Carl, the Neighborhood Alligator, & How I Accidentally Ended up at the Social Security Office in Florida

Moving is irksome. But for us, it was particularly adventurous because we had to drive 19 hours across the country at 45 miles an hour in a Penske truck with 5 animals.  We took 2 days to complete our move to Florida, and along the way we stopped at a Best Western that promised it took pets.  I'm not sure it knew what it was getting with the Tillmans.  We had Brinkley, the 75 lb Golden Retriever, Sierra, a dog half his size, and 3 devil cats, one of which found great amusement in waiting on top of the entertainment center for a dog to walk by to drop claws-first on its back, making the dog bark, the other dog howl, and the rest of the cats hiss, spit, and knock over furniture.  We were tired.  The front desk calls.  "Do you have cats, too? You didn't say you had cats too."  I lie. "Nope, no cats here." Worm gets next to the phone and answers for himself: Mrrrrrow. Mrow! Mrowwwww!  "Nope," I reiterate. "We don't like cats." 

We get on the road and arrive in Florida what feels like 3 years later.  As we drive into our subdivision, I pass all kinds of interesting creatures: an ibis, something that lives in a nest the size of an SUV, colorful lizards and frogs, and, yes, an alligator, sunning in the lake not 2 blocks from my house.  People pass him as if he is a mailbox. We name him Carl. 

For mundane reasons I won't explain, we have to get our licenses changed over quickly and it is one of the first tasks we undertake.  I wish we hadn't.  I go to the DMV with an appointment, all of my paperwork filled out, and a box full of every piece of paper they might ask for and some they won't.  I'm ultra-prepared. I'm psyched; I'm there early and there's no wait!  Andrew breezes through the process and I prepare to as well, but there's a woman who has it out for me that day.  "The social security office says June 1 isn't your birthday," she says.  She seems almost happy to follow up with, "You'll have to go there to straighten that out."  "No!" I say. "I've ordered a passport with that card; there has to be a mistake on this end."  "Nope," she insists and sends me to the 9th circle of hell. 

If you were wondering what that is -- it's the social security office in the Old People Capital of the US.  Hours of waiting. By the time my number is called, I'm furious.  The woman behind the counter pulls up my record and says, "There's no problem here. Everything is correct."  I want to stab someone in the eye.  I drive 1/2 an hour back to the DMV, where a new guy pulls my SS# up on the screen and says, "Why did you go through all of that? Your birthdate was fine all along!"  

Andrew, thinking himself immune from this insanity, inwardly chuckled at me, I'm sure of it.  At least, he does until we get all the way home, and he finds out his new name in FL is "Andrew Tllman." A big ugly misprint on his shiny new license.   I love moving. 

True Genius

Let's just cut to the chase. If you're not watching True Blood, you should be, and this post will hopefully tell you why. 

Based on Charlaine Harris's brilliant 8-book Sookie Stackhouse series, True Blood is a series full of surprises.  It's not your typical vampire story; it's about Sookie, a mind-reader, and her efforts to uncover the murders plaguing the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana.  She has quite the motivation, too; both her brother and her new vamp-boyfriend Bill are under suspicion, especially since Vampires have just "come out" and not everyone in Bon Temps is happy about it.  Think you know how this story goes? You don't. Sookie never becomes a vampire. The most lovable character is a black effeminate gay drug dealer/cook at Merlotte's, where Sookie works.  The most intriguing is Tara, her best friend: a girl who nursed her mother (briefly) out of alcoholism, all the while building a tough-girl veneer so she could cope. And just when you think you've figured out the key paranormals in the series, Harris introduces shapeshifters, blood drainers, and, in the next few series, will coax out the witches, fairies, werewolves, werepanthers, and whatever other army of strange she can come up with.

The story is enough to make it worth your while, but it's the attention to detail that highlights its excellence.  Sookie's grandmother drinks Community Coffee, the only coffee any sensible Louisianan (and east Texan!) will have as a wake-up call. Rene speaks perfect Cajun -- none of this ridiculous fake Hollywood BS -- although that turns out to be a bit ironic later in the story.  And Sookie's coworkers and boss speak like East Texans, which they basically are, rather than Georgian Southern belles.  Hollywood always confuses the two, but finally, and perhaps strangely, we get verisimilitude in the most unlikely place.  Many of the characters are faithful friends and closet racists, diligent workers but close-minded cops, devoted family men and murderers.  Everybody has a twist. 

Look, if it's escapism you want, walk away from Paris Hilton's My New BFF. Run screaming from Heidi & Spencer's wedding in The Hills. And pick up True Blood (and the Sookie Stackhouse series of course).  Then recommend something for me to watch or read; I'm in full and utter Sookie Stackhouse withdrawal.  

Teaching under Tension

I haven't written much lately because I've been teaching an intersession course, which means I left for work at 4 PM and got home at 10:30 PM and basically wanted to curl up under my bed and never come out again. This is not because the class was bad -- it was a modern american drama course with an interesting class roll of former students and a few new firecrackers -- but because the people that keep me sane were denied me during this period.  I couldn't see friends or family, and I saw Andrew about 10 minutes each day if we were lucky. 

The class started off as intense just because of my schedule. 

The tension increased when I introduced the reading list. My students read The Emperor Jones, W;t, Doubt, Angels in America, Streetcar Named Desire, and Crimes of the Heart. Despite that I told them on day one that modern drama is by its nature reactionary and at times outlandish -- that it remains important because it addressed taboo topics concerning race, sex, and gender -- my students were still shocked to read about graphic gay sex or child molestation.  

There were several times during the class that the room got uncomfortable, not because the students said anything incendiary, but because they were discussing possibilities they'd rather not entertain (such as the idea that gender is learned rather than innate).  It was an odd experience: though the students were comfortable with each other and with me, just about every play made people shift uneasily in their seats.  

Is tension necessary for growth? Have you learned something if you've been introduced to an idea that made you feel a little out of sorts? 

On Saying Goodbye

Many thanks to Paul Larson, whose blog on goodbyes got me to thinking about this topic. 

The end of the semester is always a good time for me. By this point, many students have learned to think analytically, or write with a little more panache, or have found a favorite writer, poet, or literary work. Maybe they've learned to love reading more than they did, or maybe they've found a voice they didn't know they had.  If any of those things have happened, I feel I've done a good thing. 

Teaching writing and literature usually leads students to "confess."  This year, I taught an autobiography class, which of course led to a lot of sharing.  The book my students connected to more than any was one called Paula by Isabel Allende, a beautiful true story of a woman trying to write her young daughter out of a coma and into existence once again.  One of my students had to excuse herself from the discussion, since she was currently spending her evenings next to her terminally ill father, going through the exact stages of grief outlined in the book. Another had coached her abusive, meth-addict father through the end of his life just recently. Another had never known his father, except for a fleeting glimpse of him in the street. Another had made the decision to pull the plug on his dad's life-support machine and was still angry at himself (and, as a result, the book) for telling his father it was "ok to let go."

So, the point is that I got to know a lot about these remarkable people in a short amount of time, and just yesterday they turned in their papers and left. I'll grade them as fairly as I can, attempting to block out any connections I made with that class while I do, and then I'll post the grades and begin teaching the intersession class that looms ever closer.  But I can't shake how anticlimactic that end-of-year  -- or any -- goodbye can be.  I never have been able to, not in 7 years.

My way of dealing with goodbye as a teacher is usually just to awkwardly smile at the students as they leave and pretend this is all just part of teaching, or part of living, or maybe a little of both.  Goodbyes are on my mind quite a bit these days, really. So if I don't make a big production out of leaving you this summer, when we begin our trek east, don't think twice about it. It just means I'm not ready to let you go. 

Abandoning an Agenda

Most professors will tell you they never teach with an agenda, that they don't try to push their beliefs onto their students. But the truth is that any teacher in a classroom does this to a certain degree. It's rather hard not to do so. Let's say you're faced with a room full of racists, and you're reading a book about empowered black women. Would it be wrong to encourage your students to rethink their stereotype of the African-American community so that they can approach the book in a way that allows them to appreciate these characters?  Let's say you're faced with a room full of homophobes, and you're all reading a book about a lesbian who refuses to apologize for finally finding the one person who makes her happy.  Would it be wrong to encourage the students to be open to this literary character's admirable strength in the face of oppression, despite the students' reservations regarding what they do not understand?

I find I'm faced with this delicate balance every day.  At what point am I teaching them to think for themselves, and at what point am I encouraging them to see the world as I do? I'm constantly faced with people who say things like, "Homosexuality is an aberration of God," just like I might casually remark, "That's a very nice lamp you have there."  As if they haven't just shunned an entire group of people based on a narrow reading of one Biblical passage.  And I have to struggle each time with how to respond. Do I take the expansive, professorial role and say, "Oh? And what informs that opinion?" in an effort to get them to examine their beliefs? Do I point out that their profession of intolerance could've just isolated 1/4 of the room? Do I shake them by the shoulders for their close-mindedness? I'm happy to say I have never chosen option #3, though getting a little riled up has its benefits.

The Watchmen: A Review

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen or don't know the story to the Watchmen, don't read this blog. I'd hate to ruin it for you.  

This is a review of the movie, not the graphic novel, which I hear is quite different and certainly more complete. The movie's plot concerns a group of former superheroes, called The Watchmen, who are being picked off one by one by an unknown murderer. The living, naturally, want to figure out who this is.  Side plots include avoiding a nuclear holocaust, a series of failed or corrupted relationships, and the dehumanization of a mutated physicist named Dr. Manhattan.  But really, I do the plot very little justice. 

The film suffers from having three competing artistic visions rather than a unified one.  To begin, it cannot decide how it would like to represent the comic book world.  At times, it would like to make fun of comics, with bam-boom-pow, 1950s Batman-like fighting scenes and lines from the evil villain like, "I'm not going to reveal my plan to you. What do you think I am, an evil villain in a comic book?" This approach could have been quite a bit of fun, if they'd stuck to it.  But then the characters would drop melodramatically out of airships or strut across the screen in purple-and-gold tights delivering serious lines about a nuclear holocaust without a trace of humor, as if they'd forgotten they were, just a few scenes earlier, making a parody of the comic genre.  

Alongside these 2 versions of the same film was yet another fighting to get through the macabre, violence-laden storyline: that of a post 9-11 vision of the United States.  The graphic novel, which was written in the mid-80s, imagines what would have happened if nuclear war between Russia and the US hadn't been averted (or had, in a way . . . well, I don't have time to explain that). The directors of this movie reinterpreted it to be both about the graphic novel's original concern -- war with Russia -- and the terrorist attacks on New York City.  While they occasionally make the parallels, showing shots of the twin towers still standing, ready to fall, they do not do so faithfully, making their point clear only when the film ends, as they pan out to show a gaping hole a nuclear explosion has left in NYC.  The hole is the construction site for the 9-11 towers, suggesting we have already survived our own near-annihilation.  

But since the graphic novel was already such a complicated story, these three artistic visions fight each other the entire way, struggling to stay faithful to the novel for all of its die-hard fans while simultaneously trying to mock the genre, honor the genre, and turn it into a political commentary that it only barely mentions and at the most inconvenient times in the film.  

These factors, coupled with the gratuitous sex and violence which add nothing to a story that was fascinating all its own, made it a disappointment to say the least.  

On Pet Ownership

These are just 2 of our 5 animals. While most blogs on pet ownership might be about the joys of playing with these precious creatures, this one won't be. I am certainly a blessed pet-owner; don't get me wrong. Wormwood, the kitten, provides endless entertainment. Sierra and Brinkley have grown up to be loving dog-companions. Chloe and Allie, our first animals, continue to be an important part of the furry family. 

However, lately the hairy children in our household have been quite a handful. Chloe has been quarantined and put on cat-paxil for an anxiety disorder that causes her to ruin anything that's fabric.  And today Worm had to go to the vet to be neutered, which meant no food or water after 7 PM last night.  THAT meant that at 4 AM he decided to let me know how he felt about what was apparently cruel and unusual punishment by biting me in the ear, bringing me out of REM and into a panic-stricken state of semi-alertness.  "Mrow?"  he asked.  I told him to go away and put my face under the pillow.  So he burrowed under the covers and bit me in the chin.  "Mrow!"  I get it but there's nothing I can do. I shove him off of the bed.  He sneaks under the bedclothes and nips me in the big toe.  "Mrrrrrrow," he adds, as if perhaps I am dense.  I try to put him outside, but he's a young tomcat, and it is as if I have channeled his voice into a bullhorn.  "Mrow mrow mrrrrroooowwwwwwww," he protests, upping his volume so he can be heard from inside my bedroom.  I let him back in. 

Just as I am about to fall back to sleep, the yellow cat, Allie, lets me know that, while she hates Worm, the two have formed a union.  She entwines herself in the wooden blinds next to my face and starts batting the blind-pull against the wall.  It's now 4:30 AM.  THWACK. THWACK. THWACK THWACK THWACK.  I shoo her.  I'm almost asleep when Worm bites me on the ear again, and Allie THWACKS the blind-pull at the same time.  They are certain I am an idiot.  And I must be, because I try to spray Allie with lavender linen spray, only in the dark I have turned the nozzle towards my own eye.  I give the pump a good hard push and cover my face with the stuff, getting it in my mouth and eyelashes, which causes me to sputter and the cat to fall out of the blinds, soundly knocking over my eyeglasses and a bedside lamp.  Andrew groans.

This cycle repeats itself for 2 hours until my alarm (needlessly) sounds. As I finally get Allie off of my head (where she is attempting to sit to draw attention to her lack of food and water) and Worm in the pet taxi, I turn around to find Chloe-the-quarantined-cat has escaped from the sun porch and is now standing in the living room, ready to demolish our new living room furniture we added because she ruined the old.  

I sigh and realize it is going to be a very, very long day.