I'm starting to think that maybe children aren't universally terrifying after all.

I don’t really know what to do with small children. I didn’t have to acquire much experience in this department growing up—my brother is only three years younger than I am, all of our cousins are older than that, and by the time I reached babysitting age it was already firmly established that I was not the right teenage girl to ask to help out in the nursery.

Despite having known this fact about myself since elementary school, I managed to forget it entirely in my senior year of college. That’s when I encountered the attractive whirlwind of powerful marketing and well-meaning hubris that is Teach For America.

For anyone unfamiliar with the organization, Teach For America (TFA) is a program that recruits brand-new, maximally idealistic college graduates and enlists them to teach for two years in severely underperforming schools. TFA specifically seeks graduates who did not study education in college, because the organization prefers a fresh receptacle for its own systems and values without interference from clutter such as “years of training” or “classroom experience.”

After acceptance into the program, TFA teachers undergo a five-week summer training called “Institute,” which is obviously sufficient to cover all of the skills a 22-year-old could need in order to manage and serve a classroom of academically disadvantaged students. The TFA website calls Institute “a rigorous and intensive experience,” which is presumably the result of the public relations team reworking their original slogan.

From Institute (where I learned that showers are so your roommates can’t hear you cry), I went on to my very own classroom of first graders in rural southern Louisiana. There it quickly became clear that those hours of instruction and practice in lesson planning had not addressed my extreme lack of experience with six-year-olds. My determination to eliminate educational inequity did not prepare me for the child who brought a pocketful of playground gravel back to class to throw at me...

... or the child with surprisingly good spelling and penmanship for a first-grader.

I want to be very clear on this point: These problems sprang from my extreme lack of confidence and ability in classroom management, and not from any fundamental fault with these children. They are almost definitely not evil in their cores at all. And they certainly didn’t ask to be subjected to the authority of that shouty white lady who kind of sounds like she might cry.

After a couple of months, it was obvious to everyone that my ability to explain subtraction was no match for my inability to get anyone to sit still, keep their shoes on, and stop spitting sunflower seeds at each other long enough to listen. I left the program early and came home with more than a little psychological baggage.

 Fortunately, there have been a few changes over time. For one thing, it’s been eight and a half years since I left Teach For America, so I almost never have the nightmares anymore.

For another, I have recently gotten to know a few little kids who seem not to mean me any physical or emotional harm! This experience is distinctly preferable, and in fact I have found that it can even be fun. For instance, several months ago I had a graduation party at which the first guests to arrive included friends of mine with their 5-year-old twins, Lucy and Batman. Also in attendance was a large and delicious-looking cake. I let the kids know that there were not enough people present yet to cut the cake, and we would have to wait until some more arrived. Lucy spent the intervening time making sure that the presence of a cake in the room remained at the front of my mind.

By the middle of the party (during which Lucy got plenty of frosting on her cake), there were four children under the age of six in my house. I am proud to report that I did not find this situation even a little bit harrowing.

Funny how context can change your experience. It’s almost as though Teach For America has significant organizational failings that should not be interpreted as a direct indictment of children’s character or my worth as a person. Huh.

Extra Credit: Sure, it’s satire. But it’s true.

Scrambled or Fried

I started drinking coffee occasionally a couple of years ago, and the habit has been picking up steam ever since. Until recently, though, I managed to stay firmly in denial about the chemical dependency aspect of regular caffeine consumption.

A few months ago we hired a new morning receptionist, and I was excited to train her on the desk and get back to my regular morning job in another part of the office. She arrived early the first day—having already drunk her own coffee—and I didn’t want to abandon her up front while I prepared my usual cup. It’s not as if it mattered. I could always pour some later in the day if I still wanted it.

About an hour into Sadie’s training, my headache started. Along with it came a cloud of foggy exhaustion that muddled my ability to explain the more involved office procedures.

I blamed Monday morning for my mental malfunctions, but the confusion only worsened as time went on.

By a quarter to one, I only had fifteen more minutes to hold it together before training was over for the day and I could address the pressing caffeine situation. I was babbling unnecessarily about some obvious reception process…

…while another part of my brain fantasized about breakfast foods.

Meanwhile, a woman headed toward the lobby doors from outside. I couldn’t tell at first if she was a new visitor or someone who had already checked in, and this dilemma was enough to overload the circuitry. Instead of offering Sadie advice for either situation, I pointed toward the entrance and shrieked the first thing that came out.

By the time the woman reached the desk, I was desperately feigning normalcy.

I was impressed that Sadie showed up the next morning for another day of working in a confined space with me. She did take precautions to avoid a repeat performance, though.
 

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P.S. To anyone looking for the story of how I got a sewing pin lodged in my leg: It’s coming. I have to sharpen it up a little—improve a few points, sew up the gaps, take another stab at one or two things.

Gimme Five

High fives work best if you focus on the other person’s elbow.

I learned this bit of wisdom a couple of years ago, and just a few weeks later it proved to be spectacularly true. A friend and I achieved, thanks to elbow sighting, a perfectly formed forearm arc culminating in a flawless thwack that rang out around us.

I stood back for a moment to reflect on the beautiful thing we had created.

Just then, someone else bounded across the room to congratulate us on our technique, which had impressed him from twenty feet away.

The Elbow Trick: It can’t lose!

Of course, solid fives also require situational awareness.

A few weeks ago, a client called my office with a problem that eventually took me, a department manager, two off-site staff, and half a dozen phone calls across three cities to solve. Later in the day, I was upstairs delivering mail when that manager spotted me.

Then she extended her hand at an angle right between “handshake” and “low five.”

I assessed the interpersonal factors involved as quickly as possible…

…and opted for the five. We made contact with a satisfying, elbow-targeted smack.

Then the person standing behind me placed the cell phone that the manager had been waiting for into her still-outstretched hand.

The Elbow Trick: It can still lose.

For the Faint of Heart

You know what is really a good move? Pumping enough blood to your brain. I recommend doing it as often as possible. If you can’t manage that, though, the next best option is failing at this activity as dramatically as possible.

The first plan fell through for me last month, but I made good progress on the second one by passing out backstage during a performance of Pride & Prejudice. Conveniently for the show but less so for achieving maximum attention, I didn’t have any more lines or appearances for the night.

Instead, I woke up to the ministrations of Mr. Darcy’s housekeeper from the great Pemberley estate, who also happened to be a retired nurse. We were shortly joined by a collection of extremely quiet paramedics, while the other actors balanced between concern and not missing their entrances for the last half hour of the play. The ambulance team seemed a little disappointed that they didn’t get to remove me directly from the stage, so there’s room to improve for next time.

Shortly after we arrived at the hospital I remembered that no one knew I had come straight from Regency England without a chance to change, so I began introducing myself to every approaching staff member.

One of the techs had already taken it all in stride.

The wardrobe situation also resulted in a sheepish call from the stage manager to my parents, who arrived at the hospital shortly after I did.

In the end they diagnosed me with “high vagal tone,” which basically means that various situations can set off an involuntary nervous response that slows down my heart rate and limits blood flow to my brain. Several of the triggers are related to neglectful self-care, leading back to the whole “stop doing dumb things and you’ll be fine” principle that gives me so much trouble.

It turns out that my central nervous system is a lot like one of those kids who hold their breath when they throw tantrums. Its motivations don’t match the average toddler’s, though.

Now I have a list of potential triggers to watch for, including overexertion, dehydration, emotional stress, and my favorite item as explained by one of the ER personnel, “prolonged standing, sitting, or lying down.”

Thanks to this experience, I can begin giving more credence to my body’s signals and the advice of medical professionals and make the healthy choices of a responsible adult. Or there’s emotional manipulation.

Painted Lady

Until very recently, all of the makeup I owned was purchased for my high school prom, Class of 2004. I take that back—there was one set of eye shadow that my grandmother gave me after cleaning out her bathroom drawers.

As you may have gathered, I hardly ever wear makeup. It’s not that I have naturally radiant skin or a point to make about the true nature of beauty; I just really enjoy waking up about thirty minutes before I leave for work.

I’m also a little too unrefined for cosmetics, in the same way that my hands are not a safe place for nail polish for longer than an hour. Occasions for wearing makeup—weddings, graduations, etc.—typically start out as a lot of fun. The preparation is fun. Arriving and being pretty and excited is fun for about ten minutes. But then life continues to happen, and I remember that thanks to beauty I can’t scratch my chin or blink too much or eat or drink or cry or sweat or touch anything.

You can only run away for so long, though. Last month I was in a play, and live theater requires cosmetic enhancement unless your role is “very pale and somewhat flat person.” Small community theater also requires doing your own makeup, which is where the real problems start.

The other major factor in my cosmeticsless existence is a practically nonexistent understanding of how the stuff works. In a desperate attempt to learn what I missed in middle school, I threw myself on the mercy of the people at the Clinique counter in the mall.

I started by forgetting the common-sense rule of picking an associate whose look you would like to match. It’s like remembering to take cooking lessons only from people whose recipes you actually enjoy. This error made it difficult to explain what I wanted.

After using up my weekly allotment of the word “subtle,” I risked trying some other descriptions…

…but the terminology was too much for me.

In the end, though, Ms. Clinique did figure out some things to sell me that worked for the theater and also made me feel extremely fancy.

The best part is, with a few simple tools, I can recreate the look myself anytime I want.