotty for this brief period and I get to exit the scene leaving the sweet couple unscathed, thank you Lord Jesus!
Twilight Zone, Part II
I won’t go too deep on the Planet Smoothie experience I had the very next morning with the high school smoothie connoisseur, but let me just give you this visual:
With her dirty blond hair pulled back in two (a few days old) pig tails and her extra large and perfectly circular black glasses sliding down her nose every three seconds, Planet Smoothie girl is holding my morning’s future captive in one hand, its lid grasped tightly in the other, telling me about a three-legged dog she’s just saved, her twenty-year-old sister who smokes too much, and her four-year-old niece who, well, “She don’t even care ‘bout tellin’ mah sister how bad she stanks. She jus’ goes own n tells’er, ‘Yu stank cuz of them cigarettes! I ain’t ridin’ in
I stare at my smoothie, beckoning it to wiggle free from its hostage grip, but to no avail. Smoothie princess has made the conscious decision not to give up my breakfast until I’ve heard everything she can muster up about Tripod and each of her closest relatives. God, where is the couple from last night when I need them?
School? School is good. Just a few snapshot vignettes to give you an insider’s peek into my past few months of PhDness, year three.
EDMS 5020: Teaching Young Adolescents
(First class for preservice teachers in a series of four in the Middle Grades Program)
Instructor: Hilary Hughes
Class I, 8:00AM:
They file into the room both uncertain and ambivalent. Social justice is the premise of my course—I will open their eyes to a world they may not know; I will try and disrupt everything they think they know about education, middle school kids, and themselves, but I will try and use compassion during my quest. Race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, culture—we will cover it all. About twenty two of them are there ready and waiting with syllabus in hands, perusing their future semester with sleepy eyes. He walks in, all six-feet-five inches of him, with almost translucent white skin and a smattering of freckles. Immediately, I hear a student ask him if he plays basketball. “Nope.” is the only word that escapes his lips.
“Hey, are you
“Nope.” He responds looking put-off and/or shy.
“Oh, so then who are you?” I ask, confused because he’s the only one left on my roster who looks like he could match this name that seems to belong to a dude.
“I’m Kris,” he says and sits down, never making eye contact with me.
“Hmmm, so I wonder who this
EDMS 5020
Students: 25
White males: Kris, Matt, Brian
White females: 20
African American females:
Asian American females: Toni Rose
Nice start on the socially-just gendering thing…
Same Day, a few hours later:
“So which one of you is teaching Kris Durham?” My program coordinator asks my friend Lisa and me, because we’re each teaching a section of the course.
“I am. What’s his deal, anyway?” I answer, thinking she’ll tell me something juicy that I can use to make him like my class.
“Oh, he’s a football player. One of the starting players, I think. He assures us he’ll be fine in our program and won’t miss any classes, so keep us posted.”
Riiiight…A starting football player for the
Class II, 9:15AM—“Getting to Know You Activities”
Me: When getting to know your students, it’s nice to listen to the music they like, read the books they read, learn about the video games they’re into, see some of their after-school activities, you know, get to know them outside of school. So name a song that you’re tired of hearing on the radio over and over.
Student: “Lollipop” (Other students: Oh yeah, hate that one. Grumble, grumble…)
Me: Hmm, never heard of that one. Someone else? What’s another song?
Student: “Bleeding Love” (Other students: Oh yeah, horrible! All the time! So over it!)
Me: Hmmm, never heard of that one. (Good lord, what ARE these songs they’re talking about?) OK, so what’s another one?
Student: “Take a Bow,” Rihanna. (Other students: Ooooh, yeah, that one too! Sooo annoying!)
Me: Nope, haven’t heard that one either.
Student: So, um, what DO you listen to, Hilary?
Me: Obviously nothing. I apparently have been moving through life in absolute silence. Let’s move on, shall we?
Me: In this center, you are listing all of your strengths on these construction paper links and then you will connect them to see all of your strengths you bring into the class as a cohort. So what are some verbs you’ve listed here as your strengths?
Twenty-something: Well, let’s see…I put like running, cooking, laughing, and Facebooking.
Me: Umhmm and um, what’s Facebooking, exactly?
Her: ……………………….blank stare……………………
Me: I mean, what does that mean, since you’ve turned the noun into a verb?
Her: ………………………..blank stare…………………..
Me: So what does one do when one is ‘Facebooking’?
Another student (appalled look): Um, you go on Facebook, obviously. Like one of my verbs I put was Facebook stalking because I’m really good at that!
Me: OK, well, let’s move on then.
Class VIII, 8:47AM (a month and a half into the semester…each class three hours long…total time spent together with twenty-five students: approximately 24 hours total)
“So what does everyone think about what Kristyne (pronounced Kristeen) said about teaching in an inner-city school versus teaching in a rural school? Oh, I mean, Kristen, sorry, Kristen.”
Blank stares from twenty-five faces for what feels like two days.
“Um, no, you were right the first time, Hilary. My name is Kristyne (pronounced Kristeen).”
Laughing nervously, “Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry. I knew that. Of course I knew that. I just wasn’t paying attention. Could you repeat what you said, before, Kristyne. I’ve forgotten what you said now.”
ELAN 8950: Arts-Based Research Methodologies
Students: Hilary Hughes—art-deficient PhD student in middle grades program
Six others: Art Education, Language and Literacy Education, Design
something-or-other-that’s-really-cool-and-brilliant Program
Class I:
Professor: I’d like you to go around the room and introduce yourselves to us. Why are you getting your PhD? What are your obsessions? How have those obsessions influenced what you’re studying?
Me: Oh, well, I’ll start. My name is Hilary. (giggle out loud) That’s funny, I’m in a twelve-step program so I just felt like I was at a meeting, Hehehehe.
Them: ………………………
Me: So anyway, blah, blah, blah…….happy-go-lucky-giddy-oh-how-I-love-PhDness-and-my-family-and-teaching-young-adolescents-and-body-imagestuff-and-sexualitystuff-and-alcoholism-and-here-is-my-whole-life-story-to-all-of-you-whom-I’ve-never-seen-before…
Them: ……………………….
Professor: OK, so let’s try and keep it under about seven minutes while we go around the room so we can all have a chance to share.
Class II, Discussion on readings for class:
One of Them: Yes, and I really agreed with how Ellis talked about autoethnography and its avenues of allowing us to delve deeper into the self as well as the Other. I can see how the postmodern influence has helped Arts-Based research move forward in the field of education….
Me: ……………………………
Professor: So what does everyone think about scholARTistry being described as a hybrid practice that combines tools used by the literary, visual, and/or performing arts with tools used by educators and other social scientists to explore the human condition?[1]
Me: Um…it’s…pretty….cool? Maybe kinda like Facebooking?
Gooooooooo Dawgs! Sick ‘em! Woof, woof, woof!
Cheers! HEH
[1] Cahnmann, M. (2006).
