Scintilla Day 5
What talent do you have that your usual blog readers don’t know about? Talk about a time when you showed it to its best advantage.
In many cases, I have to take someone else’s word for it that I have a talent. Some of that is not giving myself enough credit, I’m sure. Yet there are some talents one cannot be sure they posses without feedback. Even then, doubts can remain.
In this case, I’m told I have a talent for teaching or instruction.
I’ve not been trained as a teacher. Certain people in my life have suggested I become a teacher, but I have no interest in making that a career. I lack the personality to make a living as an educator. However, it has been relayed to me that I posses two qualities which make my teaching effective.
The first quality is the ability to break down complex topics into more generally understood smaller pieces. I do this by using simile and imagery. Part of that may be the writer in me, but I often find myself comparing something complicated to something simple.
I tell Mom that something a computer is doing is sort of like filling a pool with water and things like that. Mom, (and others) indicate to me that such language is usually helpful in getting them to understand. Get someone to understand four related things that way and before you know it, they’re gaining an understanding for one large thing.
The second quality, (and I need to rely on the word of others for this one even more than the first quality) is that I present what I am imparting in a manner that makes people want to listen.
An aspect of that quality, if true, may be my usual comfort with public speaking. I often talk to a group as I would to an individual. Sometimes in formal and sometimes in informal contexts, but in either case, I try to impart my knowledge in a personal way.
From time to time I conduct workshops at my local community theatre. Last year my topic for a group of (mostly) teenage actors and actresses was how to correct mistakes on stage. I wrote an outline, filled it with examples from my own life, and, as requested by the owner of the program, created an exercise for the students to participate in, and followed my plan, keeping it all within the allotted time.
When it came time for the exercise, the students requested more stories instead. They wanted to continue the conversation we had been having. I didn’t think it was a big deal, so I agreed. Later, the manager of the program told me that that had never happened with one of her groups. Normally they would be so restless by the end of a workshop, they’d jump at the chance to start the exercise when the time came.
Not in my case.
Again, I don’t know if their increased attention and their lack of interest in ending the lecture is a result of my teaching talents, or simply the chance chemistry of that particular group of people. (Though the attention I get from most groups seems comparable ) I only know that in small local circles only, I have a reputation for being an effective, enjoyable instructor. I was even told that during a production not long after this workshop, actors were reminding one another of what I had taught them.
How have I used this to my advantage? I repeat the final sentence of the previous paragraph: actors were reminding one another of what I had taught them.
My advantage is their advantage. I can’t say I’ve used my hidden supposed talent of teaching to benefit and advance my own cause, but I feel advanced as a person and member of society when such impression are made on others. This is especially true when it comes to the theatre.
Scintilla13 Day Four
Being trapped in a confined environment can turn an ordinary experience into a powder keg. Write about a thing that happened to you while you were using transportation; anything from your first school bus ride, to a train or plane, to being in the backseat of the car on a family road trip.
Over the years, starting in my childhood, I have taken several long train trips on Amtrak. It’s my mother’s preferred way to travel long distances, and her, my younger sister and myself took several cross country trips on the train when I was a child. I have taken a handful myself in adulthood.
Contrary to the requirements of this prompt, I can’t say that any of these trips have ever presented a powder keg. There have been some unpleasant experiences, such as Amtrak’s notorious delays, being stranded at one stop for several hours, whining kids in the same car. The usual. And while annoying, none of that rises to the level of “powder keg”. I suppose it could have, but it didn’t.
When you ride coach, there can sometimes be micro-dynamics. Based on the passengers, (all of whom are heading to the same general area), your car has a particular atmosphere. You know who the loud ones are, who the ones that get up for the bathroom the most, and such things. You walk through other cars, albeit for brief amounts of time, and the dynamic just feels different. You know right away it has a different feel. It’s a micro-nation with its own culture and customs.
Within a car, there are smaller demographics. Counties, if you will, within those micro-nations. The people across the aisle, a seat behind and a seat ahead of you. That cluster of humanity makes for its own relationship dynamic. You may never have reason to interact with someone on the other end of your own car, even if you get used to them, but you will probably, at least for a few moments, interact with those in your county.
On the trip in question, a stout middle-aged woman that was born in Hawaii (so she said) was across the aisle and one seat behind us. Her comments, directed sometimes at us, and sometimes out to the county in general, were consistent; Hawaii needed to secede from the United States.
This was before idiotic secession petitions, so common in the lunatic fringe of the country today, were common place. And whatever occasional talk of leaving the Union one did hear didn’t usually come from Hawaii.
But on that train those two days it did.
The head of the secessionist movement, as time went on, availed herself of the pony bottles of scotch available for sale in the nearby dining car, and the speechifying became more elaborate with each bottle. (Though thankfully not much louder.)
The pattern would be as follows:
1) Hawaiian history lesson.
2) What can no longer happen now that it is a state.
3) How the Hawaiians were wronged by the U.S. Government.
4) How each of the problems would be solved if the state left the Union.
5) A brief respite in the presentation while she got up to get the next batch of ponies. This was usually 10-15 minutes.
6) Return with more booze.
7) Consume same and begin the process again. (With a stray commentary here and there about how late the train was.)
A day and night or two of that. It was interesting at first, as she made some valid points. Then stale. Than tedious. Eventually it bordered on the incoherent thanks to the contents of the dozen or so empty tiny bottle she had positioned in front of her on her fold out table.
Finally at one point she managed to slur, “I think it must be the scotches talking,” and there ended the lesson. She slept for much of the rest of the journey.
It could have been a lot worse. She could have been belligerent. She could have gotten loud, or staggered up and down the car trying to convert people to the cause. None of that happened. She was just persistent in her topic. And within the few seats of our little “county”, on the micro-nation that was the train car we rode in, it began to wear a little thin.
Hardly a powder keg, but for certain something that could only take place as it did within the confines of public transportation.
Scintilla13 Day Three
Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song, and that stretch of road?
This is a bit like asking me to talk about a time I used salt, and why I remember doing so for that particular meal. It quite easy to recall the concept, but not so easy to recall the specifics. That’s because it’s a normal part of my average day.
I tend to sing in the car, but also at home. I don’t disturb people in a store with my singing, because I think that would be obnoxious, but I do sing alone frequently.
Often I tell people that I don’t tend to suffer from the song stuck in my head thing, because I tend to be singing something to myself or out loud so often, that there isn’t much of a vacuum to be filled in that way.
Which songs? That is a somewhat more interesting question. When alone, and particularly in the car, I have been known to sing anything, but I tend towards power ballad or the few Broadway tunes I know. Probably because those are the most performance-oriented type of pieces. All singing is performing of course, but such songs are more theatrical per se, I guess. Not that I think that as I sing them. I just find that being alone, (and in the car I usually am) suits such songs well. (Though it’s harder to sing some notes when sitting down.)
I don’t do this as much as I used to. I think it’s because for a few years I lived in a small apartment, and didn’t want to disturb other tenants By the end of my time there I didn’t care, but in a sense it did instill a hesitance to sing, and i think my range has suffered a bit from it. Since moving out of there, I’ve made an effort to sing out loud more often. Which brings me to the question of stretches of road…
As I said, there is no special memory of a particular song on a specific road. But, I am an actor in local theatres. The one I go to the most is about 30 minutes away by highway, but on any given day I opt (am forced) to take the back roads to get there, and that adds another ten minutes. The car I drive has neither CD player nor cassette player if you can believe that. (I can’t.) Also, the radio stations get mostly fuzzy through that stretch. So when taking the bake way to the theatre, the odds are greater that I will do some of that singing in the car I mentioned. I don’t tend to do it on the highway, as I think I need to be concentrating more.
It is probably no surprise it happens more when I am driving later at night than during the day. I think that’s true for everyone.
Playlist? Again, it tends to be whatever comes to mind during any given drive, or day at home. But some popular choices include:
-Various REO Speedwagon hits.
-Music from Les Miserables.
-Older country ballads from my childhood. (Statler Brothers, Oak Ridge Boys, John Denver)
-Elvis, when I want to be more upbeat.
Plus…anything I feel like.
One of my favorites, (which must be done alone in order not to give others a headache, at least in the confines of a car) is Take On Me. I like to see if I can still hit that falsetto. As of a few months ago, I could. I’m happy about that.
Scintilla13, Day Two
Tell the story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3….)
How to End Up on E!
Step One: Find something big and public with lots of people in a big city, (Example, 4th of July in Washington, D.C.)
Step Two: Discuss transportation to the event with friends you trust.
Step Three: Meet up with friends.
Step Four: Let your friends wear large American flags as they walk around the nation’s capitol.
-Be completely at ease with yourself in your own way.
Step Five: Walk around D.C. all day talking to other flag waving patriots, looking for a good place for the fireworks.
Step Six: Notice when an over dressed blonde with a camera crew walks up to your friends, commenting on their wearing the flags, and asks for an interview for “Wild On!”
Step Seven: Remain calm, and stand next to your friends during the interview. Don’t call attention to yourself, just be there.
Step Eight: Tell everyone you know about your adventures when you get home.
Step Nine: Wait over a year, and forget about the incident.
Step Ten: Have one of your college classmates mention to you randomly one day that he just saw you on “E!”
Step Eleven: Years later, write a Scintilla post about all of it in the form of an instruction manual.
Warning: You may never actually see the footage yourself. This may not bother you much.
Scintilla Day 1
I’ve decided to once again take part in the Scintilla Project this year, whereby bloggers are giving a prompt each day for two weeks. So my usual schedule of blogging will be a bit off for the rest of March. But it will do good for my writing skills. (And who doesn’t want that?)
Today’s prompt is…
Tell a story about a time you got drunk before you were legally able to do so.
I think it’s indicative of my personality that I in fact never got drunk when I was underage. For that matter, I haven’t often been drunk even as an adult.
It’s interesting that this is a prompt at all, for though not everyone (obviously) has gotten drunk when underage, the concept seems to be common enough that it would make a good prompt for this blogging experience.
Alcoholism is a problem at any age, and I don’t make light of it. At the same time, I think drinking laws in this country are too strict. If people want to get drunk at any age they are going to do so, but being more open minded about alcohol consumption, that is to say making it less of a forbidden, (but highly available and easily obtained) fruit might take some of the mystique out of it for underage people. Just a theory.
But we live in a country where you need to be 21 for now. And the law was a large portion of why I didn’t get drunk when I was underage. I didn’t go around reporting people who were drinking underage, but I did feel, even as a high schooler that there were laws I could skirt, (taping a show from TV and watching it later) and laws, like drinking, that I should not.
Still, the law was only part of it. Somehow, (and don’t ask me how) I knew I wouldn’t feel much better when drunk. There were plenty of reasons and stresses in my life that would make getting drunk appealing to others. But even then, I didn’t think being drunk or even tipsy would change them, or even make them more bearable.
Then there is the social factor. I don’t deny that my views on this issue may have been tempered had I been around friends who drank. But in those years I wasn’t around friends much at all. I didn’t have many, and those I had didn’t drink. I was unpopular and rarely invited to anything. Drinking alone, as a result, was the only option much of the time, and that was not at all appealing.
And then there is the most practical reason of all; I didn’t want to puke.
Now even in adulthood, I have thrown up from drink once. But back then I wasn’t sure what the threshold would be, and there are few things I want to avoid more than puking. It really was worth not getting drunk, if it decreased my chancing of puking.
So there you have it. I never got drunk when I was underage. You can blame being lawful, understanding the futility, a lack of a social life or the fear of puking. In reality, it was probably a combination of all of these factors.
I drink now, and sometimes I drink enough to feel it, when with the right people. But even today, being straight-up drunk is uncommon for me.
I still hate puking, after all.
Ty Unglebower 