People Aren't Monkeys, Apparently

(This post is Part 1 of 2 monkey-related stories)

Racial slurs and hate speech are the most deplorable, inexcusable types of insults anyone can make. I believe that people who make such statements should be held accountable for their caustic words. But what happens when, in a Seinfeld-esque miscommunication, someone is accused of making a racial slur when in fact, they did not? How do you convince others, while they glare at you, their faces ridden with offense and astonishment, that they got it all wrong?

What if you’re seven years old and your friend, someone who was in the same small, 12-student class with you for the past 2 years, is repeatedly puffing up his cheeks like a blowfish, crossing his eyes and then, alternately, making high-pitched whooping, screechy noises at you? He was an energetic boy who liked getting a rise out of his classmates, and I was especially easy to annoy. So he kept filling his cheeks with air and screeching at me until I thought I was going to have an aneurism. Don’t ask me where the teacher was at this point. As you may remember, grownups were not capable of understanding the complexities of elementary school drama. It must have been recess though. Anyway, I finally asked this kid to stop being a monkey and stop annoying me. Big mistake. An argumentative girl turned around and informed me that it was not only incredibly rude but also quite racist to tell my friend, who was being monkey, that he was being a monkey. I thought she clearly didn’t see what he was doing. So I told her. And he denied the whole thing.

At this point several other kids were listening to our quarrel, which made me feel even more defensive. I don’t know what the rest of them had been doing but no one noticed him making funny faces and incredibly irritating noises just moments before.  The argumentative girl, holding a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other, declared to the rest of the class that I was bullying that kid because of his brown skin.

Now I know that some holier-than-thou white people say things like, “I don’t see color” and claim to have no idea whether someone is of a different race. Uhhh sure, whatever you say. But you know what? Up until that moment in Mrs. Eckhart’s second grade classroom, I didn’t have a damn clue that that boy was of a different race. Seriously. Maybe children see the world differently or maybe I was just very dumb or unobservant or whatever. But when that girl accused me of being racist toward him I about passed out from shock. I remember staring at him and shaking my head, not wanting to question his skin color but having the veil of innocence ripped from my eyes. And I saw for the first time that he was different than me. 

Despite this revelation, I stuck to my guns about the monkey thing, and I still will stand up for myself on that one because, folks, he was legitimately pretending to be a monkey just to annoy me, ok?? Well I spent the rest of recess all alone because the other 11 people in the class refused to talk to me. I suppose I should be impressed that those young children were intolerant of prejudice (or perceived prejudice in this case) but as a very misunderstood second grader, I just felt devastated.  I remember kicking up the tiny rocks in the gravel parking lot in frustration. Every time I looked up from my dusty shoes I’d see eleven tiny humans on the other side of the lot with their chins up and their eyes narrowed. I just realized that maybe this experience is why I liked Lord of the Flies more than anyone I know.  Poor Piggy.

Anyway, my best friend eventually told me that everyone would be my friend again if I apologized to the boy. I vehemently protested, explaining for the 100th time that I was not being rude or derogatory (I’m sure I didn’t use that word) but was simply telling him to cut it out. And the “it” was his monkey-like behavior.  I couldn't believe how the whole thing had gotten blown out of proportion. My best friend looked like she wanted to believe me, but kept glancing over her shoulder at the others with a distinct look of fear. She didn't want to be exiled like me. “Just say sorry, ok? It’s not a big deal. Just say it.” She whimpered.

A large piece of my innocence disintegrated that day. My first approach was to lie like a successful politician.  I approached the mob and apologized for hurting his feelings. That was not good enough. They insisted I specifically apologize for calling him a monkey. At this point I had to take my lying skills a step further so, like a lawyer, I looked in his eyes and said I didn’t mean to call him a monkey. And the spell was broken. They were all my friends all of a sudden and the strange event was never mentioned again. I completely forgot about it until recently, but I have wondered why I feel overly paranoid about what I say when I’m talking to and especially when I’m joking around with someone of a different race.

Stay tuned because in my next post I will tell you another story involving a typical sitcom miscommunication, an unusual wedding reception, and another lesson about how people are not monkeys.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?? Let me know in the Comments section!

"Listen To Your Broccoli"

“Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” – Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I just finished reading the chapters called “The Moral Point of View” and “Broccoli” in Bird by Bird. They both really hit home for me. I am currently writing my first draft of my second novel and there are some ethical and moral dilemmas I am trying to write as sensitively as possible. The problem is, I’m not entirely sure where I stand on these issues!

Anne Lamott says that reality is complex; right and wrong may not be opposites. I think that in my current situation, instead of chastising myself and not getting any writing done, I should present both sides to my readers, offer them the pros and cons, and let them decide for themselves.

Generally, the goal of writers is to communicate what they have learned about life in an effort to help society improve.  However, I feel like I am not the only person who rolls their eyes whenever they read something preachy with a booming moral message. The message of a story should not be encased in a single sentence because truth cannot be packaged in a few words. Instead, the entire story or book should shed light on the ethical concepts that the author wants to reveal. Although I am on the fence about a couple issues, there are many others that I feel strongly about and want to share with my readers.

Ok moving onto “Broccoli”, which I found highly entertaining. Broccoli is the term Anne assigned to Intuition—the soft, little voice that tells you what’s real. Your rational mind won’t get you far in creative enterprises such as writing, so it is incredibly important that you learn to quiet the harsh, logical part of your brain and allow your subconscious to perk up, possibly for the first time since you were a child. A fabulous quote from Bird by Bird that I keep re-reading is: “The rational mind doesn’t nourish you… Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.” So stop doubting or second guessing your hunches. If you tell yourself that something that you want to write/paint/draw/dance/sing doesn’t make sense or won’t be popular or well-received by the masses, please tell your brain to shut the eff up.  You must allow yourself to be weird. "Listen to your broccoli."

Write Pages of Nonsense! Make a Mess!

{This post is part of an ongoing series that chronicles my thoughts/reactions to a book about writing called Bird by Bird written by Anne Lamott}

Today Anne Lamott told me that perfectionism will ruin my writing. “Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up,” she said. As I read that line, I can imagine the redundant words, the poorly used punctuation, and the unnecessary adjectives having an embarrassingly loud party all over my manuscript. 

I know that I’m supposed to embrace the notion of writing “shitty first drafts” as Anne so poignantly puts it, but I still fear that the grammar police are going to show up before I get a chance to edit anything and I will get in huge trouble for the mess and the noise that my nonsensical sentences and poorly thought-through phrases are having. It comforts me to know that Kurt Vonnegut said, “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” If he, as a literary icon, felt like his first drafts were ridiculous, then certainly I, who can barely use Microsoft Word effectively, can be excused for having a few run-on sentences.

Perfectionism must be conquered, because to write, you must write. This means that even on days when you are convinced that you are the worst writer in the world, or if your mind is utterly blank, or if you have a to-do list a mile long and your phone keeps buzzing and distracting you, you write. It might all be garbage, but that is ok. Somewhere deep in the dirty, smelly pile of garbage you wrote that day, there might be a diamond. There could be one sentence, or one concept, or one character that is absolutely brilliant, and the next time you write, you delete all the garbage (and exhale with relief because you evaded the grammar police again) and start polishing that diamond.

In the next chapter, Anne provides an example of how writing pages and pages of nonsense can get you to something valuable, something you can actually use. She had her writing students write everything they could remember about their school lunches. Surprisingly, they have a lot to say. She did this exercise along with them and shared bits of what she wrote. At some point, amid ramblings about bologna and lettuce, she mentions that there was always a strange kid against the fence. This kid by the fence was at the bottom of the totem pole, and as long as he was there, the other children felt safe from becoming social outcasts. This proved to be a very thought-provoking concept, and in essence, the gold nugget for which she was dredging dirt. All the descriptions of sandwiches and carrot sticks got her to remember the kid at the fence and gave her a unique character to explore.

The following chapter was about creating great characters. When I was preparing for National Novel Writing Month, I did tons of research on character building, so this chapter was a bit more of a re-cap for me than entirely new information. However, I like that Anne spelled out some specific characteristics that make narrators likable and believable, as opposed to just abstractly saying that they need to be likable. She cautioned against specific faux-pas to avoid. Despite having some knowledge in the art character building, I still learned a lot.