Smoothie Pants

This is a story I tell my students in order to encourage them and make them feel better about all of the terrible things that happen to you when you're a teenager. And all the terrible things that still happen to you when you're an adult, despite your efforts to prevent them.

And it goes like this.

Generally on a school morning, I zombie myself to the bathroom to get ready while Tyler hits snooze several times. Then as I dress by the light of my phone flashlight, Tyler zombies out of bed and goes upstairs to make my breakfast and lunch. I know what you're thinking--that is so sweet of him. And the worst of me, because how lazy am I that I can't make my own meals? The answer is v lazy. It is v sweet of him, but it's also because if he didn't I would legitimately waste away slowly and be shriveled into nothing by graduation.

Generally, lunch is one of three: oatmeal, PB&J, granola bar.
Breakfast is also one of three: toast, cereal, smoothie.

On this particular morning, Tyler made me PB&J for lunch and a smoothie for breakfast. He was especially tired so I sent him back to bed with a kiss and a spank.

I sat at the table drinking my smoothie. I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to grab chapstick (it's a necessity and an addiction). I promptly stood up from the table and as I sidestepped out of the bench my pants caught the tablecloth and began to rip it from it's resting place on the table. I foresaw the disaster with my psychic-like abilities and froze in just enough time so that the smoothie glass didn't move.

"That was close, self," I told myself as I made a mental note not to do that again.

Why No One Tells the Truth About Anything

A conversation a while ago sparked another viscernifestation of mine. This one is brilliant. The discussion started talking about an incident that occurs often in my life and I'm sure in the lives of many other people: you have a discussion with someone, they ask you a question either simple or complicated, and you lie. You deemphasize, downplay, and flat out lie when you answer.
I started wondering why people do that. I thought about myself and the questions I answer with lies. Questions like:

How are you liking teaching?

How do you like where you're living?

How are you?

And lies like this: 

Oh, it's great. 

It's a good place. 

Good, how are you?

Okay, sometimes those are the truth, but a lot of the time they are not. As I was talking through this with some people close to me, I wanted to figure out why we tell those lies. Why did I start answering questions like that? Where was that habit rooted? 

I realized that most recently it came from the reactions I would get from people as I was giving honest answers to those questions. 

I told the truth and then started noticing a pattern in the reactions I was getting from people. They were surprised (read: uncomfortably shocked) that I didn't LOVE teaching and that I wasn't raving about how prepared I felt and how easy it came to me. Every time I said something other than "GREAT!" about where I lived or how I was, those I was talking to become visibly uncomfortable. Often pining to change the subject. 

I suppose subconsciously I decided that people didn't want to hear how teaching was really going. Or what I actually felt like that day. I don't know what they wanted but they didn't want to be uncomfortable so I started changing my answers to the short ones seen above. 

And it worked! No one was ever uncomfortable again! Kidding. But people stopped giving me that look that says, "pleasestoptalkingpleasestoptalkingpleasestoptalking."

You know the look. 

Instead they nodded politely, as if pleased with how content we both were lying to each other. So here is some not lying for you.

Sometimes I really don't like my job and I really don't want to go to work. 

Sometimes I get frustrated with my house and that it doesn't have what I think I need. 

And sometimes I'm sad/mad/irate/frustrated/annoyed. 

But so is everyone else, and so are you, and you should just stop making that uncomfortable face and say something nice to people who tell you the truth. 

You've been Walter Mitty-ed!

The first time we saw this movie I left the theater feeling like I had just experienced something incredible. The only problem was that I couldn't figure out quite what that something was. Obviously I'd experienced the movie itself, but the movie made me have some other experience that I couldn't identify or describe. I think I'll say the word experience one more time just to push you over the edge. Experience.