Seymour

I get oddly attached to some inanimate objects. It's a problem, really. I can't help but personify the items I use daily, attributing them with traits until they seem to possess feelings as real as my own. This makes it strangely emotional when the inevitable happens and they are lost, replaced, or outdated.

Changing computers is one of the most difficult of these object transitions. Affectionately dubbed Seymour, my now six-year old Dell desktop computer has been both loved and cursed throughout his well-utilized life.

His arrival in my life was a complete surprise. I was in seventh grade and the technological age was dawning. Teenagers growing up in the early 2000s were rapidly joining the digital age and everything, academic and social, was going digital. I was spending more and more time on the family's old computer, even in the now unthinkable dial-up days.

Mom had just begun a new career and was making some money of her own. Even though she's always had her only child tendencies towards selfishness, she loves surprising people with big gifts. She definitely doesn't mind spending money.

I woke up that Christmas morning to find Seymour sitting in the living room in all his brand new computer glory. At the time, he was pretty up to date with his flat, sleek screen replacing the mammoth monitors common at the time. Of course, I was totally surprised and overjoyed.

During the next six years, a lot would happen to me as I sat in front of Seymour. It was there I typed all the papers and did all the research and created all the school newspapers that came to define me in a certain way. I sent all the IMs that kept me in touch with old friends and brought me closer to new ones. I discovered new books and music, troubleshooted all of life's problems, read the news, connected to the world.

I grieved when he crashed and paid copious amounts for his repair and restoration unto me. The computer, in earning his human pronoun, became an integral part of my life. It's amazing how computers become so precious, preserving the carefully typed thoughts and work, captured memories in 'My Pictures,' painstakingly composed playlists.

Perhaps Seymour's most important role was keeper of my college and scholarship applications. On his screen, I first saw my Carolina acceptance letter, the magic words defining the rest of my life.

So I can't help but feel a little bad sitting here typing this on my sleek and shiny new university-provided laptop. Seymour's blank screen across the room looks neglected, archaic. Though he's pretty much useless now--virus ridden, memory full, impossibly slow, something about putting my fingers on his home keys feels like home.

Okay, okay. I'm being incredibly silly. I know it's just a computer, circuits and wires incapable of feeling lonely or anything else. But maybe, sometimes I will fire him up. Just to feel better.

Goodbye Seymour. I'm sure I'll grow just as attached to this computer in good time.

Lipstick Feminism

A cupcake dress can be misleading. A candy-cotton scented auditorium filled with girls wearing cherry printed short shorts, bright red lipstick, blue wigs and bare mid-drifts can give you the wrong impression. Sugary sweet pink decorations, trimmed in lollipops and gummy bears and poofy-skirted back-up dancers might make you think Katy Perry is just another air-headed poptart of a musician.

But she isn't. Underneath the Willy Wonka aesthetic and shimmery sequin wardrobe, there's a message. Katy's kinda political.

Some parents might be outraged as their children sing "Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock?/Don't be a chicken, boy, stop acting like a beeotch/I'ma peace out if you don't give me the payoff/Come on baby, let me see/what you're hiding underneath." But hundreds of male musicians produce entire albums about coaxing the clothes off "shorty" and leaving if they don't get the "pay off." Katy's one of the few women who are singing about getting guys to drop their pants instead of the other way around. Why shouldn't women be allowed to embrace sexuality like the men? While she prances around on the stage in a purple leotard and peacock feathers, Katy's not-so-subtly telling women they can play the boys' game. Maybe ten year old girls shouldn't be saying "beeotch," but they are empowered, allowed to embrace what the men have always been allowed to express.

A lot of Katy's songs have feminist undertones. "Pearl" is pretty blatant; it tells the story of a girl repressed by a commandeering man who eventually learns to break free. "Circle the Drain" tells off a deadbeat boyfriend more interested in drugs than his girlfriend.

I like Katy Perry because she can sing about being your own strong woman while wearing a shiny tight catsuit. And pull it off. You don't have to choose between being a pin-up "teenage dream" and a feminist. Katy Perry is both without even really trying.

She may have kissed a girl just cause she loves them so much.

This Is Country Music...And We Do

I'm not a redneck by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn't be caught dead in a cowboy hat or boots. I don't drink, smoke, or drive a pick-up truck. I don't hunt or ride horses or live in a trailer park or any other stereotypical redneck thing.

Really, there's only one country thing (except maybe Cracker Barrels) I really like: country music. My ipod contains twangy country tunes with banjos and steel guitars amongst "cooler" music ranging from 80's rock, today's pop, and singer songwriters.

I never really could explain why I like musical genre that so enthusiastically sings about many things I hate like Hicktowns and illiteracy until I attended the Country Music Association's Annual Music Festival.

The fact the festival even exists is a testament to the uniqueness of the country music community. All of the artists play for free, and it's the big multi-platinum selling ones offering their services out of sheer appreciation for the fans who bought all of those millions of albums. All of the proceeds go to a charity that puts instruments and musical programs in inner city schools. Even though I'm not a huge fan, Taylor Swift summed up the cool thing about CMA Musicfest. As she closed the show on the final day, from the stage at the center of the big football stadium, she pointed at a moderately priced seat to the right of the stage: "when I was 15, I sat right there and watched this show, and now I'm up here thanks to all of you."

No other genres come together so cohesively like country music. No matter what song any of the performers sang, every single person (80,000 or so strong) knew all the words and shouted them with complete conviction. Country music fans are simply country music fans, not just following one or two artists.

But really, the greatest thing about country music is that there are real gems hidden among all the redneck anthems. If you dig past the mudflaps and boondocks and Daisy Dukes, you find songs that speak to the collective human experience. I came to that realization while James Otto talked about his writing of "In Color," a song about reflecting on life through photographs. He explained how he reflected on his grandfather's stories as he turned the creaky pages in his black and white photo album while writing the song: "A picture's worth a thousand words but you can't see what those shades of grey keep covered; you should've seen it in color."

I couldn't help but think of the photo albums we took from her house after my grandma died. They chronicled her life, in black and white. They told stories we'd never get to hear from her now and reminded us of the ones she did share with us. We truly couldn't see what was behind that grey smile as she perched on the hood of some car one summer in her youth. James Otto and Jamey Johnson captured all those feelings deep down in me that I didn't even know I had.

Isn't that what good music is supposed to do? I've never felt that way about a Lady Gaga song, no matter how much her fans think I'm silly for watching a devastatingly unattractive (seriously, look at a picture of Jamey Johnson) man pick guitar strings and sing his life story to a very drunk crowd, but I'll defend it to the day I die.

Tim McGraw sings "Some say it's too country, some say it's too rock-n-roll, but it's just good music if you can feel it in your soul." I think a good song is one that makes the listener feel something, the emotion oozing out of every syllable, every note. A song that transmits the experience of the writers and performers straight to all the open ears taking it in. I think Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" is one of the greatest songs every written because it can make a person feel so utterly lonely even when surrounded by loved ones. It's just that powerful to me.

So maybe I'm not a redneck, but country music isn't just for rednecks. It's for anyone who has found peace in their childhood homes, left home or missed their adult children, or just learned from life's mistakes or simply living.

Goodbyes, Part Two

It seems like graduation should feel different, exceptional. I mostly felt normal.

It was just like everything else our school ever did. It was slightly chaotic and unorganized, but ended in something beautiful, even if it was only beautiful to us. School board officials gave slightly forced speeches, the superintendent gave a genuine one, and students demonstrated why we deserved rented ferns at our graduation. It did represent our school as best as a few short hours could.

But I felt pretty normal. I didn't feel like I was moving from a high school (and college) student to a high school (and college) graduate. I just felt like I was sitting in a gym floor wearing a silly outfit with some friends. Even walking across the stage still seemed like a rehearsal; I couldn't possibly be doing it for real. Maybe we spent too much nostalgia throughout the years to really summon up the emotion on this typically monumental day.

There were really only small, isolated moments where I felt something greater than what I feel every day.

The first came when we walked in and I first saw how many people were occupying the gym's bleachers, packed in like sardines, snapping pictures like paparazzi (fanatical, proud parents are probably the only photographers in the world scarier than paparazzi). I thought how wonderful it was to see all of the people I'd never have to explain what my school was or how I came to this place in my education to in one room. They all just understood; they knew the magnitude of our accomplishments without belabored explanation and questions. They just clapped. I felt happy, but I didn't feel graduated.

The second came while I was reading my short, inconsequential speech. Most of the time, I was just terrified. I didn't look up into the crowd because I had to read and concentrate on keeping my voice from breaking. But then I got to a feeble joke all my classmates would understand and I heard a few tiny laughs from them. Before, it felt like I was just speaking to the wall out of obligation, but then I realized people were actually listening. That sort of sums up all of my high school graduation--sometimes it didn't seem like it, but people were listening. I felt proud, but I didn't feel graduated.

Next, skip to the end of the ceremony. The principal "by the power bestowed upon her by Surry County Schools" or something like that pronounced us graduated, and we turned our tassels. Excitement bubbled up inside me, the kind of excitement that is rare and raw and can't be replicated. I looked around at the cardboard topped faces smiling in rows and knew they felt much the same.

In that one singular moment did I feel truly graduated.

I could post forever about all the little moments and exceptional people that made my school so wonderful, but it just seems unnecessary. I may be graduated, but a little part of me will always be sitting in the T-building waiting for school to start.

Goodbyes, Part 1

I was just catching up on all "The Office" episodes I've missed in the last year so, but I had to stop after the "Goodbye, Michael" episode. After seven real years and twenty television ones, Michael Scott worked his last day at Dunder Mifflen, and it was the second saddest thing I've ever seen on television (number one being the Gilmore Girls series finale, which still tears me up even though I've seen it several times). Though the show is mostly silly and the characters over the top, the goodbyes were just so heartfelt and sad.

The whole time, I kept thinking of my community college. Maybe it was because I haven't really got the closure on high school yet, but I'm pretty much done with the college. Maybe it was because the college seems a little bit like Dundler Mifflen. Maybe it's just because every goodbye is hitting harder these days.

Whatever the reason, I feel like I should pay a little tribute to good ole SCC. I spent much of my time there ragging on the place, ashamed of walking among some of the least intelligent people I've ever met. But SCC is great because I also met some of the most intelligent people I've ever met there. It's a place of extremes: really young and really old, really lazy and really ambitious, really homegrown and really exotic.

A few of the professors, one in particular, set me on course. Essentially, isn't that what community college is for? I went from studying something everybody else assumed I loved to something I know I love. The professor saw in me what I refused to admit was there; he kept me from settling. As cheesy as it sounds, he gave me the confidence I needed to pursue the path I know, however difficult, I should be going down. Though I never expected to find it on community college campus, I found challenge and direction. I wonder if he knows how much his words hit home. If I had never gone to that school, I might still be plodding down the wrong path.

I also got my first job, the best job I could ever have, at SCC. It furthered reinforced what I had just realized--I need to be a teacher. It showed me I could do it and that I would love it. It allowed me to meet people both inspirational and infuriating. It let me feel some of what it is like to part of an office a la The Office. That experience, something I could never have anywhere else, is now an essential part of me, thanks to SCC.

I'm going to miss eating artery-clogging meals in the grill with whatever random people found in there. I'm going to miss everyone freaking out when the water in the fountain outside the grill freezes over. I'm going to miss being the only person in the library looking for a book instead of watching "That 70's Show" on Youtube. I'm going to miss teachers start considering you less students and more humans, friends. I'm going to miss being in classes of all ages and all walks of life and meeting people who are getting construction degrees so they can build their own houses. I'm even going to miss the taxidermy conferences and spending forever looking for a parking space.

I'm probably still going to try to deny the community college credits on my transcript, even though I earned them while still in high school. But even though I never would've attended SCC if it weren't for my weird little high school, I wouldn't trade my time there for the world. It made me who I am, and while I might not be the ultimate version of myself, I can't image I'd be a superior me without SCC.

During their emotional goodbye, Jim tells Michael that "goodbyes are a bitch." He was definitely right. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm going to miss you, SCC.

Who Knows

The blinking cursor mocks me mercilessly as I stare at the empty page. With every digitized blink, I wonder more and more if I have the power to move it across the white expanse, send it on a harrowing journey to the bottom of the page, make it disappear on a freshly printed document.

I do the busy work, providing a false sense of accomplishment. My name, the date, the header. They don’t really matter but make my idle hands feel useful for a moment, the worry welding up within me temporarily quelled.

My mind races about everything but the topic at hand. I run my hand over the spines of the books lining the shelf behind me. Dust stirs up in plumes at my touch. All of these words. They’ve all passed through my brain, have all influenced me somehow. I envy the names printed on the dust jackets. How I long to do what they’ve accomplished: they’ve written something somebody else wanted to read. Their cursors moved, their abilities proven; they found the secret ingredient so elusive to me. I hope I could absorb their abilities by proxy, but all I manage to do is sneeze.

In the movies, characters just go on some adventure where they find the inspiration they need to write the story that’s been lying dormant inside them all along. I go outside and walk down the street, hoping something miraculous will happen.

It’s a nice day, kind of sunny with a slight breeze. Pretty non-descript. The road is same as it always is with its faded white line marking the division between coming and going, the mailboxes patiently waiting to gobble up deliveries, the trees quietly standing guard over the silent houses. The familiarity erases any chance of inspiration. A cat eyes me suspiciously where the road dead ends. As I approach his territory, he backs up but never diverts his piercing green pupils. I stop to keep him from running, and we reach an impasse.

The only sounds are the birds chirping and us breathing, sounds so familiar they hardly count as sounds at all. The cat is looking at me like I’m the most interesting and frightening thing in the world. In that moment, his whole existence hinges on whether I am friend or foe. As my feline acquaintance contemplates flight or fright, I take a few steps forward. He arches his back in retaliation. “It’s okay, kitty,” I say in the baby voice people reserve for animals and infants.

Immediately, I regret it. Who am I to assume the cat should be regarded as a child? He and I treated the encounter with strikingly similar approaches. I would be offended if he meowed at me condescendingly. “Hello cat,” I replied, in a regular tone.

The cat remained frozen at the edge of his driveway, blocked by an invisible boundary, but unarched his back. I stood in the uncomfortable silence for a few more minutes before turning around to head back towards home. When I glanced back, the cat was gone. He certainly knew to cease his opportunity for escape.

Sitting back in front of my blindingly white computer screen, I rested my hands on the keys and waited. The stubborn story rests within me, arching its back, blocked by fear and boundary lines. With every step forward, it backs up. My approach is wrong. If I turn my back, it will disappear. But I coax it and coax it, and eventually, it has to come.

Grandma Meg

When I was young, I never wanted to leave Grandma Meg’s house. In order to coax me from her side and into the car, my parents would have to appease me with a plush refrigerator magnet that happened to greatly resemble Grandma. I would clutch the magnet, christened Little Grandma Meg, so I would miss her little less on the ride home.

It’s no mystery why I would never want to leave her. Some of my best memories come from simple summer evenings at her house. One of the few times I’ve laughed until I cried was on her back porch playing Yahtzee. I accidentally picked up the dice and put them in my cup of Pepsi instead of the game’s red cup. We laughed so hard at my silly mistake. That was one of the reasons Grandma was so great: she could have fun doing the smallest, simplest things.

I loved going shopping with her. There was never a person more at home perusing the racks at a department store. She could spot a deal as soon as she walked in the door and had eye for the most perfect purchases. Soon after my family moved back closer to home after living for awhile in Texas, Grandma wanted to take me shopping for back to school clothes. I was nervous at first because the distance had made me forget the intricacies of her character. Without the buffer of my parents, I was afraid it would be awkward. That was a foolish fear.

She flitted from rack to rack, holding up a shirt or a dress against my body and seeing immediately whether it was up to par. She chose clothes I would never pick out myself, but they would always end up being my favorite outfits. Soon, my friends at school were following up any compliments on my outfit with “was that a Grandma Meg purchase?” She was the trendiest Grandma anywhere. Soon I remembered the person I was so attached to, hilarious, happy, and loving. Her love and compassion never left any room for awkwardness.

When time for my senior prom rolled around, I knew exactly who to call. We all tried to keep up with her as she searched through hundreds of dresses. Annoyed at my hesitance to try anything on, she heaped my arms with beautiful gowns. Eventually, she draped an amazing black dress over my arms at an expensive specialty store. Of course, I loved it, and so did she. But the price tag was shocking. Still, Grandma had found the dress we were meant to buy, and we were not leaving the store without it. “What about Dad?” I asked, concerned for his cardiac health. “Don’t worry about him,” she said, waving her hand dismissively, “I will take care of him.” And so I got my perfect dress, and I felt wonderful in it all night.

Grandma always knew what would make you happy, and she wouldn’t rest until she did everything she could for it to happen. Compassionate to a fault, she was always worried about everyone else’s welfare before her own. She loved giving. Many times, if we visited her just before the holidays, she wanted to give us our gifts right then. She wanted to work so hard to make us happy, but the truth is she didn’t need to. All she had to do was be there, and maybe give us one of those warm, loving Grandma Meg hugs.

She was always up for anything. How many grandmothers would plunge down a waterslide at maximum speed, her purple swim suiting earning her the nickname “Meg the Missile”? How many would take on the streets of New York City, posing in character with a Dracula double in the wax museum and showering street hustlers with money because she was just that nice? ow mHowHow She would go anywhere, do anything, and always have a good time doing it. She loving traveling and having good stories to tell and spending time with her family.

Now I need my little Grandma Meg more than ever. I don’t know whatever happened to that little magnet, but I have the equivalent with me everywhere I go. I have the memories of her love and laughter preserved forever in my mind and heart. The taste of Pepsi and Mentos, the crinkle of shopping bags, the clean flowery smell of her house, and the sound of shuffling cards about to be dealt in a round of rummy will always remind me of the many cherished memories I’ve made with her. I could fill up a hundred files writing out all the good memories she helped make and those memories will help me and all my family go on living in a world without Grandma Meg. It devastates me that she won’t be there for my high school graduation, but I know she was so proud of me, and I will think of her as I walk across the stage. She always liked to point out the characteristics in me that seemed to come from her: picky and peculiar eating habits, affinity for shiny jewelry, being tight with money. I’m glad to know that I can carry on little bit of her because I know the world was a better place for having my Grandma Meg in it.