Dear Justin
Each week I post questions folks e-mailed me the week before.
Dear Justin,
I find my mother physically attractive. Is this wrong? If so, what’s the matter with me? I am 42 years old. I am not married. I’ve never been married. I fear this may hinder my ability to get married.
Worried
Mobile, Alabama
Dear Worried,
It is always wrong to find you mother physically attractive. Sure, there are excuses for it, but these usually involve puberty. However, since you’re 42, there is no legitimate excuse. Worried, you need to get on the train to manhood. You’ve never been married? At your age, your only hope is to frequent bars – preferably one with bus station skanks – and find a woman. Any woman, really – a guy like you can’t be picky regarding looks, age, intelligence or cholesterol level. Just make sure it isn’t you mother. I hope this helps.
Dear Justin,
I am a junior in high school and have been dating my girlfriend for seven months. I spend several hours almost every evening at her house eating dinner, watching TV and talking to her parents and brother, but I’ve never pooped there. I don’t know why, but the mere thought of pooping at my girlfriend’s house sounds positively disastrous. They have a bathroom directly off the living room and I feel like if I use it, surely it will stink up the family time in front of the television, and using the bathroom on the second floor would seem a bit suspicious. What should I do?
Stomach Hurts
Groton, Massachusetts
Dear Stomach Hurts,
This is idiotic. Are you even serious? By all means, crap in that toilet “off the living room.” Your girlfriend’s dad and brother will commend you when your girlfriend and her mother aren’t around. What a ballsy move that would be. Consider the alternatives: a) you don’t poop and your stomach hurts and you might – possibly – die, or b) you use the bathroom upstairs and creep everyone else when they hear the toilet flush. They may even think you’re bulimic or possibly a woman. Look, Stomach Hurts – pooping is a part of life for everyone. With the exception of Victoria Beckham, who is likely to die soon, everyone does it. Woman are supposed to hide it; men are expected to flaunt it. Trust me on this one.
Dear Justin,
I attend a private, affluent high school in New Jersey. My father is a surgeon and my mother – like Ann Romney – is a stay-at-home mom. I am a cheerleader, but for the nearby public school since my private, affluent high school in New Jersey does not have a football team or cheerleading squad. One day at practice, a group of black boys walked by and I abandoned my post at the pyramid foundation to make sure my purse, cell phone and other personal effects worth more than $500 were out of their reach. One of the girls who fell from the top of the pyramid called me a racist and the other girls agreed. However, I was only doing what my mother does, which is exactly what my father told her to do. While white people whacked out of their mind from manufacturing and using methamphetamine do not bother me, black high schoolers wearing varsity jackets do. Does this make me racist?
Erin
Morris County, New Jersey
Dear Erin,
Yes. Yes, Erin, it does make you racist. From the paragraph you sent me, I have gathered the following about you: a) You’re too “good” to attend public schools, but okay with taking advantage of public school athletics, b) your cell phone is worth more than $500, which is ridiculous – no matter what justification you may throw my way – because you’re in high school, c) you’ve basically said bad white people are okay, but good black people are not, and d) you’ve had sexual relations with at least 14 men at your school. Erin, you need to be your own person and think for yourself, especially in the near future. When you go to college, seek out folks who do not support people like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and George Zimmerman. They will likely teach you a thing or two you’ve never heard. Take this knowledge and process it – expand on it and build on it. There is no reason to live in a box these days. Be yourself and think for yourself. If dad threatens to cut tuition payments, threaten to take out a loan from the federal government to pay for college, which would make his money basically useless. Remember, Erin, “People are people – and if they like you, they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Dear Justin is really Justin Schoenberger of Greenwood, South Carolina. You can e-mail your questions to him at
God to unfriend all Christians on facebook
HEAVEN – In a move many found surprising to be found surprising by any, God announced plans to unfriend more than 150 million Christians on facebook Thursday.
“I can no longer deal with the number of people on facebook who use my name regularly to further their messages of narrow-mindedness, bigotry and intolerance regarding anything that’s not straight, white and Christian,” he said via Skype from his Heaven-based headquarters. “And the silly one-liners over the pictures of deformed kids and abandoned animals and sunsets and rainbows … that stuff has got to stop.
“I’ve never said any of the stuff people SAY I said.”
In addition to unfriending every Christian in America, God said he also plans to remove all members of his “God” group – which will automatically close the group down after 24 hours – and grant administrator rights to his “God” fan page to former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. God said he can’t figure out how to delete the group and page instantly, but knows these two measures will lead to their demise.
God also plans to advise his alleged son, Jesus Christ, to follow suit. Neither claims affiliation with the “God” fan page listed as an interest or the one listed as a public figure.
Jebediah Remorse found news of God’s decision “shocking.” The Alabama-based preacher, who made $970,000 in 2010, said Thursday he didn’t know why God wouldn’t want support on the popular social media web site.
“I think it’s a hoax being put on by the liberal media,” Remorse said. “God supports everything we Christians do. “There’s no way he would ever be unhappy about something one of us wrote on facebook that supports what we think is meant by the words we think he said.”
Remorse believed God was “most happy” about Christians’ gay bashing following North Carolina’s passage on Amendment One, which bans all civil unions, but especially civil unions between gay people. He said he wrote a “weekly devotions” about it, but has no college education.
“God doesn’t like gay people,” Remorse said. “That’s a fact clearly stated in Genesis 2:24 and throughout Leviticus.
“He’s not going to be mad about people believing what he believes but masking it with support for traditional marriage – especially not mad enough to unfriend them.”
Pocahontas Smith found news that people like Remorse found the news of God’s plans shocking to be “alarming.” The Native American woman who married a European man after a brief affair in the woods said guys like Remorse have been spreading ignorance and extremism for so long, they shouldn’t be surprised God’s had enough.
“When John and I got married, a bunch of white guys from his town showed up on horseback wearing white hoods and robes and carrying burning crosses,” Pocahontas said. “They told us they were Christians carrying out the word of God, who doesn’t like interracial marriage.
“So instead of waiting for God to tell us that directly on judgment day, they were apparently so certain of this that they felt the need to do his work for him.”
Pocahontas said her story is similar to what Christians are doing on facebook regarding Amendment One – and is why God has finally had enough.
“You’ve got a bunch of gossiping housewives and cheating husbands who go to church every Sunday spouting off on facebook about how God ‘wants’ this or ‘doesn’t want’ that,” Pocahontas said, clenching her tomahawk in its sheath. “Like these people even know.
“I’ll tell you what they do know – they do know that God wants people to do what’s right and not just speak it … yet they cheat on their spouses, teach their children to bully other children and lust over ‘shiny’ things.”
God, meanwhile, said he’s considering switching to Myspace but doesn’t know if that even exists anymore. He’s also heard all of the cool, educated people hang out on Google+.
Nonetheless, God said his decision to unfriend all of the Christians on facebook had nothing to do with Amendment One.
“I don’t even care about that,” he said. “I don’t even care about marriage, really. If two people are in love, they should be together.
“All of these ‘rules’ for love and marriage – I didn’t come up with those. Man came up with those.”
Raising a lady
Earlier this week, I was helping the son of my neighbor who died last year gather some of his mother’s belongings for a yard sale. He handed me a book, “How to Raise a Lady,” and asked if I wanted it.
Of course I did.
One of my greatest fears as a father is that my daughter will have to go through her childhood and young adulthood as an outcast because of something I did or didn’t do. The possibility came to light earlier this year, when one of her teachers sent a note home on Kalista’s daily behavior log stating she had been reprimanded for not being polite. Come to find out, when someone calls for you in the South, it isn’t nice to reply, “What?”
“Instead, we’d like her to say ‘Yes’ or ’Yes, ma’am,’ ” the teacher informed me when I called to ask about it.
I thought telling Kalista to explain to these people – a woman at her daycare also decided to make Kalista say “sir” and “ma’am” in lieu of a “What” – her dad never taught her these things because he’s not from the area would be a reasonable explanation that evoked some understanding.
It was not.
A week later, I received a note from Kalista’s teacher stating my daughter had been “very disrespectful,” telling another teacher she didn’t have to be polite because her daddy’s not from the South and doesn’t teach her manners.
That made for an awkward parent-teacher conference.
I decided after the conference that I had to – for Kalista’s sake – learn the language of the natives and pass it on to her. That’s why I jumped at the chance to read “How to Raise a Lady,” which is clearly written under the presumption everyone is white and golfs.
It took me one chapter to realize I’m never going to remember all of it, two to pretend I could remember it all and three to become downright annoyed.
“Southerners have a tendency to cloak what they really mean in euphemisms,” the book states. “ For instance, two southern ladies are having lunch and discussing an acquaintance to recently lost her children’s entire college education fund playing the stock market. They speculate on what could have led her to do such a careless thing. ‘You know, until he died, he always took care of their money while she took care of the house and children. She’s just darling, and the most wonderful mother, but she never did have a head for figures. Bless her heart.’ In the North, the same conversation would have gone like this: ‘Thank God Tom always took care of their money because she can’t balance a checkbook to save her life. She’s a fiscal disaster.’ ”
How do you teach that to a child?
Later in chapter three, the author shares this story: “When the church I attend in Nashville called a clergyman from New York City to be our rector, many were a little apprehensive about a Yankee in the pulpit. But the new reverend was warm and charming and gave brilliant sermons in a frank and straightforward manner. After services one morning he was talking with a group of church members who asked him what was the biggest difference he had found between the Yankees and Southerners. ‘Well, in the North, you know exactly where you stand with people. In the South, no one ever seems to say what they mean.’ Bless his heart – he just hadn’t learned the language yet.”
It seems more important as children than during adulthood that we suppress our true feelings about another person. For instance, youngsters shouldn’t be telling their classmates they do not appreciate their company; their minds cannot support the delicate balance between honesty and tactfulness (there’s never a need to be mean), plus they haven’t learned exactly what they like and don’t like. Consequently, I’ve always encouraged Kalista to learn more about a person she doesn’t like, make sure she truly does not like him or her, then simply stay away.
Now I’m wondering if that was the best advice. It seems to me the Southern way to handle situations practically begging for honesty is to actually employ dishonesty. Or speak in a secret code. I’m a lost cause – there is a zero percent chance of me adopting a policy of untruthfulness because it’s “polite.” But Kalista’s still malleable.
Speaking of the “secret code,” the term “bless your heart” or “bless his heart” or “bless her heart,” according to the book, can mean a multitude of things. It can mean “I feel sorry for you/him/her,” “You/he/she is an idiot but I’m far too dignified to say it” or “Screw you/him/her, but I’m far too dignified to say it.” To me, “bless your heart” is worse than stating directly what you mean because, quite frankly, it’s cowardly and insincere to say one thing and mean another. We teach our children – at least I do – to take responsibility for actions, not hide them in some secret code so we can say “that’s not what I meant” when the results aren’t favorable.
Perhaps the book will change my opinion after chapter three. Thus far, raising my lady to be earnest, strong and sincere despite the “politeness” around her seems to be my best option.
Dear Justin
Each week, starting last week, I will be posting questions folks e-mailed me the week before, followed by my response.
Dear Justin,
I am a 26-year-old female college student in a small, conservative town. For the past two years, I’ve been trying to find a boyfriend, but it’s so hard. Lately, I’ve been using social networking and dating websites but have not had any luck. I am a good, attractive person, but no one seems interested. Do you have any advice?
Sadly Single
Belton, South Carolina
Dear Sadly,
Attractive? That’s debatable. If you were attractive at all, you wouldn’t be struggling on dating websites, which are basically places for men to shop for hookers. Do you have cats? I bet you do. Look, Sadly – what you need to do is drive to the nearest Shell station, go inside and take your pants off. You will have men after you in seconds.
Dear Justin,
My husband and I have been married for six years. He was born deaf. However, last year he struck his head in a minor car accident and his hearing returned on a sporadic basis. But he did not tell me until last week, when he said he’d appreciate it if I stopped passing gas forcibly after my morning coffee. I was floored. When I asked him about it, his hearing went away again. How can he go almost a year without telling me he can hear? Am I reading too much into this?
Farts Too Loud
Ware Shoals, South Carolina
Dear Farts Too Loud,
First and foremost, what a miracle it is that your husband can hear. But it’s certainly suspicious that he waited so long to tell you about it. Have you considered the possibility he was faking his deafness all along just to get out of talking to you? I would ask him this question directly – and pose the same to members of his family.
Dear Justin,
I have worked at a computer software firm for almost two years. It is my first job out of college and has gone very well until recently. About two months ago, a receptionist hired several months after me, “Jan,” began making unwanted sexual advances toward me, touching my buttocks and rubbing my back when I least expected it. I am afraid to report her actions because men supposedly don’t get sexually harassed by women, plus she’s very large. What should I do?
Confused
Plano, Texas
Dear Confused,
You should have come up with a better alias than “Confused.” Try using “Ol’ Wussy” or “Complete Idiot” to identify yourself the next time you’re asking someone if they think you should report being the “victim” of sexual harassment. What’s with this “least expected it” crap, Confused? When does anyone ever expect a backrub by a large woman at work? Confused, I don’t see any need for action in this case. Reporting it to your company’s human resources department would get you labeled “gay,” which is a social (and possibly literal) death sentence in Texas. You are lucky to have Jan in your office. She sounds like a tremendous asset to the company.
Dear Justin is really Justin Schoenberger of Greenwood, South Carolina. You can e-mail your questions to him at schoenbergerjustin@gmail.com.
Bear spot
With a moon half lit and stars looking like they were hanging from a coat hanger in God’s hand, there was no place I’d have rather been.
Occasionally from my chair beside a shimmering fire, I heard sequences of rustling, growling and barking from my dog, which inspired fear to use my spinal cord as a highway between my asshole and heart. I’d shine my utility light at the dog, chained to a tree in the dark 20 or so yards away, to see where she was looking. Then I’d snap the beam in that direction as if it were some type of laser that would defend us. More than once, I saw two eyes likely belonging to a rodent; I saw nothing most of the time, though – and that scared the shit out of me.
What my eyes couldn’t see, my imagination did. My mind would contemplate the running inventory of potential weapons of defense at our camp: an axe with four feet of oak handle, butter knives crammed in a picnic basket, the smallest (the cheapest) hammer available at Walmart. Ultimately, I decided after the third instance of an unidentified visitor my best bet would be to throw handfuls of sand at an assailant in an effort to disable it long enough to grab the kerosene, douse the bastard, find my matches, throw another handful of sand, strike a match, toss it at the cretin and watch the savage go up in flames. This would probably give me ample time to grab my daughter and run like Squanto up the hill and to my car, I figured, envisioning myself hurdling fallen timber and skipping through holes in the dark like an Olympic athlete with night vision.
If the beast came after me while it was on fire, I’d be left with no choice but to take it head-on, likely tackling it like a linebacker because, really, that’s the only move I’ve got.
Eventually I conceded to drink more beer than necessary on the second night. Not enough to be drunk, but enough to stop worrying about impossible possibilities. I knew if I drank what had been reserved for the night before bit was never drank due to the need to defend my daughter against bolts on lightning on the sex offender registry – yes, if I did just that – I would stop worrying about lions and tigers and foolish town councilmen and other things not likely to be seen in Calhoun Falls, S.C.
Wait – never mind.
I got, on the second night, precisely what I went camping for to begin with: a reason to be reminded why I live. My daughter caught her first fish. I escaped the ambient noise and clutter of in-town life Electricity, I learned, is not necessary.
Distancing myself from things that are mundane and nagging, such as work at work and at home, left me with no choice but to give Kalista my undivided attention. She had grown. She helped set up camp and washed the dishes after breakfast. I had grown.
Upon hearing we would be leaving the next day, she’d already begun making plans for our next visit. She’d smiled and said she was having a great time the night before when we were stuffed like a jack-in-the-box inside a two-man tent, letting rain from the downpour outside soak the foot areas of our sleeping bags. And I’d told her, when she said something similar at breakfast the next morning, we only had four or so more years until that was never true again.
She laughed at the notion.
“I’ll never want to stop going camping with you, Daddy.”
I laughed.
“What. I’ll always go camping with you. I’ll always want to go. I mean it.”
I breathed in some smoke-scented air and let it out slowly.
“No, no you won’t. And I’ll be okay with that. It’s a normal part of life. I’ll miss you and I’ll miss this, but I’ll understand.”
I began thinking about it again that night, once she’d gone to sleep in the tent and I was alone by the campfire, nursing a stream of Miller Lite to keep my mind off predators covered with fur. We’d tried going tent camping two years earlier, but she was too young. She’ll soon be too old.
And, eventually, gone forever.
To: Phil Gaines, S.C. Parks, Recreation and Tourism director; Michelle Clark, S.C. Parks, Recreation and Tourism administrative coordinator
cc: calhounfalls@scprt.com
Mr. Gaines and Ms. Clark,
Thank you for the job you are doing.
On April 27, my 6-year-old daughter and I arrived at Calhoun Falls State Park for her first weekend of tent camping. While we have stayed at numerous campgrounds throughout the nation in a travel trailer, never have I seen a facility as well-maintained, appropriately staffed and generally pleasant as Calhoun Falls Stat
e Park.
I was particularly impressed by the helpfulness, cordialness and professionalism exhibited by staff inside the camp office throughout the weekend. A male employee with a badge, whose name I did not record, seemed eager and enthusiastic to loan us fishing poles and tackle our first night, which led to my daughter catching her first fish the following afternoon. I have attached a photo of the milestone to this e-mail.
I am thankful to have had this experience at one of our state parks. We will definitely be visiting again.
Justin Schoenberger
Roughing it
Thankfully, the journal I kept during my camping trip with Kalista this weekend didn’t wash away. Here’s day one.
Friday, April 27, 2012 – Calhoun Falls State Park, Calhoun Falls, S.C.
4:45 p.m. - Our arrival. There are no marching bands or throngs of reporters waiting to meet us. Other than that, it’s a nice place.
5:30 p.m. - The metric ton of camping gear crammed and jig sawed into my compact car has been delivered, by me, to site T-5. I was disappointed to learn a 400-yard fall/climb down/up an untamed hill separated our site and parking space.
6 p.m. – Following an unplanned tour of the park’s 70-plus RV sites, complete with a near demolition courtesy of a Ford F-950 backing a 90-foot camper exactly where I happened to be, we are checked in. We also spent $25 on toothpick-looking bundles of firewood, 50 live crickets for fish bait, a cardboard container to hold the crickets, graham crackers, chocolate, marshmallows and one can of Diet Mountain Dew.
6:15 p.m. – We return to camp to set up. I first do the tent with relative ease. I struggle with the canopy for over the picnic table, which requires – as noted in the instructions – two adults for assembly. I give up after 40 minutes. Kalista asks why. I tell her the canopy, which is brand new, is a piece of junk. She agrees and helps me cram it back in the box.
7:15 p.m. – A fire is going. Kalista has set up the mats, sleeping bags and pillows in the tent. I put a full percolator of water on the fire to boil for coffee. I estimate a steaming cup of java will be in my hands by 7:45 p.m.
7:45 p.m. – Coffee still isn’t ready. In fact, the water in the percolator is cooler than urine. It’s not even close to boiling. It is at this time I discover pans must be over a flame – not just hot coals – to cook food and boil water. Thunder starts. Kalista and I put anything we didn’t want wet inside the tent. Basically, we put everything inside the tent.
8:15 p.m. - It’s been thundering for 30 minutes straight. Lighting’s even made an appearance. The wind pattern – revealed eerily by the trees surrounding us – reminds me of a show on The Weather Channel.
8:25 p.m. – I pour my first cup of coffee. Took the damn thing long enough.
8:26 p.m. – It starts to rain.
8:30 p.m. – The rain stops
8:33 p.m. – The rain starts.
8:40 p.m. - The rain – a bit heavier this time – stops. Through the trees, I see a break in the clouds. I tell Kalista it’ll probably pass, refusing to take cover because that would mean abandoning my coffee.
8:48 p.m. – The rain starts. It doesn’t stop. It gets heavier. And heavier. Finally, I finish my cup of coffee like a kid in a fraternity drinking beer and join Kalista inside the tent. There isn’t a damn bit of room in there, thanks to all of our crap.
8:55 p.m. – Still raining.
9:05 p.m. – Still raining.
9:30 p.m. – It’s still raining. I realize it might not stop ever again. I decide to go to bed because there’s nothing else to do.
9:45 p.m. – I give up on sleeping in a two-person tent with a 6-year-old, pots and pans, baskets of silverware and backpacks of clothes. Since Kalista had to stay, I informed her I was taking a bunch of stuff back to the car, which, again, is 400 yards uphill. This time it’s slippery.
9:55 p.m. - I return to the tent. By now, the rain had slowed and looks like it might be done. I pour a cup of coffee in the drizzle of raindrops, determined to have an evening in front of a camp fire.
10 p.m. – It’s no longer a drizzle. It’s pouring. I give up on my coffee, toss it into the wilderness and make a dash for the tent.
10:15 p.m. - Kalista cannot sleep. The thunder and lightning have gotten worse. Also, the time between them has decreased to less than a second. It’s loud. I wrap my arms around Kalista and whisper into her ear that it’s time to toughen up.
10:20 p.m. – It occurs to me a tree may get struck by lighting and fall on our tent.
10:25 p.m. – I ask Kalista if she’s sleeping. She tells me she is in a muffled voice. Crap.
10:30 p.m. – It occurs to me again what little protection we have against a fallen tree. I tell Kalista we’re going to the car. I help her with her shoes, put on mine and plan our escape. She would grab the flashlight and I would make a run for the dog, which had found shelter outside beneath a massive picnic table.
10:33 p.m. – We make a run for it. The rain is really coming down. It’s a cloudburst with apparently no interest in subsiding. I slip and fall while scurrying toward the dog. My knee starts to throb. I press on, though, scooping the muskrat-looking thing up and squeezing it to my chest. I yell for Kalista ot lead the way. She goes too slow, so I go ahead. I hear her telling herself to be strong and not to give up as she picks her way through the Armageddon and up the hill. Our dog bites me for some reason. Then it yelps as if I’m the one who bit it. I rearrange my grip, picking my way through the mud, sticks and leaves as I trudge up the trail, which is now a small stream.
10:34 p.m. - We reach the car. We get in (the dog goes for Kalista’s cooster seat, since the rest of the backseat is filled with camping equipment. Kalista nestles into the front passenger seat and slams the door. I slam my door. She informs me she’s wet.
10:34:30 p.m. – It occurs to me the only towels or extra clothing we have is in the trunk of the car. It occurs to me I’m not going back out into the rain to get them. Instead, I start the car and turn on the heat. My back is soaked. My hair is dripping. My fingertips, I can tell without looking, resemble prunes. Dirt, grit and general nastiness cover my body. I begin to shiver.
10:40 p.m. – Kalista is covered with one of my coats she found in the back seat. I could cover up with a bicycling jersey, but that would just be silly since it’s made to keep people cool. I pretend I’m not marinating in shit.
About 11 p.m. – I fall asleep to the post-race show of a NASCAR race on the radio. It‘s warm. Kalista’s been asleep for 15 minutes. I remember thinking, sometime between 10:40 p.m. and 11 p.m., how little I wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
Lifescapes
In honor of the snow they’re forecast to get back home …
Once I had a landscape to paint. Streaked with long-named roads and dotted with maple trees tapped with metal buckets, the snow-covered hills served as a backdrop to the only life I’d ever loved.
There were snow-covered conversations among snow-covered men, wearing snow-covered hunting boots below snow-covered jeans. They did not mention the snow when they spoke in sun-bright diners, where they ate nothing and drank smooth ceramic cup after smooth ceramic cup of diesel-strength coffee. They spoke of family, sports and double work shifts.
Some would leave these sun-bright diners on snowmobiles. Most would leave in two-year-old trucks lined with salt residue, mud and rust that used to be salt residue. Their tires would spin in the parking lot slush as they found the two car-cleared tracks to follow in the road covered, plowed and blown with dirty snow. Some would hit the accelerator harder than necessary – knowingly – and crank the steering wheel toward the shoulder of the road, sliding the vehicle into a fishtail from which they were proud to recover.
When they got home to places like Ischua and Machias, they split firewood using petunks and mauls without going inside. The section of each man’s yard reserved for this was snowless and muddy – matted and trampled from hours of petunk-swinging and maul-driving. When he finally went inside, he did so with an armload of firewood through the basement to avoid the only wife he’d ever have because snowy, slushy and muddy boots were not allowed in the house.
The landscape I once had to paint went on like this. Its snow always snowed and trucks always trucked. It never, ever stopped .
Until one day the maples turned magnolia, the snow melted to ocean and bitter coffee gave way – on occasion – to sweet tea. I could not recall the sight of my breath. I did not remember Sinatra. I forgot the taste of pork roasts and sauerkraut and Friday night fish frys and warm Canadian beer.
Men were more jovial and less devoted to work and most committed to their families. Their wives viewed them as heroes. They went out for dinner when not at their parents’ for supper; they greeted a dozen or more persons whenever they were out. On occasion, one of those persons was I – a complete, former guest.
What a difference in these two landscapes.
I yearned, upon this transition, for weekends alongside a man-made lake, Saturdays at toothless town square festivals and summers that waited until Thanksgiving to fade. I desired a pontoon boat; I learned it was okay to eat beef on Friday. The hills and faces and ugliness and humanity I eventually wanted to paint oozed with color and richness and vibrancy – and townfuls of words people wanted to hear.
I still have a landscape to paint.
Justifying destitution
Dear (name of my daughter’s school),
Please stop telling me about important events, materials needed and other important stuff at the last moment. Thank you.
Justin Schoenberger
Dear Justin Schoenberger,
We wish we could do that, but we don’t know what the Hell we’re doing.
(name of my daughter’s school)
This started a few months ago on ice cream day. Each month, a local ice cream joint provides the school with Italian ice cups for the students. Each student must pay $1 for these in advance.
It was inadvertent, actually, that my daughter let the news escape her lips in the midst of a pity party triggered by something else one night: “ … and I wasn’t even allowed to have ice cream in school today!”
For whatever reason, I had not received the usual “we’re having ice cream on Thursday … send in a dollar” note from her teacher, assuming there actually had been one. So, in their infinite wisdom, school representatives chose to tell my daughter she couldn’t get ice cream because it would have meant possibly getting stiffed 100 pennies.
(That’s great for little 6-year-olds’ egos, isn’t it?)
I sent in a $20 bill and a snarky note the next day. My daughter should be covered through second grade.
Another instance of poor planning by the school came earlier this week, when the night before my daughter’s class was slated to take the stage for an Earth Day music performance, I saw a note stating members of her class needed a “kelly green” t-shirt for the show.
“What the crap is ‘kelly’ green?” I thought.
I Googled frantically. It turned out kelly green is the color of most Earth Day t-shirts. She had a lot of save the planet-oriented shirts this color, but none that were plain. So we frantically went to the mall during the narrow window of time between the end of the school day and her play and frantically found a plain t-shirt pretty close to kelly green, only to learn upon frantically arriving at the school for the performance the shirts didn’t have to be plain – she could have worn one of the shirts in her dresser drawer at home and saved us one of the most frantic experiences of our lives.
Had the teacher revealed the need for “kelly” green shirts, say, one week earlier, we could have figured this out at least a few minutes before the last minute. But no … this teacher apparently flies by the seat of her pants.
And finally, the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and triggered my usual sarcastic remarks in a public blog: it doesn’t look like my daughter’s going to be able to participate in the Star Lab from Clemson University Tuesday. It cost $5, which had to be paid in advance. The money was due today – and parents found out about it yesterday.
I don’t carry cash. If the school sent home a form asking for debit card information or accepted online payments, they would have had the money in seconds. But any school that’s okay with making a child go without ice cream while the rest of her class has it isn’t remotely close to caring about what would make parents’ lives easier.
Dear (name of my daughter’s school):
You are a bunch of jerks. You do realize a child’s academic productivity can be adversely affected by low self-esteem, right? I’m not shocked your district’s graduates suck at the SAT and are part of a state public education system that‘s been ranked 38th-45th in the country (that’s out of 50 states – we have 50 states, just so you know) throughout the last decade. Get it together.
Justin Schoenberger
Of course, I’ll never send this note.
A bunch of stuff
A couple of things that have piqued my interest as of late:
Some friends of mine have blogged about things they want to do before they die or before they turn 30, which is practically the same thing. I will not follow suit. Although I have tried to put pressure on myself to achieve goals, I discover quickly none of them are that important to me. This might be a stifling thing. However, it may also mean I’m content.
The city in which I live, Greenwood, S.C., has received a moderate amount of local press for adopting a plan to make its streets “bicycle friendly.” As a cyclist, I’m happy, but as a human being, I’m unmoved. The streets here are fine without some special lane for cyclists, assuming the cyclists obey the rules of the road and don’t cop an attitude of ownership (which happens a lot, especially with the “snooty” cycling crowd). Bicycle lanes cost taxpayers money – sooner or later – and that’s not fair to people who don’t ride bikes. Also, a recent study of this really awesome bike/running trail between Greenville, S.C., and Traveler’s Rest, S.C., revealed more than 9/10 of the users were white people. It’d be nice to see a portion of this money cover a low-cost (or free, ideally) bicycle rental service to reach folks who don’t already ride bikes. Regardless, it’s always good to see the city acknowledge cyclists.
Speaking of where I live, Calhoun Falls, S.C., has been in the news a lot recently because of, well, a bunch of stuff. First, the town’s attorney resigned over alleged racism. Then a police officer was suspended because a councilman didn’t like something he posted on facebook. And now a councilman (the same guy, I think, who got the cop suspended) has been arrested for drunken driving and threatening the life of a cop. Naturally, he’s charging racism because, by the sound of it, every disagreement or squabble in this town is over the color of a person’s skin. While I only know of these happenings what I’ve read in a really crappy newspaper, I’m pretty sure a lot of this is nonsensical and feel horrible for the mayor, who was elected at about the same time I covered the town for that really crappy newspaper. He’s always struck me as a genuinely good person who’s only ever wanted to do good for the town. He’d probably be able to do it, too, if he weren’t always bogged down with childishness. I wonder each time I read a degrading story about the town if he still wants that job.
Finally, things are really growing in the gardens. Yes, gardens - plural. In my yard, Kalista and I planted a multitude of onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers; the community garden my parents have spearheaded is full of melons and a heckuva variety of peppers and tomatoes, among others; and I’ve been busy looking after the squash and so forth around their yard. While the garden in my yard is by far the best vegetation-wise, I couldn’t be happier with the realm of attention the community garden has received. Last year, my mom – a lifelong gardener – and my dad – who grew up on a soybean farm – learned valuable lessons from the first year of their community garden: no matter how much you know about growing plants, you don’t know a thing about organizing a community garden if you’ve never done it. Translated: good luck getting people to help. It was tough last year as far as community participation went, but this year – thanks to a different “marketing” approach – has been a different story. That’s great news.
