Teaching

I was at a friend's wedding shower today and met some other teachers who work all over Hamilton and Halton. We chatted about how some teachers don't really seem to like their jobs; in fact, some actually appear to hate teenagers, or to hate the act of standing up and actually teaching stuff.

I said to one of the women I met, Melina, that I honestly can't believe some days how great my job is. I get paid to laugh at the goons in my Writer's Craft class. I get paid to travel to Italy and to see 37 students' faces the first time they explore the sloping streets of Assisi. I get paid to work with the Model United Nations club students who will, undoubtedly, change the world we live in and improve people's lives in tangible ways. I get paid to be surrounded by youthful energy and students like Haakim Nainar or David Yoon exchanging lines from my favourite TV shows with me. I get paid to read original works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that few other people may ever be exposed to.

I always feel nostaglic at this time of year. I have been teaching at least two grade 12 classes every year since I began at Westdale four years ago, and I always--ALWAYS--cry at graduation. It's always my finest hour: smudged mascara, puffy eyes and sniffling. Watch for me at grad, kids; I'll be the classy broad sobbing in the corner.

The Death of Embarassment or the Resurgence of Anxiety?

I was just reading an article in an online journal called In Character. The article, by Christine Rosen, laments what she perceives to be the death of embarassment in North American society--from people getting laser teeth whitening in the middle of a shopping mall to people obnoxiously cuddling and making out all over the place. She cites other journalists' studies which blame social networking sites like facebook, online sharing sites like youtube, and reality television for our collective desensitization to embarassing situations and thus our subsequent ability to up the ante of our own personal tolerance for embarassment.

What she fails to acknowledge, however, is how contrived all of these media actually are in the first place. On facebook, people's profile pictures, status updates and comments are carefully constructed (for example, tilt head slightly to the left, hold camera at appropriate distance from head, and try to appear natural, as if the webcam just happened to snap your image without your consent). On Jersey Shore, the producers cast the eight bronzed shore dwellers, make suggestions to them for how to behave, tempt them with copious amounts of booze, and continue filming even when things escalate far beyond the level of ordinary embarassment to which the rest of us are accustomed. When Snooki "fist fights" a group of girls who show up one night on their patio, it is difficult to feel actual embarassment for her because I know how fake the experience is in the first place and how pride, the antithesis of embarassment, is Snooki's primary emotion. Garnering attention is her objective, and thus it would be a waste of my own feelings of embarassment for her.

With the alleged death of embarassment, why do so many of us suffer from anxiety, whihc seems, at times, like an extreme and preemptive version of embarassment? We are so excessively worried about what others will think or say about us that we have panic attacks before leaving the house. Hm.

Betty White and Nana

Part of the reason I begrudgingly created a facebook account about six months ago was that I had heard there was a "Betty White to host SNL" group--and I wanted in. I simply adore Betty White. I own several seasons of Golden Girls on DVD; I watch the show on reruns as often as I can after work; and I have even been swayed to watch rom-coms, like "The Proposal," when I heard that Betty White had even a minor role. I just can't get enough of her. She truly is "(North) America's Grandma"--or nana, as she was referred to in several sketches last night on SNL.

Despite SNL writers' near exploitation of White with their highly sophisticated formula--old lady + swear words (prison rape and genitilia jokes) = haha--White still managed to pull it off with a wit, charm and sass that only she possesses. I had heard that there would be extra guest hosts (Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, etc.) to ease the burden on an 88.5 year old woman--but White appeared in every sketch and showed no signs of slowing down by the time 1:00 am rolled around. She reminds me of my own nana, who lived to be 89 and only passed away after a slip in a nail salon (she still received regular pedicures, which only made me love her more) led to complications to her internal organs. Before the fall she was healthy, spritely, and lively, and didn't miss a beat when it came to telling a joke or giving a good belly laugh.

My nana, who passed away in my last year of university almost five years ago, meant more to me than perhaps anyone else ever has or ever will. She had that same combination of playful adorableness and astute wisdom that Betty White seems to possess. I loved my nana so much and from such a young age that my first sentence was "I want my nana." As I grew up, we only grew closer. Nana came on every family vacation with us, and would sit in the most uncomfortable seat in the minivan--the middle seat in the back row--just so my brother and I could both lean on her and sleep. She literally sat with an enormous smile on her face the whole time--almost three full days of driving and two overnight stop-overs to Florida--just because she loved being with us.

And as I got older, entering into university and living in student housing, nana treated my every experience, as mundane as it might have been, as a milestone: she bought me a housewarming gift every time I moved into a new abode, and would deliver it herself, climbing the steps to my apartment above Fabutan, or the Westend Pub, or whatever sketchy place I had found to rent at a cheap price. And despite what loser I might have been dating at the time, nana would always make him feel like a part of the family, even though she always knew before I did that it wouldn't last.

I guess I am feeling particularly sentimental since it is Mother's Day and my mom is on vacation. I hope anyone with their own nana, oma, gran, grandma, nona, or jadda appreciates her while she is here.

A Good Ol' Fashioned Fish Smacking

I am in a wedding in July and this past Saturday we ran the stag and doe. I have never helped to oversee a stag and doe before, but apparently there is some kind of rule whereby every guest must purchase, in addition to their $10 door ticket, something called "fish insurance." My friend Kristina, the bride, is a staunch vegetarian and animal rights activist, and so I pointed out the blatant hypocrisy of having one of her guests swallow a live goldfish (which is what happens to the one unlucky guest who hasn't purchased said fish insurance). Instead, she agreed to purchase a dead fish from the grocery store (not a fillet, one with eyes and everything still in tact) and allow a member of the wedding party to smack an uninsured guest across the face.

For some reason, more people seemed to pay attention to the fish carcass than they did the bride. The fish had a prominent place on the front entrance table--on ice, of course--where people proceeded to touch it, talk to it, add cigarettes and gum to the inside of its stiff mouth. I wanted to see the humour in this, but for some reason I felt really bad for that fish. We can be so melodramatic about human death, and reserve such grandeur for the memorialization of the human dead, but we degrade and debase the lives of so many other creatures. I tried to spare the fish any further indignity by hiding it, but it was discovered.

It's difficult to be political when a bunch of drunk people want to see another drunk person get slapped in the face with a fish.