This is fantastic.
posted by K Bu @ 5:11 PM,
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Same Town; New Perspective
Monday, December 11, 2006
When my older brother first left for his freshman year of college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I can remember my grandmother solemnly assuring the family that he was veritably leaving us for good.
"Sure, he will come home, but it will never be 'home' again," she would explain to my little brother and I, succeeding only in fanning the burning pits of anxiety already weighing heavily in our stomachs. We thought we would never see the likes of our awkward older brother again. With a wave and a forced hug goodbye, he was dead to us, lost to that ethereal world of intellectualism and debauchery collectively dubbed the "college experience." Life would never be the same.
Fortunately, our worst fears were never realized. He was back home the following summer, poking Colin incessantly under the dinner table and challenging Lucy to wrestling matches until she'd pass out on the couch from exhaustion, raising all her limbs in the air in four-legged surrender.
Thus, for all intents and purposes, Brian was still an official member of the Burke Family Homestead. He hadn't changed all that much, and neither had we. But that inevitable, restless drift from the confines of suburbia eventually set in, and that was the last summer he spent with us. (Next year he is beginning his career as a financial management planer for GE - in Atlanta.)
Three years later I am finding myself in the same situation. My finals are done, my first official quarter of college completed, and I am suddenly thrust "back in my parents' house/ back to the shouting out loud" - the wide-eyed victim of some sort of sick, nostalgic transplant back to the land of my youth with Guster as the soundtrack.
And so I was afforded a unique opportunity - to return to my hometown for the first time as a visitor, and see things through a fresh, broader perspective than I have ever had before.
* * * * * * *
This last weekend I went to the Holiday Bravo! and had an epiphany of sorts that came in the way of a 4 foot video tripod and Angry Mother (tm). Don't worry - I'll explain:
There is a girl in the cast, a good friend, whose mother hates me. I don't fully understand why, but I do know it has something to do with gossip and false information, magnified by the fact that the woman has never actually met me and has thus had to rely on decidedly unreliable secondhand sources to glean her information. This is not to suggest that my reputation is bad; but somehow, the fact that I didn't take her sophomore daughter to my senior Prom is enough to merit the spiteful wrath of a grown woman.
Case in point: One of my theatre camp students is her youngest daughter. One day during camp last summer she marched up to me and stomped on my foot with all her little might and then giggled sheepishly. "Sorry, Kevin. My mommy told me to do that to you because you...were mean to my sister?"
How my sole enemy on the earth happens to be a middle-aged mother whom I have never met is beyond me. And yes, it is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds. My only plausible explanation lies in the fact that she has, indeed, never met me; instead relying on raging female hormones and teen angst to fill in whatever gaps my absenteeism in all of this had left, allowing a bitter, overwrought portrayal of my character to develop.
But that's completely speculation on my part. It could just be insanity.
Nonetheless, background notwithstanding, the reality of the situation remains the same.
Seeing two old friends talking by a pillar on the opposite end of the commons, I made my way over to congratulate them on a fantastic performance. People had been milling about for around twenty minutes by now, and the crowd had noticeably diminished to around thirty. Upon my arrival, I proceeded to congratulate both of them and offer a friendly embrace. One of them was the daughter of Angry Mother (tm).
Just as I stretched out my arms for a hug, her Angry Mother (tm) came barreling out of nowhere brandishing a tripod and a maniacal grin, slamming the former into my chest and knocking me backwards a good few feet.
As if blatantly broad-siding someone point blank with a camera tripod isn't enough to warrant the attention of the surrounding public, she meanwhile chose to proclaim at an immoderately loud volume, "Back, VERMIN! Back!" before proceeding to steal away with her daughter, smiling sublimely to herself in the way a dog does when he finishes urinating on your leg.
If this seems unbelievable to you, go ahead and read it over once more. Then close your eyes and imagine the ridiculousness of the situation. Picture me standing there in the commons of my old high school, congratulating old friends and catching up on the last few months.
Then imagine me - out of the blue - getting plowed over by an angry middle-aged mother whom I have never met yelling insults loudly and audibly so that as she stole away from the scene, the entirety of the commons was staring in my direction with blank expressions of confusion at the abrupt disturbance of the peace.
As they stared, I stood frozen, staring back, unsure of what and why and how and what to say.
"Its great to be back, " I offered with a sarcastic smile that elicited enough laughter to return the room back to its former buzz.
* * * * * * *
At this point, I would like to stress that I am not relaying this to you as a personal vendetta against this woman. If I really felt malevolence towards her, I could have easily stooped to her level, perhaps return the volley by calling her a "varmint" or maybe even loudly point out that she was a teen mother and thus has no right to speak to me about youth morality.
But behavior like that or like hers should be saved for bars or sorority houses or television shows like "Desperate Housewives." It simply doesn't belong in a high school, in public, enacted by seemingly mature adults in front of families with children and even worse - impressionable teenagers.
I realize that behavior like this is fortunately a special case. But as a manifestation of the frustrated social structure of modern American suburbia, its relevance remains.
Her thinking is indicative of a larger whole - a suburban mindset wherein a single viewpoint or opinion is easily enough for one to base an entire judgment. This is the same demographic where the publicly discredited 'Swift Boat' ads still won the race for Bush in '04, where tiny, elitist social groups held together by book clubs and little league and high school dance teams, congregate in living rooms and at booster club meetings, passing judgment on those around them like little vigilante juries, indicting the different, the unknown, the mildly deviant with nothing more than gossip-laden 'evidence.'
College has opened me up to a world beyond the stifling homogeneity and self-obsessed culture of this town. No matter how hard I try, I know that I will never quite belong here the way I did four months ago. And although I didn't need an adult woman harboring the romantic grudge of a high school girl wielding a tripod to come to this realization, it sure knocked the point home. Literally.
So here's to you, you wild eyed middle-aged mother with your relationship issues and difficult past and unwarranted animosity towards members of the opposite sex. You helped me learn more about who I am and where I am going than my entire four years of high school.
Now go point that tripod somewhere else.
posted by K Bu @ 6:54 PM,
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