I love driving. But I’m also very fond of sleeping and showering and eating but my bed, my bathroom and my kitchen are not my favorite places. There’s more to it than just the placement of my hand on the wheel and my foot on the gas.

A lot of it has to do with being in control. I wouldn’t call myself a controlling person; I am a person who likes to be in control. The difference, though seemingly subtle, has to do with the influence I have on other people. I will not try to control you. You make your own decisions. I just have to be in control of myself and the situation that I am in. If you’re involved in that situation, then, yes, you may feel the force of the control I’m exerting. I’m not trying to pull you along; but if you jumped in the river knowing you wanted to go upstream but you’re not strong enough to swim against the current, that’s your problem.

In my car – Caliente, Cal for short – I am completely in control. I turn the wheel.

I am also in control of my environment. NO eating in my car. NO ONE who is not related to me drives my car. (I don’t share well. Any of my friends will attest to this. Maybe it’s because I’m the youngest child. Maybe it’s because I’m naturally a brat. Either way, Caliente is mine and you are not sitting in the driver’s seat.) NO sitting on my hood. You better not slam the damn door if you know what’s good for you. My car, my rules.

And then there’s the independence. The fact that, given enough road and enough gas, I can go anywhere I want to, all on my own. I don’t need a passenger. Sirius radio keeps me company just fine. As long as the asphalt treats me well, I’ll respect it. It’s a mutual agreement that works out much better than most of my human-to-human relationships. Analyze that how you may.

My car is my place. I can sing too loudly. I can pick my nose. I can scroll through the seven colors of ambiance lighting to pick the one that best matches my outfit. And you know what? Cal won’t judge me. You’d think that a relationship with a car would be strictly physical (I wash him, I “feed” him, he lets me sit on his lap), but my attachment runs much deeper than that. Caliente isn’t just some guy who touches my ass and asks for nothing in return. Contrarily, he isn’t obliquely needy in a way I can’t or won’t satisfy. When he needs something, he is able to tell me through a single illuminated icon. I provide. He shuts up. No argument, no hurt feelings.

When I’m driving, I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself. I was on the highway recently, at night, with no one ahead of me in sight. As I descended a hill, I looked in my rear view mirror. And behind me, following the guidance of my taillights, was a team of cars. It seemed, for a second, not just that I was my own leader, but capable of leading this fleet of others to whatever surely incredible destination awaited us. And I could do it because I was in my favorite place.

So apparently I’m a creepy control freak. But it doesn’t matter, because Caliente doesn’t care.

Senior prom, May 2009. I should have taken him as my date.

Did you know: that birds fly south when it gets cold?

Did you know: that you probably don’t know where every dish in your parents’ kitchen belongs?

Of course you know. It’s common sense. You’re no idiot. You know these things. But do you know that you know them?

I didn’t. Not really. Not until now. Winter break of my junior year of college. It took me over 20 years to figure these things out.

It’s my second winter break in Mississippi. Not my first. These things shouldn’t be new or surprising. But they are. Last winter, everything was so new on the surface, I didn’t even glimpse the things lurking underneath. Last winter, it wasn’t just a new house, it was a new state. It wasn’t just trying to find a ride home to Michigan, it was trying to find a ride to the airport so I could fly home to Mississippi. The big things were brand new. So I didn’t spend time looking for the little things.

And then, this winter. You know what I realized? Brown grass is ugly. I caught myself judging houses that had yards with brown grass. Then – duh, look around you idiot – almost all of them have brown grass. Yours included. Why is this a shock? It makes sense; grass can’t stay green in the winter. Logically, I knew this. Yet it had never registered, because up North, in Michigan, where I spent the first 19 years of my life, the grass wasn’t brown in the winter. It was white. Because it was covered in snow.

We don’t get much snow down here.

And the birds. Never had I mourned the lack of birdsong throughout the cold months. I hadn’t even noticed it. But here, the birds sing their merry little beaks off day in and day out. I know that birds fly South for the winter. And I know that I know it. But I didn’t know that I knew that this is the South they fly to. Birds are around, all the time. A particular habit of my father’s is to approach trees, in the dark, at night, when we’re walking Skippy our wonder dog, and stomp. Just stomp, and listen – those are birds, lots of birds, squawking and fluttering and flying and sounding like there’s enough of them to pull the tree up by its roots and lift it up into the sky.

And who could forget the dishes. You think you know everything about your home, don’t you? Not I. Not anymore. Last winter, my first winter in Mississippi, I didn’t even try to figure everything out. I knew that house was temporary. Was it my temporary home? Yes, it was. And it felt like home. But I didn’t need to know where I was supposed to put the freaking gravy bowl when I was emptying the dishwasher. This winter, my second winter in Mississippi, was different. Because this house is not temporary. This house is ours, permanently, and it is home. And it feels like home. So I made a point to learn that the cooking utensils are in the drawer on the right side of the stove, and the serving utensils are in the drawer on the left side. But that gravy bowl? Hell if I know. Shouldn’t it bother me that I don’t know where the pieces of my life belong? Maybe. But guess what? I lived in the same exact state in the same exact city in the same exact house for 19 years.

And I still never knew where to put that damn gravy bowl.

I’ve spent the last 20 becoming who I am. But who is that, anyway? And is that who I’m going to be for the next 10, 20, 60 years?

I’ve posted plenty about not knowing what I want to do. I’ve consciously tried to avoid thinking about who I want to be. Because as difficult as it is for me to decide on a career, figuring out the person behind that future job title is even more of a challenge.

I used to be shy when I was little. Upon disclosing that recently to a friend of mine, he literally did not believe me. Maybe because we met on an airplane destined for Spain while in line for the bathroom. I have a tendency to talk to people in such circumstances. (One of my roommates regularly offers me a dollar to keep my mouth shut on elevators. I haven’t earned a single buck.) We wouldn’t have talked then and we wouldn’t be friends a year and a half later if I was shy. But I used to be, I swear.

So what am I now that I won’t be in the future?

I became a germ freak junior year of high school. That’s when I got hooked on those mini bottles of hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works, and it was all downhill from there. I have the strangest habits and phobias related to germs and the act of avoiding them. This obsessiveness didn’t manifest itself until I was 16.

So what am I not yet that I will be in the future?

I feel like these are typical teenage questions – who am I, who am I going to become, how am I going to become it. Except I’m not a teenager anymore. Shouldn’t I have answers at this point?

Strange, but not upsetting. Two weekends ago was my first time returning to my original home state since January, though I’ve been to my new home in Mississippi twice since then. The best part about crossing that border after nine months of absence? The speed limit increasing from Ohio’s 65mph to Michigan’s 70. There was no elation or nostalgia about “returning home.” Because it’s no longer home that I was returning to. 

I was making the drive to Michigan to visit friends at Central Michigan University and University of Michigan. Upon using Google Maps to assess the drive from Dayton to Mt. Pleasant, I was given two options. Five hours and thirty minutes would take me one way. Five hours and forty two minutes would take me another. The latter, slightly longer route would take me directly through my old hometown of Coldwater. Guess which route I chose?

What is the universal language? Laughter? No, that’s the “best medicine.” Is it love? Happiness? A smile? Well, what about sadness? Isn’t that universal too?

Yesterday, my neighbor told me a story. He was in the library watching House online. Over the noise coming out of his headphones, he could hear a telephone conversation being held nearby. In another language. Yet, though he couldn’t understand the words, he could understand the emotion behind them. And this student on the phone, he said, sounded completely distraught.

At this point, I am thinking this is the entire purpose of the story: the realization that you can perceive that much emotion in someone else’s speech, even when you have no idea what they’re actually saying. Universal communication, boom. To me, that seemed like a good enough lesson to learn. But that wasn’t all.

“I had to do something,” he told me. So, when he went to refill his water bottle, he stopped at the other student’s desk and asked the boy if he was alright. What the other student answered is not my story to tell. But it was tragic; not just your woke-up-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bed kind of day. My neighbor listened, and offered his condolences. In his gratitude, the other student offered him cookies.

This, clearly, was the whole story. Not just that the non-English speaking student was sad, but that my neighbor consoled him and the student shared his sadness. And this is when I tried to put myself in their shoes.

Would I confront an upset stranger in a library – especially if that stranger was expressing his anguish in words I couldn’t understand – and offer my ear? I don’t think so. Vice versa, if I was the upset one and a stranger confronted me, would I share my story? I think not. Why? Because neither position, asker or sharer, is my responsibility. I don’t owe it to a stranger to carry his burdens, and I certainly don’t expect him to care one bit about mine. And in fact, contrary to some appearances (I write a public blog, for goodness sake), I am generally a private person. I don’t like sharing my personal stories and I don’t go out of my way to listen to them be shared by other people.

Before I get labeled a total ice queen, though, know that my terms are conditional. For one thing, I am specifically referring to strangers. My friends and family, I would be there for. Even if they were speaking in another language…which I don’t think any of them are fluent enough to do. Secondly, if the stranger was clearly in danger or physical pain, I would do what I could to help. I wouldn’t stand idly by if tangible help was needed.

But intangible help? That I’m not so good with. It’s not always that I just don’t care – though I occasionally suffer from that as well – it’s often that I just don’t know what to do. And if you’re a stranger, I’d much rather leave it up to someone else to dry your tears. I mean, I have a mid-level phobia of germs; you can’t expect me to carry around a handkerchief.
]]> http://scholarslip.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/sharing-sadness/feed/ 0 scholarslip http://scholarslip.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/were-halfway-there-livin-on-a-prayer/ http://scholarslip.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/were-halfway-there-livin-on-a-prayer/#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:03:19 +0000 scholarslip http://scholarslip.wordpress.com/?p=420 ]]>

That song actually makes me think of a time before college. Before roommates, learning my way around campus, actually having to study for exams, paying rent to a landlord and killing a cockroach in my bathroom (with a high heel).

It reminds me of a time before UD, but not long before. Mid-August, the weekend before I moved into Marycrest Residence Hall my freshman year, my sister was the maid of honor in my best friend’s stepsister’s wedding. I remember serenading each other to that song, captured on my father’s candid camera, at the back of the reception hall.

Now it’s almost exactly two years later. I am halfway done with college.

Some things have gone right. Some things have gone wrong. Most things have gone differently than I expected, some differently than I hoped.

The bigger things of the past two years are obvious. I came to UD. I got a job as a student writer for the University of Dayton Magazine. I studied abroad. I added a minor to my double major. I moved to Mississippi. I stayed on campus this summer instead of going home.

The smaller things of the past two years are less visible to the roving eye. But some of the smaller things, I believe, are more important.

I’ve changed. I like to think that I have grown, though maybe in certain ways I’ve shrunk. I have learned more about how I view myself. I have learned more about how others view me. Sometimes these views are so conflicting it’s hard to believe we’re looking at the same person. But I’ve known myself for 20 years. My view is biased.

I’ve changed my mind. About my expectations for the future. About how I carry myself in the present. About how, like it or not, I am affected by my past.

I write now from a measurable point of introspection. I am 50% done with my undergraduate education. I have 50% to go. Is my time at UD half full or half empty?

I feel like I am in limbo. I am caught between two extremes and unsure where the next swing of my trapeze is going to land me. Will I be able to walk the fine line of that tightrope I’m suspended on? And if not, is there a safety net way down there somewhere I can hardly see that will catch me?

Dramatic? Maybe. But if these truly are the best four years of my life (which I certainly hope they are not), isn’t it a little dramatic that they’re just as much over as they are yet to come?

I’m not much for praying. But I understand the sentiment. I am halfway there – and sometimes it feels like I’m not living on much more than the hopes in my head.

You think the Daytonian used to frighten its perusers by telling ghost stories? Not quite. Because the story it was telling wasn’t scary because of haunting, transparent figures from the past. It was scary because it put way too much pressure on the transparency of my future. I don’t have the exact text to quote, but to paraphrase, the part that had me so unexpectedly freaked out said this: After your formal education is complete, you should know what it’s all about. You should know what the world has to offer and what you have to offer the world. Self actualization is the goal of college – or it should be.

IS THAT TRUE?

I am two years into my “formal education” here at the University of Dayton. I have NO idea what it’s all about. NO idea what the world has to offer. NO idea what I have to offer the world – least of which what I even want to offer it. As far as being self actualized, that’s a joke, right? All I know about self actualization I learned as a 15 year old in AP Psych, and it’s at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. How can the creators of the Daytonian in 1968 have possibly thought this was a feasible goal for a college student?

Reading got me thinking about a conversation I had with an old classmate a few weeks back. The summer issue of the University of Dayton Magazine had just come out and one of the articles mentioned on the cover, The Next Big Thing, was mine. Seeing that in print was by far one of the best, if not the very best, highlight of my summer. So we were talking about what I wanted to do after graduation. Two majors in the school of business and a minor in philosophy, but so in love with my job at the magazine and with writing in general. And I had to say, though I’ve thought about the idea of journalism, I honestly have no idea if I can or will follow through with it. For a variety of reasons, not limited to pure practicality of the slim possibility of success and the dying of journalism as a field.

“If you didn’t have to think about money, what would your dream job be?” he asked me.

DRAWING A BLANK HERE.

But according to UD students 43 years ago, I should know. Or at least, as an incoming junior, be halfway to knowing. And you know what else is scary? I tossed the question right back at him. And he caught it with ease, because after graduating in December of 2010, he already got his dream job.

Maybe he’s the exception to the rule. Maybe the entire class of 1968 is the exception.

But what if it’s me?

Or 5,744,640 blinks, because humans blink approximately 15,360 times a day (if you’re getting eight hours of sleep) and I’m talking about a period of 374 days.

That’s the number of days that passed between writing a blog about returning home to Michigan for the first time after going off to college, and writing a blog about leaving Michigan as my home to move to my new one in Mississippi.

I only noticed this passage of 374 days because both of those blog posts were published in issues of the University of Dayton Magazine, for which I am a student writer. Recently looking at past issues for tips on how to write an upcoming story of mine, I came across both pieces. The first in Winter ‘09/’10, the second in Spring ‘11.

When I went home to Michigan in November of 2009 it was my first trip back since starting college at UD in August. I expected it to be entirely the same…and it wasn’t. When I went down to Mississippi in November of 2010 it was my first trip there that I would call it “home.” I expected it be entirely different…and it wasn’t.

Excuse the cliché (fourth of this post already, considering the opening three), but you know how it’s not where you are that matters, but who you’re with? Well, I’m the first one to yell “bullshit!” at sayings like that but sometimes, it’s true. And sometimes it’s not.

I expected it to be true when I went back to Michigan for Thanksgiving break freshman year, and it wasn’t. It’s no secret that as a teenager I was not in love with my hometown. But I thought that seeing my high school best friends after their prolonged absence from my life would make Coldwater the, if not perfect, at least highly acceptable backdrop for our reunion. Yet, as stated in the blog I wrote about the visit, I may have felt right at home in my house but I felt alienated from my longtime friends. Who I was with didn’t improve where I was.

Then, heading down South for Thanksgiving break my sophomore year, I thought the adage would prove to be the B.S. I called it for. I was going to a new state, to a new town, to a new house. How could that become home in one short visit? But guess what – in that new state, new town and new house were my parents and my sister and my dog and my rainbow bedspread. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know where the silverware drawer was or that the cashiers at the Piggly Wiggly had a drawl. Who I was with completely overshadowed the fact that I didn’t really know where I was.

So which is it? True. False. Both. Neither. I concede: who you are with matters. But so does where you are. They impact each other. It’s what you make of the two that makes a difference.

How’s that for a final cliché?