Thank You For Ten Update
My work continues on my short story collection, Thank You For Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater. Not without it’s headaches, but I expected that.
I mentioned in a previous post that I had decided on the order of the stories in the collection. That remains true, and I don’t see that changing.
Then I joined Smashwords, which is where I will probably publish this collection. Which meant downloading and studying the style guide for same. I have been doing that for the last week or so.
There is much to learn! One of the biggest things I have learned is that basically, everything you know about typing before you work on self-publishing e-books is wrong. Common buttons I have pressed while moving things around for print since the fourth grade are in fact detrimental to creating epub manuscripts. (Or whatever the proper term is. That’s one of the things I’m still working on, terminology.) That realization alone was cause for some slight muscle tension in my neck. Kind of. If you have published anything online the “right” way, you know what I’m talking about, probably.
But a bit of a debate raged in my head. Do I buy Word, for which Smashwords was designed, and for which the style guide was written? Or do I use open Office, which I got for free only a few weeks ago and am still playing with, since I have only had this computer for just over a month. I like free, and after all my friend and fellow author J. Lea Lopez told me she used Open Office for her publishing. She just had to remember to…(insert something that is too technical for me to understand at this moment of my education.) I like Open Office and was getting used to it.
I went back and forth over the decision, reading an adequate but not impressive Open Office guide to Smashwords that a pastor had written online. (Actually several of these were written by pastors, and I am trying not to spend too much time determining why that is.) After studying that a few times, and having a conceptual breakthrough as to why and how e-publishing manuscripts are different from standard manuscripts I actually decided to bite the bullet and buy Word.
I’m not more happy about it than you are! But Smashwords advises it for anyone who plans to publish multiple things with them. I figure this is all new and strange enough to me as it is, without trying to add a bunch of extra steps to determine the spirit of the Word-based style guide and apply it to Open Open Office. (Which is also pretty new to me.) And since I don’t know any pastors that could help me, I decided the shortest distance between two points was a straight line.
Generally I am willing to trade some inconvenience for saving money. I tried to do so here. But publishing my stories is too important to spend days or weeks dithering over what to do. The time for theories and speculation is over in my author life. Time to get on with everything. I’ve had a chorus of “publishing/marketing is coming to get you one day!” for long enough. It’s not going to take care of itself, and if I am going to have to slog through things such as formatting and meatgrinders and rewiring my brain when it comes to typing, I want as few steps as possible. So, Microsoft Word it is. Just know what a dedication and commitment I am making to my fiction writing by taking such a step.
Outside of the mechanical, I spent about 90 minutes the other day coming up with an author’s note for Thank You For Ten. It started innocently enough, as I was just planning to put some space filling text in the document to test some of the formatting rules I’ve been talking about. Then in another minute I find myself slaving over an introduction to the entire collection. I’m sure it will undergo a few more changes before the final draft that gets published, but I’m quite happy with it. (After 90 minutes on less than a page, I should be.)
I mentioned this on Twitter but it’s worth repeating; I cut myself a lot of slack for the author’s note. That is to say I didn’t worry about rules or trends when i wrote it. (Not that I let myself get too worried about those anyway.) I’m happy with just about everything I write, but sometimes one has to consider structure or expectations or deadline or style guides. Not with my author’s note. This, after all, was not a narrator speaking, but me, directly. If convention says it is too long, too poetic, too philosophical, or distracting from the rest of the book, so be it. I’m the author, and I have a note for my readers.
So what with said note, and with learning, (slowly) the specifics of formatting for e-publication along with what I already learned earlier in the year from using my coupon on Createspace, it’s all starting to feel real now. Starting to feel that I may not have to be buried by the information and the technology after all. The learning curve remains steep as I go further into this process, but it doesn’t feel like a cliff to be scaled anymore, and that is progress, believe me. When/if I self publish my first novel, Flowers of Dionysus the process will be even longer and more complicated. But for the first time, it feels possible, and that makes me lean more towards self-publishing the novel and skipping the agent process than I have ever felt before.
An Open Letter to a Would-Be Constituent
For the purposes of this letter, the subject will be referred to as Miss Madsen. —Ty
Dear Miss Madsen,
My apologies for the curtness of my previous letter. While I will confess that I still find some of your presumption to be a tad annoying, and that your timing was not the best, I could and should have handled it better. I can’t undo my comments, but I can perhaps explain them.
You see, early in life I thought I had had an epiphany of sorts. I legitimately came to believe that I had been called to public service by the Universe. Specifically, to public office. Despite obviously not being built for such pursuits, a mixture of inspiration and encouragement from educators and peers planted a seed so deeply in my mind that for the longest time, I felt it was my destiny. Not that I was owed an office, but that I was built for it, and that it was my duty to follow through on that nature.
That was a mistake, and by the time you voted for me, I already knew that. In fact I knew that before I even announced that misguided campaign.
Going to a mediocre college whose political science department showed me no respect whatsoever contributed to that realization. As did several years of failed attempts to use a diploma in political science from said college to secure government employment on the local and (what I thought) was the most impactful government levels.
It was just not meant to be, and it took way too much of my life for me to realize that. The signs were there all along. The entire business is anathema to me and I should have known it. In high school teachers conspired with athletes to make sure I lost and they won a student government election. Colleagues with whom I had studied government in college wanted me as part of their group. The head of the department thought my questions in class were antithetical to a political scientist. The president of the college Democrats sent me on a goose chase by giving me wrong directions, so that the rest of the club could carpool and meet Al Gore and a rally while I stood in a parking lot waiting for them to show up.
Politics and political people wanted no parts of me even back then. By the time I decided to run for Congress, I had years before come to the realization that my epiphany had been a false one. The trajectory on which I had built most of my life lead me into a dead end, nay a vortex of despair and uselessness. Believe me I am still suffering the consequences of so much time and thought wasted during my young adulthood in pursuit of such a life.
But I was determined to do it at least once. I was going to seek public office, and officially close a misguided and poorly written chapter of my life that for years I had thought was to be the novel itself. I got a ride to Annapolis on an ugly winter day, (I’ve ever been good at driving to such places), and I filed to run for the United States House of Representatives. My signature was right below Senator Mikulski’s on the same sheet.
“I’ll raise issues,” I thought. “I’ll get attention for the things that this district never pays attention to. I will, by my presence at least force a few people to ask and answer different questions, instead of accepting that people on my end of the spectrum had no purpose. I would not win the party’s primary, but I would make sure people on society’s fringes were represented in the campaign. They would matter. I would matter.
The district I grew up in proved quickly, however, that I did not matter. No connections, no support, no money.
Each day of the campaign, I knew I should have left well enough alone and dropped out, leaving government in my murky and uninspired past. I knew it when nobody but family showed up for my campaign launch party and announcement. When People in town halls tried to nail me with the blame for everything wrong with the country, without allowing me to explain what I might do about it. When nobody ever called the campaign phone, except the belligerent, asshole editor of a local Washington County paper threatening to sue me for doing what candidates had done for decades…leave fliers in the newspaper boxes of houses. When no party machinery or candidates for other offices or issue organizations so much as returned my emails to engage in conversation. When they only email I ever did get were from people telling me I was shit for putting up signs they could see from their car or house and reminders that they would not be voting for me.
All of these things and more, removed any further doubt in my mind that I was never going to hold public office, and that such a life is not worth living. That is was not and is not a noble pursuit, even to lose. Not only that, it proved that it is a waste of time for someone such as myself to even be involved in the pursuit of public service by way of elected office, at least in these parts. It was not even worth showing up to raise the questions or to make people think about what I had said, because they didn’t think. Ever. The small-mindedness and bile of the average voter I encountered in my one and only campaign for elected office had made it clear to me that even before it was over, I had made one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made in my life.
The occasional reporter or more decent voter offering high praise for my excellent public speaking skills did nothing to counter these realizations.
So on election night, when the “party” consisted of two sisters (one of whom went home before any returns were announced) and my mother waiting for notoriously tardy returns to come in saw me coming in last (even behind someone who did no specific campaigning) I was not exactly in good spirits. Losing I could accept. I don’t know if I could accept coming in last in the field had the campaign been noble and had I been treated with any respect, because that didn’t happen. I came in last having gathered no respect, no attention outside of a few speeches, and not even so much as a notion of satisfaction. I vowed to never again partake in local elected office, and I have kept that promise. (I even recently refused to apply for vacancies on a few volunteer public commissions, despite encouragement. I knew what the result would be, and I wasn’t going to go through it again.)
And the morning following the election, I get your email.
The email, as I understood it, in essence revealed that you weren’t too worried about the election, and that you knew I didn’t “have a prayer” but that you liked my “pithy” answers to reporter’s questions, and you wanted me to tell you more about my future plans, or something.
I remember thinking that I had gone through enough less-than-helpful emails during the long, pointless campaign. I remember thinking at that moment that your interest, such as it was, would have been far more suited during the campaign, by way of a donation, (of which I got none from anyone) or at least from a few encouraging emails when it would have mattered. But to be standing there in the charred remains of not just a single campaign but what I had at one point thought was my destiny, I had to read about you and your wanting to know about my “future plans” even though you knew I didn’t have a chance?
It was too much for a disillusioned, insulted and ignored former idealist. It felt like too little, too late. It felt like more of a jab than a congratulations. (Here I have to point out that it is never a good idea to tell someone for public office, even after they lose that you never felt they had a chance.) So I snapped back at you.
“Who the hell are you anyway?” I asked. “I’m not a candidate for public office as of this morning, so I don’t even feel obligated to pretend that your assessment of me and my future is important to me. Perhaps you should mind your own business.”
All this time later, I of course know that I didn’t understand the intention behind your email. I incorrectly defined what you were saying and doing. True, you could have been a bit more considerate in the manner you chose, but the responsibility in the end lies with me. In the midst of fatigue and anger and general disgust with people, especially locals, I misinterpreted you. That is the first thing for which I am sorry.
The second thing for which I am sorry is for being so angry about it. I should have waited a day or two to respond to you. By then I probably would have had better insight into what you were trying to say. Or, if I were that upset about it, I could (and should) have just ignored your email. Left you to wonder if I ever got it, but I would assume not being that bothered one way or the other. But instead I left you with a parting shot that may have defined who I am in your mind in the years since. You have every right to think of me that way. I formed that image of my own free will and ignorance. If you see my name in a paper or a magazine or online today and think of how unpleasant and shallow I am, so be it. I accept it.
But perhaps as you read this letter, and combine it with what I have done with my life, my words, my energies and my time since my ill-advised foray into elected office, you will see the real me. The me that had no business running, and will never do so again. The me that now has a far better disposition, one that matches the humble, patient, helpful and forgiving person I try to be each and every day. If you can see that now, Miss Madsen, and you are willing, I hope you will accept my apology.
sincerely, Ty Unglebower
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
Can I Avoid Being a Sycophant on Twitter?
One of my Twitter lists is called “Tolerable Famous People.” It’s a short list.
Yes, that sounds like you give when presenting at the Oscars. But the impression you probably get from this is partially true; celebrities these days tend to be less tolerable to me than they were in the past. I have standards for this list, and not a lot of people have met them. A few that have don’t even tweet that often. Maybe that’s one reason I find them tolerable as celebrities. Chew upon that irony for a bit.
It’s also a short list because some celebrities with whom I have no problem have lousy Twitter accounts, to be honest. Nothing but canned comments about products the whole world knows they’ve been paid to endorse. Or all they do is retweet. Posting links and retweets is a great way to find information, but if all a celebrities does is retweet other peoples stuff, (or worse, retweets other people’s stuff about them) it’s not interesting to me. Their name and image on the account does not make up for this.
But another reason for the shortness of the list is actually related to why the list exists in the first place; I’ve not yet come to terms with following famous people on Twitter.
That’s right. I don’t follow even the few people that are on this not-so-coveted Twitter list of mine. Partly because I don’t want my main feed to be too cluttered. But the bigger part is it feels like I’m somehow desperate, pathetic, or sycophantic. I want to avoid that appearance, even with celebrities I respect. Especially with them.
A few years ago, I was able to attended a Broadway performance of Spamalot, the Monty Python musical. It had only been open for two weeks, so it was the original cast. Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria. Pretty wild to be that close to them.
But some in my party wanted to wait outside the backstage door to get their autographs after the show. There was nothing prohibiting this, and the rope that was in place there indicated that it happened after each show. Some in my party couldn’t believe I wouldn’t go.
One reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want to stand out in a chilly night for all that time, only to possibly never get an autograph or even see the aforementioned celebrities. And partly because I felt they’d done all we should expect from them…they performed a show. As an actor myself, I know that can be exhausting. The main reason, however, was probably that I didn’t want to appear enamored or needy to the very people whose show I just enjoyed.
No insult to autograph hunters or my friends from that group. I just happen to think it helps dehumanize as oppose to humanize famous individuals, and I like to see them as human as I can. So I was content to stand across the street. I did see the cast members come out and greet people. (My friends reported later that they were all friendly and accommodating.) I could have gotten their autographs, or their pictures. I did not choose to do so, and I don’t really regret it these years later for all of the reasons I described. If ever I would have a chance to interact with such famous people, I would prefer it to be in the confines of a more civil, organized, and equal setting.
I know what you will say next. The whole point of Twitter is for people to follow you. That’s why they do it. Stay with me a while; I will be faithful.
At least behind the theatre on Broadway, Tim Curry was literally standing there. Think what you will about autographs, a real person was there signing them. Though I don’t share it, I understand the appeal. The guy was right there to talk to, albeit it for just a few moments.
But on Twitter, they aren’t “right there.” To follow a celebrity on Twitter, one literally announces to the world, “I’m following them!” and I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s one thing to check in on them, to see what they might be doing any given day, of see their impressions of a current event. It’s another to be standing at the ready for the moment Sir Patrick Stewart mentions his breakfast. (Yes, Patrick Stewart is one of the Tolerable Famous People actually on the list at the moment.) So I list them. It feels less fan-clubbish.
But even then, it’s a short list because I’m still reluctant to engage in celebrity culture for its own sake. I think someone will be interesting, based on an interview they gave or a book they’ve written, and I see if they’re on Twitter. If they are, here is where is gets neurotic; my cursor hovers over Add to List for a stupefying amount of time. I ask myself, “Will my life truly be enhanced and deepened in a significant demonstrable way if I follow this alpine skier from the Olympics?” (Sorry, not follow. List.) Yes, I really ponder it.
Now here’s the possibly goofy part; more often than not I actually talk myself out of it! Never mind I like the way the skier spoke on television, and respected their worldview. Forget that the high-ranking member of the U.K. government I heard on the radio offered thoughtful comments on public service. It couldn’t matter in the least that the guitar player for Top Band seems to be a hilarious dude. I don’t ski, live in the UK or listen to Top Band. To add them to my list and review their tweets would be mere celebrity culture, I start to think. So I don’t.
Sound silly? Probably is. But consider an account I stumbled onto the other day on Twitter. I’ve altered the handle slightly, though this too may be one. Probably is. We’ll call it, “JUSTINPLEASEFOLLOWME.”
The entire purpose of the Twitter account was to get Justin to follow them. So much so that is the name they used for the account. No identity as a human being, other then some tweets about homework, weather, cheer practice, and some shout-outs to personal friends sprinkled into the feed. Almost the entire account was thousands upon thousands of pictures, posts, links and other tweets from or about Justin, and the (as yet not attained) goal of having Justin follow them back.
That’s a sycophant.
An extreme example, I know. My Twitter obviously does not revolve around any one celebrity, or even celebrity itself. If it did, I might have more than 420 followers after all of these years. But I just can’t seem to shake this feeling that I am contributing to celebrity worship in some small way when I follow someone famous on social media.
This also means that even when I do list someone famous on Twitter, I cut my nose off despite my face in a way. Even when a famous person’s tweets end up being just as advertised and continue to entertain, provoke thought or impress me, I don’t reply often. One big aspect of Twitter is of course engagement, and a few people just under the A-List have, on occasion, responded to my tweets. But almost every time I think I might just offer a quick thought to Eugene Robinson, (yes, he’s really on the list as well), I can’t get JUSTINPLEASEFOLLOWME out of my head. And if on the off-chance a famous person let’s their eyes rest on my tweet for a moment (among thousands) I want them to be entertained, educated or impressed by me. I don’t want them thinking about JUSTINPLEAEFOLLOWME.
So, I may be missing out in not following or listing famous people on Twitter whom I respect, or more often engaging those I do list. There may be a way to admire the work of a person that has become famous, or to enjoy who they are, without appearing either to them, or the rest of the world as pathetic. In fact, I probably reside well on the proper side of that line already. I just can’t ever be sure.
A Sluggish/Not So Sluggish Writing Start to 2014
Hard to believe that the second month of 2014 is nearly done. (Even though it is the shortest month of the year.) At the end of last year, I set a series of writing goals for 2014, and I noticed that in some ways I’m doing well and in others I am not doing as well as I would have liked. More specifically, I seem to be doing a great job at editing and publish-related tasks on my list. And I continue to make a fair amount of progress when it comes to some outlining. But the actual writing of new material has gone slower than I would I have wanted. I’m not worried yet, but let’s just say it’s something I’ve noticed.
I’ve started two of the short stories I intended to write this year, but have not been back to them in a few weeks. I have character sketches of the stage play I want to finish by the end of the year, as well as a broad outline of the plot. Some great ideas came to me for that last week which may solve a few of the problems I was having. But I haven’t yet begun to write the script. I’ve begun to commit the script of my already written one-man show to memory for later this year.
I’ve been editing Thank You For Ten and I think I’ve chosen the order in which I want the stories in that collection to appear. I have my account at Smashwords and I’ve been talking to some people about the process.
So I have achieved a lot already in 2014 in regards to my words. It just hasn’t been related to creating new stories.
Perhaps the material I chose to start the year with is not the most inspiring to me right now. It’s possible. Perhaps I’m still a bit burned out on creating new fiction after the sprint of Nanowrimo and finishing an entire novel in that for the first time ever. I’d hope it wasn’t that, though. I don’t think it is, but I can’t dismiss the possibility. Then there’s the fact editing and outlining in and of themselves take up a certain amount of creative energy. And since I only have so much of that energy at any given time, I may find myself running low when it comes writing rough drafts of new material. Maybe I’m lazy? Though again, given all of the other work I have done regarding my work, I dismiss that suggestion quickly.
I’ve even considered the possibility that the atrocious winter we’ve experienced on the East Coast of the United States this year has contributed. I have never liked winter, and I haven’t been able to get outside much, without freezing my face off or dodging mud, ice and snow. I haven’t been able to walk as much as I normally would in somewhat better weather. There is a certain quasi-oppression that goes with bad winters. It could be that my creativity is limited to what is already in front of me, or at least to broader ideas and concepts as opposed to precise writing.
But if I think about it too much, it will only make it worse, right? A writer must write, yes, but I have never been one of those “butt in chair every day” types. I don’t respond well to whips, even if I am my own task master.
Then there is the possibility that I am in fact writing. I was thinking earlier today that I should probably stop making a distinction where none exists. I may not be producing new rough drafts of material at the moment as often as I would like, but I am producing writing. The process of good writing is about rough drafts and getting it done, of course. But it’s also about considering how the piece can be improved, marking said improvements and of course actually making the changes. Writing is about staying with one idea for a while, exploring it, asking it questions, seeing if it has the chops to make it as an actual piece. Writing is about setting the stage, (at least for me) and considering the plans. Changing plans if needed. It’s about asking one’s self the difficult creative questions before work begins on a project to which one is committed. And it’s about getting the answers to those questions. In those senses, I have been quite productive with my writing thus far in 2014.
And of course it will even out. It always does. If the short stories I started with don’t click, I can set them aside and work on something that does. That ball will roll again, and in the mean time I keep editing and polishing that which I already have available to me. It’s all getting to the same place in the end, isn’t it?
If you’re in the same situation, let’s try not to be too hard on ourselves. If we can’t write, we can edit. If we can’t edit, we can outline. If we can’t outline we can brainstorm, and if we can’t even do that, we can always read the work of others until our own writing gears are moving once again. Or go to a museum, or listen to music or watch a movie…
How sluggish or productive has your writing of new material been lately? Does it worry you?
Open Letter to a Quiet Hypocrite
For the purposes of this open letter, the subject will be referred to as “Poffenbarger.” -T.U.
Dear Poffenbarger,
I would have used your first name so as to at last be on equal footing with you. Yet I don’t want to seem as though I’m familiar or comfortable with you, even now. In fact, you don’t even deserve the “Mrs”. You were unworthy of the respect I was forced to show you in fourth grade. Wherever you are today I’m confident I’d still find you unworthy of courtesy or respect. You are beneath me, and indeed beneath decent people as a whole, as far as I am concerned. So Poffenbarger it is. Rude, but nothing like how you treated me.
My entire life I’ve had unusual perceptions of the world around me. When I was a child those perceptions combined with a near adult-level sophistication in certain settings. I was simply reacting and speaking and interpreting life from the only place I could and can-my own. It wasn’t until much later I realized what an outlier I was as a child. Until then, I assumed everyone could see what I saw in the universe.
This made for some difficult situations. While a luckier person in such a situation would have been mentored into success, I was more often than not teased, misunderstood, dismissed or ignored, sometimes all of the above by the same people. Sadly, tragically, this included some teachers over the years. With no intention, I impressed if not amazed some of the actual adults in my life. Others were intimidated by me because they didn’t know how to deal with a student that was so ahead in some areas. (Never mind that I was so behind in other areas.)
Other teachers were not even aware I was different in some way, and just went about their business. And a few teachers and other adults found it somehow fascinating or entertaining to be around such a child as I. I could be wrong of course, but looking back I think I was a curiosity to several teachers. A dancing bear, a toy with self-awareness to be explored on occasion and set aside when boredom set in or more challenging levels of intellectual engagement were required. No investment or mentorship followed. Very little positive followed, in fact. I can’t hold you responsible for how other teachers treated me, but you probably fell into this last category. At least at first. However you eventually morphed into your own category; you were something worse.
I concede that both then and now certain things bother me that don’t bother other people due to my sometimes sensitive nature. Yet exactly zero of your actions fall into that category, and you will receive no benefit of any doubt from me.
You see, as part of those unusual perspectives and levels of thinking, a kernel of my consciousness has remained, in essence, the same from my earliest days. At the true center of my being there is a place that the fourth grade version of myself would recognize quite easily. A nine year old Ty Unglebower could walk right into the spiritual and mental sanctum sanctorum of the grown man that now writes this post and feel at home. The walls may have been painted once or twice, and a few new chairs brought in, but believe it or not the child could get around in there. I assure you it is a testament to how mature the nine year old was, and not how undeveloped I am today.
I was not, I repeat, not a normal nine year old. But you already knew that, didn’t you?
Regardless, I was nine. Being a child is being a child and that must be considered by adults who interact with them. The things you did and did not do to me were wrong. They are wrong, and now that you have no power over me it’s time you hear from me about them.
I’m aware of the hellish possibilities of repressed memories. Nonetheless, I truly do not believe you attempted to be sexual with me. My memory is a keen one and I have not suffered most of the other warning signs of having been a child victim of such things. So I’ve concluded I was not. But you did victimize me nonetheless, and I feel confident that I was affected by it for years.
You knew, everyone knew, what sort of relentless bullying I suffered in school at that time. Now I didn’t realize back then that being intelligent made me an even bigger target for such people; I thought I was supposed to be as smart as possible in order to do good at school. But you and all of the other teachers that did nothing about it in that tiny school had to be aware of what a target I had become. I had no true friends and had only the teachers who were supposed to protect me. But instead of finding a way to do your job and keep me safe from any of that, you perpetuated the problem in any number of ways. The worst way was the little private talks you’d always make me have with you.
After almost every gym class there for a while,(during which I would perform poorly) you’d single me out, sit me down, and say such things as, “I’m here for you,” or “I want to see you have more fun” as you’d put your hand on my shoulder. Then you’d offer up that painted-on Romper Room smile you’d use in front of everyone when you were pretending to be cheerful and fun loving. Except during our talks you’d do it four inches from my face as we sat together on a park bench, and it took on quite a different power.
The other kids may not have heard what you were saying during these little mostly one-way chats of which you were so fond, but they could see I was still sitting with you when they went back to change their clothes. And they could see I would come into the next class late with you so you could let the other teacher know where I had been.
It also did not go unnoticed when I was a “special helper” for jobs I had no skill or desire to help you with; you knew from gym class I was awkward and not at all athletic, why have me carry a gym bag twice my size? Were you hoping you could mock me later and curry favor with other students? I’ll get back to that…
It was not unnoticed when you would feed me questions in my ear during field trips to ask our guides…questions I didn’t care about in the first place but would ask anyway because a teacher had told me to do so.
And I can only hope nobody ever knew that one day after yet another one of our (mercifully) non-sexual but obligatory uncomfortable chats after class, you smiled and whispered “I love you, okay?”
Remember that kernel of adulthood I mentioned I’ve always had? It knew even then that something didn’t fit with all of this. Maybe the rest of my nine year old self didn’t process everything around me, and would ask the Park Ranger on the field trip whatever you wanted me to ask him, but that kernel within knew you didn’t love me. At least he knew that if you did, you shouldn’t be saying it. Though some part of me thought I should say it in return to be nice, both that kernel and my nine year old self knew full and damn well I did not love you, so I didn’t say it back. I opted for “okay,” instead.
You might be a mere footnote instead of the subject of this letter had it all ended there. It may have just been a little bit awkward and icky all these years later if it was just the pink heart stickers, songs about sunshine and hands on my shoulder. I could have maybe written that off as unchecked and inappropriate enthusiasm for an unusual student that crossed your path. Everything but the “I love you,” might have been left in the past as I matured, wrong though it all may have been. I say, maybe. But it was your shameless public behavior clashing with such terrible consistency against the “softer” private moments that we shared that angers and disgusts me today, and always will.
What, were you with your tiny mind and unstable emotions angry because an otherwise precocious nine year old boy never told you, “I love you too”? The meaner things did seem to increase after the “I love you” meeting, so I have never been able to dismiss this horrifying possibility.
Or maybe you suffered pathetic levels of insecurity and arrested development and just had to look “cool” when the older students (many of which were my bullies) were watching you. Maybe you were and are simply a psychopath or narcissist. I don’t know the reasons for the dichotomy and I don’t give a shit. I only know the darker side was no more acceptable than the “I love you” side, particularly for a person in authority over children.
You see, Poffenbarger, all the manufactured cartoon cheerfulness in the world cannot hide a shallow heart such as your own. At least it didn’t hide it from me; I knew there was a glaring difference between the two versions of yourself. I knew what a teacher should and should not do, and maybe you knew I knew all of that. Maybe that’s why you treated me the way you did. Maybe a part of you cowered in the presence of a nine year old that knew things and wouldn’t love you.
I knew that as a teacher you don’t laugh from across the room with the eighth graders at something I have said or done, and insult my intelligence by saying later it was about “something else” while casting an obvious smile over your shoulder to said eighth graders. I knew a teacher doesn’t just tell me to “toughen up” and not advise me further when you I was bullied. A teacher does not snap at recess, “If that’s how you want to be, never mind,” when I respectfully try to deflect your requests to come help you fly a kite. Nor does a teacher tell jokes about slamming babies into the pavement in front of a class of mixed ages…an image that stuck in the sensitive child part of my mind for years afterward. Truth be told I still can’t think of that joke without a slight grimace.
You know what else a teacher doesn’t do? A teacher does not have an introduction to trigonometry class consist of a mix of all the grades, I dare say. I don’t even think the vast majority of fourth graders have any business attempting trig in the first place, though I’ll defer to educational professionals on that one. But I don’t have to consult anyone when I say how morally repugnant it is for a teacher to huff every time I would ask a question about what we were doing until finally blowing up and saying, “Ty, that’s the fifth question you’ve asked about this trig assignment today, and if you keep asking me questions I’m never going to get anything else done. Now, do you understand this material or not?”
I love you, okay?
Naturally, as always with the colder side of things you did this in front of the whole class. A class which of course contained some of my bullies. (Which you knew.) No surprise, I lied at that point and said that yes, I suddenly understood the trig assignment. Clinometers, Calculators, and Camels you called the assignment, and I doubt I’d be able to do it even today, but I lied to everyone under pressure and claimed I could do it at age nine.
All of these things illuminate just how heartless, corrupt and morally bankrupt you are. Yet the worst example of your failure as a teacher and as a human being came during the volleyball unit we had.
We used a beach ball, and we were practicing serves. In your typical and sickening, plastic fashion you laid out specific steps we were to follow in regards to different volleyball skills. (“You spread your hands wide, like there is just too much sunshine inside of you and you have to let it out!”) Then each student would take turns applying the supposed lesson.
When my turn to serve came, I didn’t do well. I hit it wide to the right and out of bounds. My height and my lack of athletic skill meant that such a result was likely.
So what did you do? How did my teacher, the one who sang of rainbows and swans, made me her little helper and told me she loved me when we were alone respond to my bad serve?
With a loud, “booo” and a thumbs down.
I was a child, you were my teacher and you booed me you vindictive, duplicitous bitch.
I love you, okay?
I got through the rest of the class trying not to let anyone know how humiliated I was. I talked and joked with my few so called friends for the remainder of the lesson, saying what I calculated to be Ty-type things so as to complete the facade of indifference, but feeling unattached to every word. I think that was one of my first performances, years before I did theatre. I was playing the uninjured Ty.
With great effort I simulated a casual demeanor that couldn’t have been further from how I was feeling. I pushed lighthearted words out of my dry mouth and into the threatening ether of an elementary school gym class. Through the heaviness of a clenched chest and by way of hot facial muscles practically ripping apart with concealed pain I said the things Ty would say when not in such distress. I don’t know if I succeeded, because anyone who would have noticed the pain would probably have not been worried about it anyway.
The boo would have been hurtful coming from any teacher, but especially from the one that walked around like she lived on Sesame Street, and whispered that she loved me. (Even though I never believed that you did.) You did that to me, Poffenbarger, and I have never forgotten it. Nor have I forgotten what came next.
When class was over I initiated a little private meeting myself this time, the first and only time I did so. We hadn’t been meeting quite so much anymore, (Could it be because I never said “I love you too”?) but the nine-year old was hurt and the kernel told me I had every right to address the situation in a polite manner after the other kids left.
“Mrs. Poffenbarger,” I said as the faux-nonchalance at last began to crack, “I don’t appreciate you booing me.”
Perhaps a nine year old has no real business talking in such a manner, but there I was being honest, vulnerable and dare I say it, brave in the only way I knew-with words.
I didn’t cry at school often, and I didn’t then, but I almost did. Even now I don’t like admitting that I almost cried, but am still amazed I didn’t.
Your response?
“Oh give me a break! Reggie Jackson gets booed by thousands of people every single day. You think it bothers him?”
Being nine and me, I didn’t know who Reggie Jackson was at the time, but I concluded he was a professional ballplayer of some kind. I also concluded that I was not, and that it wasn’t a fair comparison at all. I don’t remember if I ever got to make that point though. Probably not, because before long you pulled a page out of your trigonometry class book of spells. I think you huffed and asked if I was “fine”, put a now much colder hand on my shoulder and sent me on my way to the changing room to be teased.
I love you, okay?
It’s a good thing I don’t have a yearbook from that year anymore, because if I had, I don’t know if I’d be able to sleep at night knowing that any facsimile of your face was in my home. Not that I would need it; your face still appears in the back channels of my mind at times. Whenever I hear of bullying, or the complicity of authority in same, I see you. When I hear that a child has been failed or worse manipulated by the adults in their life, I see your face. When I meet yet another empty shell of a human being that pays lips service to warmth by displaying cosmetic cheerfulness and love only to contract into the invertebrate filth they truly are the minute it becomes inconvenient to live up to the Candyland image they have constructed, I see your face,
But sometimes I see your face without any provocation, and those are the worst times. When that happens, I also see my classmates growing smaller in the distance as they make their way back to the schoolhouse. I once again wish I was traveling back with them, even though none of them stood up for me when I needed it. I feel the late Maryland spring on my skin, and see the breeze blowing your hair into your eyes as you pat the empty space on the park bench beside you. Once again I watch your gym sneakers on the sidewalk, wishing I could look at only them once you instructed, “look at me.”
I hear your voice…soft and upbeat to the point of song, and yet still revealing both a slight threat and a complete emptiness that even an unusual nine year old should never have to detect from his teacher. I note how your register lowers and your head tilts to the left as you once again utter the words that echo in the hallow, dark chambers of memory to which I have tried to consign you:
“I love you, okay?”
And when this happens? When I’m transported like Scrooge into the middle of a vivid, three-dimensional recreation of a moment in my past best left unthought of? I want only to spit in that smiling face…to run from it and catch up to the rest of the class. To seek you out in person today and tell you something in person that I almost never actually say to another person. I don’t know where you are, and it’s probably best, but what I can’t say to you in person I will say at the end of this open letter:
Fuck you.
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
Ty Unglebower 