Mary Returns to My Blog

 Editor's Note: I don't think I'd very much like to continue with online installments of Mary's adventures, as it is a work in progress and I both adore and fear criticisms. If they are good criticisms, such as "Meghan, my god, how have you never been published before, you brilliant genius, you!" I am obviously a fan. If you say something along the lines of, "Well, if you used less commas and smaller words and perhaps didn't write like a stuffy old English professor, I might find it more enjoyable" then I'm liable to do one of two things: reject your criticism as bunk and possibly defriend you, or, and this is the more likely option, never post again because I realize that I am a failure. SO. As that stands, please do not be disappointed if I stop posting about Mary if I take long breaks in between. Also know that this is a blog for my life experiences, not for my writing experiments, so if I do end up continuing this little project, I'll probably set up a separate blog. Which would be a hassle. Anyways, read and enjoy!

When the bell signaled the end of class, Mary wondered how she was still standing. Her best guess was that it had something to do with her incredibly sensible shoes. Engaging these children was like pulling teeth of her own mouth.

"Tell me your name and three things about yourself" she'd asked of them, generously giving an example, in case the straightforward instructions had confused anyone. She was worried in particular about the sleepy-looking youth who sat near the door; he looked none too bright. "My name is Mary Bridges, feel free to call me Mrs. Bridges; either that or Your Majesty, Highness, Gloriousness or any variation thereof." A stifled sound which might have been a sympathetic snort had come from the quiet girl in the last row. Tough crowd. "As for the interesting facts, I have my degree in criminal psychology, I own two and a half cats and have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to four things: bullying, willful stupidity, faulty grammar and bad haircuts."

The girl with that shock of thick blonde hair had looked at her curiously, as if wondering how on earth she could own half of a cat, or perhaps thinking it impossible for Mary to have an "no bad haircuts" policy when her own bangs were in such need of trimming, but she had not raised her hand, re-reading instead, for the third time, the lengthy and apparently self-addressed letter which she thought she was successfully hiding. Mary had self-consciously adjusted her bangs and, after a painful silence, admitted that her half a cat was actually a kitten. There had been a few appreciative smiles, but the air in the room still felt like lead. It was with a happy heart that she had called on a student to introduce themselves, thereby diverting the attention away from her own poorly received jokes.

As was the usual case, nearly everyone knew each other, making the getting-to-know you process something in which only she had any interest. Quiet-girl, with the pale skin and downcast eyes, was from out of state and had made no real eye contact or even a very audible assertion of anything, mumbling out a quick "I like strawberries, my favorite color is green and I like to sing" as her interesting facts. Mary had noticed that she used a purple pen, though, when signing the attendance roster. Of course, one of her classroom rules being black and blue ink only, she had corrected this out of habit. The poor child's face had gone completely pink, the tips of her ears burning visibly underneath her hair and Mary had immediately regretted bringing the mistake to the class's attention.

The only other thing of note that had happened between the beginning of the name game and the tiresome but necessary reviewing of the syllabus was that the boy with the bad dye-job had nearly gotten in a fist fight with the eccentrically dressed vegetarian girl in the row across from him (her interesting facts had been "I'm a vegetarian, I have died my hair twenty-two times, not counting the current color, and I believe that an animal's life is just as important as a human baby's."). Mary wasn't quite sure how the argument had started, but the blonde boy had mentioned something about a hunting trip and suddenly half of the room was howling like a pack of rabid wolves while the PETA advocate was shouting "why don't you just shoot a baby?!?".

It had been a little too much to take in, so Mary Bridges had taken the flare gun she kept for such occasions out of her trench coat and fired it at the ceiling. "That was a warning shot." she'd said calmly, the sturdy yet attractive heels of her fine leather boots clicking as she had paced between the rows of frightened faces.

A single pink slip had been laid on the desk of each offending student. "Really?" she'd asked, in a tired voice. "The first day of classes?" As she had returned to her podium, she'd noticed the dark-haired boy in the corner: he had not looked up, but his stern expression had been replaced by a slow smirk, an intensely satisfied look that bespoke no end of hatred for the perpetrators.

Thinking back on the events as she watched the students file out of class, Mary wondered if every day would be as exciting. She certainly hoped not. Perhaps this was why life continued to pass her by: because it knew, deep down, that she didn't really want to be dragged along for a bumpy ride. Her bones were older and more tired than they used to be and she didn't think they'd appreciate the constant jarring of such an excursion.

A little later to leave the classroom because of the awkward way in which he was obliged to carry his backpack, the boy who'd caused such a commotion at the door stopped by the podium on his way out.

"Have a good day, Mrs. Bridges." he said, not meeting her eye, his lisp making the s's in her name uncomfortable and wet.

I wonder what his name is, she thought, not unkindly but merely with the weariness of someone who's memory is no longer what it was. "Thank you."

Resolving to study the roster that night, Mary turned from the door to her desk and the hour of rest that awaited her before the true terror began: Sophomore English. The last straggling students were still shoving their books into their bags, and scurrying away as Mary tried to match their names to their faces without much success.

It seemed strange to Mary that she had chosen to finally settle down as a high school teacher. She had always hated high school; it had been the worst four years of her life. I suppose I'm here to help those students like me, she thought, the ones who really can't bear it here and need something encouraging in their day. Students like him. 

She watched the dark-haired silent boy who's name might have been Ian or maybe Ivan, she wasn't quite sure, as he dropped a well-worn, paper-back copy of The Great Gatsby in his haste to pack up his things. His skin was olive in tone, betraying his obvious Italian heritage, but his eyes were a light green and very, very sad. The fingernails he had been coloring with a fine-tipped Sharpie, although covered in scribbles, were long and fine with very deep beds; beautiful hands, like a musician's or a writer's. He joined the blonde girl who had been waiting by the door. They didn't say anything to each other, but he held out his hand and she, rolling her eyes, handed him the page she'd been mulling over, heavy with pink secrets.

An interesting pair of friends. The quiet girl followed at a safe distance, neither walking with Ian (or Ivan) and his blonde friend, nor walking with last of her classmates filing out.

Mary wondered about her students. She wondered about her fellow teachers and whether or not they wondered. She wondered if it were merely her degree which kept her wondering about people or if everyone did so on occasion. She wondered if there was enough cat food left for Lord Byron, Edgar and Mimsy and whether or not she ought to stop at the neighborhood Publix on the way home. She decided she ought and began writing a list for groceries, letting her thoughts leave her students behind, momentarily absorbed in the mundane but pleasant details of domestic life.

Just a Little Bit of Scribbling

Editor's Note: This is just the beginning of a something that I've been working on. I wanted a little bit of feedback before I began the project whole-heartedly. It's really not too much to go on, I know, but just give it a read. 

Mary Bridges, Private Eye, leaned against the doorframe, not drawing any attention. Her over-sized sunglasses obscured the upper half of her face, the up-turned collar of her beige trench coat the bottom.  She scrutinized each face that hurried by her, waiting to see which would be the first to try to move past into the empty room behind her. So far, no one had even glanced in her direction. With a frustrated sigh, she removed her shades and passed a hand over her eyes. While she was being discreet, she was hardly invisible!

She replaced her spectacles on her nose, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. Even though there were still three minutes to the tardy bell, she'd expected these AP Lit students to be punctual. The English teacher leaned further back against the open door, hardly noticeable in her brown and cream checked skirt, taupe sweater and sensible shoes. Life as Mary Bridges, Private Eye was far more glamorous and rewarding than her own pleasant but often tedious and thankless existence in the public school system. Sometimes she felt like the world was spinning past and she was running after it. As hard as she tried to flag it down, it continued hurtling through space, like a taxi driver passing her by because he thinks that maybe she can't tip as well as some other potential customer.

How does he know? she wondered. How does he know that I won't give him the best tip of his career? That was the problem with watching the world spin past: she never got the chance to show it why she was worth the stopping.

The constant stream of students had begun to thin by this point, which is why the sudden ruckus at the far end of the hall pulled Mary Bridges out of her spinning, hurtling thoughts and into reality. Leaning around the corner, she noticed several students waiting outside. A tall, strange looking boy was crouched on the ground, frantically shoving papers and notebooks back into his backpack which, apparently, had split down the side, vomiting forth the untidy mess to begin with. A few of the students who had been lucky enough to enter the building before the fiasco, stood around uncertainly before shrugging and making their way towards her classroom.

 Ah. she thought. These must be my students. Moving out into the hallway, she smiled at them, a smile which was returned with either blank stares or the aversion of eyes. Her mouth thinning in disapproval, Mary filed this into the back of her mind and strode to the double-paned glass doors to deal with the more immediate problem. She wished momentarily that she were wearing shapely leather boots or at least some shoe which made a more impressive sound than the apologetic squeaking of her own comfortable pair.

The ungainly boy with a mop of badly bleached hair had finally gathered all of his things. Mary spared a moment to question how his backpack had possibly ripped already and, perhaps more inexplicably, how he had accumulated so many papers on the first day of school. Disheveled and flustered, the paper-hoarder mumbled an apology, an unfortunate lisp apparent underneath the embarrassed gruffness, and shuffled quickly in the direction of the classroom. Somewhat thrown by the entire spectacle, Mary stood silent for a second too long and was consequently hit by the flood of remaining students who had been crowded outside the door. She had been planning on graciously opening the door wide and welcoming them into the hallway and also an exciting year of literature and writing. As was so often the case for Mary, her grand plans were swept away by the tide of life and she was left rather bedraggled and confused as to why there was sea water in her shoes.

Heaving a well-deserved sigh, she made her way back to the classroom, following at a safe distance from the new and vaguely frightening group of students. Mary was always a little frightened of the students that were shuffled into her classroom, although she had hoped this year would be better, finally having been given the AP class rather than stuck with Freshman and Sophomore English. She liked to call those mainstream English classes "Words for Cavemen." It's not that Mary honestly thought the students in those classes shared all of the characteristics of our early ancestors, she just could not help but notice the lack of anything representing interest, sentience or even life in the vacant stares of those "regular" students.

Determined not to let the masses see her unnerved, Mary Bridges brushed her bangs out of her face, straightened her stylish shades and strode into the classroom, asserting in her overall demeanor exactly how much authority she wielded over these young souls. The door closed with a resounding bang and the children were quiet, afraid of what would happen next.

Mary wondered if the bell had finally rung, as she could hear nothing over the din of twenty to thirty exuberant voices, discussing everything from the hideously unchanged cafeteria fare to the summer's last and, from the sound of it, wildest party. In all of the excitement and clamor, Mary noticed a quiet girl sitting near the back of the room, staring silently at her hands and looking very pale next to all of the Floridian end of summer tans; she noticed a dark-haired boy sitting in the corner desk, drawing on his fingernails and looking far too somber for anyone of that age; she noticed a brilliantly blonde head of hair bobbing up and down as the owner scribbled furiously on a sheet of lined paper, her neat handwriting spilling out of the pink pen she was gripping and onto the greedy white page. The sight of these three quiet children dissolved the bubbling, toxic high school hubbub around her and reminded her why she had decided to be a teacher in the first place. Imbued with new courage, Mary took her place behind her customized podium, standing on the surreptitious step she'd added to giver her an extra few inches of impressive height.

A firm believer in the practice of never shouting in the classroom, Mary simply stood there, very quiet and very still until, noticing her odd behavior, the students began to look up, falling into a remorseful silence. The tardy bell tolled at long last and Mary smiled out at the upturned faces before launching into her welcome speech and accompanying PowerPoint.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a word that means something is coming. Tomorrow is a word that means today will soon be gone, just another memory, another laughter line, another tear shed and forgotten. Tomorrow is a word that means promise and compromise and fear and excitement and today, tomorrow is a word that means six months.

As of tomorrow, it will have been six months since this world lost a wonderful man: a father, a teacher, an artist, a brother, a son, a husband, a friend. So many different words to describe one person, and unless you knew him, those words hardly describe him at all.

It might be hard to wake up tomorrow, knowing that it has been six months since I last heard his voice or saw his face or held his hand, and even longer since I heard his loud, clear voice, and saw his smiling, healthy face, and held his strong, warm hand. It might be hard to wake up tomorrow, but I will do it, and I will take a long shower and let the tears mingle with the warm water so that they wash away and leave behind no anger or pain. I will make my bed and write in my journal and go to class like it is a normal day, and the sun will be shining and I'll smile, like I always do. I will do all of these things because that's what we have to do.

Tomorrow I will also wish. I will wish that tomorrow wasn't a word that means six months. I will wish that I were at home with my family instead of alone in a new town with people that don't know what tomorrow means. I will wish that I could hold my sisters and brother until all of the pain leaks out and we can only laugh at our tear-stained faces. I will wish that he had bothered to set up a voice mail message so that if I were to call his cell phone I would hear it. I will wish that Hostess hadn't gone out of business so that I could walk down to a convenience store and buy some donettes. I will wish that I had at least one recent photo of he and I in which he wasn't sick. Tomorrow I will wish it wasn't tomorrow.

But then, tomorrow is a word that means wishing and hoping and dreaming. Tomorrow is a word that means, make your wish and let it go because wishes that don't come true will only make your heart heavy if you hold onto them. Tomorrow is a word that means keep moving forward.

Whatever it is that tomorrow means, whether it is all of these things or none of these things, tomorrow will be a day like any other day, and that means that I will be safe and happy and sound under the care of the best guardian angel. Really, I'm very lucky; that's what tomorrow means.

Brother Jed vs. Pope Bendict XVI

What is the difference between Brother Jed and Pope Benedict XVI?

Well, for starters, the Pope doesn't wear khaki shorts and a fishing hat, but that's merely superficial.

Who, you might be asking, is Brother Jed? If you don't know who Brother Jed is, that's probably because you've never set foot on FSU campus before. Brother Jed is an evangelist who takes time out of... whatever it is that he normally does, and comes to campus to spread the word of the Good Lord above. Unfortunately, while that might be Brother Jed's intention, it is certainly never what he ends up doing. For the most part, he just talks at the ever growing crowd of college students bent on heckling him as much as they can before their next class starts.

I have to say that I am of two minds about what goes down in the quad when Brother Jed comes to FSU and that is because I find the behavior of everyone absolutely appalling. Hardly a word falls from Brother Jed's mouth that isn't laden with sexism or bigotry and all anyone else in interested in is how many rude questions they can ask. It's an absolutely abysmal display on everyone's part. Brother Jed isn't doing anything but carving out a bad name for himself and Christians and these kids who are heckling him are just making themselves look callous and uncouth. If Brother Jed really wanted to spread Christianity, he'd talk about the love of Jesus and the forgiveness of God and that as Christians we shouldn't judge lest we ourselves be judged.

Now what does this have to do with Pope Benedict? Well, I recently started following him on Twitter. I know, I know. I have a Twitter, but it's for my Italian class, long story. Anyways, I knew that the Pope had himself a Twitter so I thought, how cool would it be... and I clicked follow.

And you know what the difference between Brother Jed and Pope Benedict is? The really, really important difference is not that the Pope has a nicer hat, or that the Pope wears white robes instead of khaki shorts, or that the Pope speaks primarily in Latin and Italian instead of with a Southern drawl. No. The really important difference is that every single tweet the Pope posts on his account (I cannot believe I just typed those words in that order) is uplifting and encouraging and exactly the sort of thing that a leader in the Christian (Catholic or not) community should be tweeting, er, talking about.

Now, the really sad thing is this: despite the uplifting content of the Pope's tweets, things like, "Join me in praying for Syria, so that constructive conversation will replace the horrendous violence" and "What are some childhood Christmas traditions that you remember and love?", despite the fact that he is attacking no one, saying nothing critical, even calling for us to promote freedom and respect for all, and just being a generally nice person, tweeting some nice things, there are still thousands of people who follow him with one intention: to troll him.

I'm not a Catholic, but I'm pretty sure that trolling the Pope is just bad for the soul. On every single tweet that the Pope makes, there is at least one comment that is just rude and often completely irrelevant.

So, although the Pope and Brother Jed are not the same in their demeanor, their wardrobe choices or their decisions about what is the best way to spread God's love, what is the same is that there are people everywhere with a hole in their heart who have nothing good to add to the global or personal conversation.

Stomach Viruses, Oxygen Tanks, and Crying Babies

 What do these three things have in common?

For my first post of the new year, I have decided to share a story about last year. It's a traveling tale, which guarantees an opportunity for you to laugh at my expense, so enjoy.

This past December I went home for Christmas break after my first semester away at college. It was the longest period of time that I had spent outside of my dorm room since late August, and I have to admit that by the time I was on the road back to Tallahassee, I was sorely missing my twenty-five square feet of living space, complete with extraneous pillows and minimal closet room. I spent the first half of the break in Florida and then flew out to California on the 28 of December. Normally I love flying. I just bring a blanket, some fuzzy socks, and headphones and I pass out. This was not normally. For some reason, the gods of cheap airfare travel decided that it would suit their purposes to inflict upon me a twenty-four hour virus right before flying. I'm not exactly sure why that suited their purposes, perhaps they consider whatever goes down those terrifying airplane toilets (in my case a lot of water, stomach acid and not much else) as tribute of some sort. Whatever their plan was, it resulted in my feeling, and looking, like poop when I walked into the Orlando airport with my older sister.

Can I just say thank God that my sister was even with me? I'm pretty sure that she was more than thoroughly annoyed with me for being sicker than a dog, but she was still  awesome and even bought me an expensive bottle of Fiji water.

Anyway, as soon as we sat down on the first plane out of Orlando and into Atlanta, I knew it was going to be a long haul. Someone sitting in the vicinity was wearing an overpowering perfume and I thought my head was going to burst. Either that or my stomach was going to declare mutiny on my slowly sinking ship of a body. I put my sweater over my face to block out the smell, the light and the noise. A well-meaning stewardess stopped by after noticing my makeshift tent and offered me some non-aspirin pain medication. I gladly accepted, but less than ten minutes after we'd been in the air, I had to sacrifice the aspirin, er, non-aspirin, to the gods of air travel.

The one hour flight to Atlanta took what felt like a lifetime, during which I visited the closet-sized lavatory twice more. On the third trip that I made to pay homage as the gods' new favorite mortal, I found that instead of a desire to upchuck, my body now had a desire to faint. I took a momentary assessment of the situation and decided that I would rather pass out in my seat than in the tiny bathroom, particularly as we were getting ready to descend into Atlanta, so I pushed open the door and began to make my way down the narrow aisle of the plane. I didn't make it very far. A flight attendant made me sit down at the back of the plane and ran off to get what I thought was ice.

It turned out that she'd said "oxygen". I'm not sure how I mistook that for "ice", although the blood was rushing in my ears and I was experiencing the joy of a barf bag for the first time ever. Regardless of what I'd thought I'd heard, what she came back with was a huge oxygen tank and a mask. I have never been so mortified in my life, except possibly when she asked if I wanted the paramedics to meet me at the gate.

Yes, please. I would love for some paramedics to wheel me off the plane and through the airport...

No! No, thank you. I have never had pleasant experiences with paramedics, I really didn't want this flight to go any further downhill.

The flight finally ended, we touched down in Atlanta, and I got off the plane, on my own two feet, thank you. The next flight was not nearly as awful, although it was three times as long which made it awful in its own right, but at least the gods of air travel had finally decided that I had been an adequate disciple for long enough and left me the heck alone.

Eight days later I had to board another plane to fly back to Florida after a wonderful stay with my family. This trip was nowhere near as horrendous as the trip from Florida, but it was a red-eye flight, so suffice it to say that I got about two hours of sleep that night. There was not one, not two, not three but four babies on the flight at 10:45pm out of Sacramento, and all four of them were seated within ten feet of me. That means that nearly fifty percent of the space around me was taken up by screaming babies.

Sitting directly next to me was an adorable little girl and her mother. This little girl must have been at least seven or eight, but she was very tiny. I didn't think she would cause much trouble, considering it was way past her bedtime and she probably just wanted to sleep. Well, yes. She did just want to sleep. Unfortunately she just wanted to sleep on my shoulder. Why my shoulder when her mother was right there? Who knows.  It was difficult to fall asleep when her head kept going *bonk* onto my shoulder, but at least she looked clean and free of head-lice. Then again, it was just difficult to get to sleep because airplane seats are the worst.

Tell me, who designed the airplane seat? I want to know if they finished their design, looked at it and said, "Good. Good job. This looks like something people will want to sit in for six plus hours. Good for you, Bob. Good for you."

The thing that made my trip back  to Florida so fantastic is that I was landing in Jacksonville and being picked up by my boyfriend and his mom. First impressions are incredibly important to me, so I was really excited that the first time his mom would meet me would be after six hours on a plane. I hope you note the intense sarcasm. Being the person I am, I put a change of clothes in my laptop case (the only bag that I brought onto the plane) along with some makeup, and when I touched down in Atlanta at 6:00am the morning of Saturday, January 5th, I went to the ladies' room, changed my clothes, washed my face, and put on some makeup. I then drank a strong cup of coffee and read a book until I arrived in Jacksonville, as fresh-faced and sociable as ever.

Of course, thirty minutes into the drive back to Tallahassee, I was fast asleep, but at least I looked like a human being.