Ode to the Holiday Identity Crisis

Last March, I was on a train from Maastricht to Paris. My travelling companion and I could only procure tickets for separate cars. I willingly shelled out some extra monies so that I could sit in first class. My own plate of warm cookies? Yes, please! Free wifi? Don't mind if I do. About an hour into the trip, I was blissing. My iPod was probably playing a traveling tune to which I was happily bopping. This is when the steward approached me and started speaking before I could take out my ear buds. He was trying to hand something to me. I smiled in the goofy and awkward way I do when I'm trying to compensate for the fact that I've never felt comfortable being waited on. I laughed loudly, pulling out the ear buds, and said, again loudly, "Oh, no thanks!!!" I thought he was handing me a moist towelette, which was unnecessary since I think warm cookies call for finger-licking. He scowled in the way that a young Frenchman might. Without repeating himself, he simply handed me the paper that I would need upon my arrival to collect baggage, shot me one final grimace, and walked on.

I felt loud, silly, and stupid.

I've been thinking about this night-time train ride this week because I'm home with my family. When I'm with them, I feel loud, silly, and stupid. When with my friends, I think I'm generous of spirit. You have a different opinion than me? Cool, let's hear it; let's discuss it...quietly. But at home, I'm ungenerous. I'm right, and they're wrong. I am loud because, well, they're loud. I feel like the last four months of non-stop exchange of ideas in the academy (best if said with a British accent) is foresaken for arguments and Grand Ideological Battles on Nothing (GIBON). I feel like the worst version of myself here. I seem just as ridiculous as I did that night on the train. I'm not loud and I'm not stupid. But what do I do when I am those things? Does my family think of me in the same way that the steward did?

I remember once telling someone who felt unhappy that the true test of a good and happy person is if they can be good and happy in any situation. It's easy enough to be giving and gracious when you're comfortable, but what about when you're in a less-than-ideal situation? I've failed a test of my own design. I'm itching to be back with friends in New York and Las Vegas so I can "be myself." But am I really myself if I'm not that person everywhere? Shouldn't I be able to listen to my brothers talk about Tupac and protein shakes and boxing without losing my patience and becoming that loud, silly girl? I can only hope patience comes with age.

Excuse me, I'm going to go age.

Gestation

Today, with a newly gifted fifty in my wallet, I rifled through the shelves of the bookstore in my parents' hometown after excusing myself from football festivities. This was a welcome solo adventure made even more welcome when I came across a familiar book that, no, I never read but had already decided I would like. This past summer I won a contest that the author (the publisher?) organized to promote the book. And there it was! In print, ready for my reading. Of course I wanted The Whole Five Feet by Christopher R. Beha, who sent me one of the volumes from his collection of Harvard Classics, the topic of his memoir. And what did I think in my moment of exaltation? I thought about how I would blog about this story if I had a blog. As I walked toward the register, I was constructing the post in my mind.

This is something I've been doing a lot lately. And I'm not surprised; I read blogs every day. Though it seems silly to write about the tone of blogs since there are a million bloggers with a million different voices, I do think that there is a sound that they (at least the ones I read) share. They remind me of the conversations that I have with fellow students: relaxed, unpretentiously intellectual (to us), humourous, reflective. And the refelective part is the bit I admire the most. One of the biggest challenges that I saw my English 101 students grapple with this past semester was their inability to recognize themselves as thinking people. And they really were. But I couldn't teach them to write until I taught them that they did have things to say. The difference between me and them is that I know there are things I want to write, but I don't do it. No one is telling me to write a personal narrative though I desperately want to. Thus, a blog is born. And that's the best way to put it. I feel like a daddy seahorse. They give birth to like two-hundred baby seahorses at a time ("Open new tab" -> Google "seahorse" -> Wikipedia entry for "Hippocampus (genus)" -> scroll to "Reproduction" -> My factoid is confirmed: 100-200 young released). But, on average, five of those young survive. This is blogging. I'm pregnant with so many posts, and I'm really excited to see which will grow into fully devoloped Hippocampi.*

*apologies to seahorses, or really, any living thing that's ever given birth. I use this extended metaphor naively.