I read an article entitled 13 Things A Movie Theater Employee Won't Tell You. My very first paying job was at the now defunct Pentagon City Theatres in Pentagon City Mall back in the 11th grade. Between high school and college I worked at four different theaters, so the article piqued my interest. It was spot on, but it failed to mention half the things that I expected to see. Two of the theaters shut down and the other two were bought by another company, so I don't think I can be sued. I'll just leave out the names of the theaters. Here's my list
#1 If you don't see a popcorn kettle, then more than likely the popcorn isn't fresh.
At all but one theater, we used to pop popcorn ahead of time and keep it in the back on shelves. We had to keep at least thirty 13-gallon trash bags up on the shelf at all times. First in, first out. If I popped it on Monday and business was slow all week, then you probably ate it on Friday. You couldn't tell a difference because those display cases have warm air coming out of the bottom. My job in the morning was to fill the bins in the front, turn on the light and turn on the air warmers. Subsequently, my job at night was to empty the bins and put all the unsold popcorn back in a bag and back on the shelf to be reheated and resold tomorrow.
#2 For the love of God, that isn't butter!
One theater required us to correct customers who asked for butter on their popcorn: We have butter-flavored topping. What does that mean? At the beginning of the day, we go back into the storage room and pull out this gallon jug that looks like the same canola oil bottle you'd get from the grocery store except that stuff was chunky and slightly off colored. We dump that into the big butter dispenser bowl and flip the switch that melts it down. It's some kind of oil, but I have no clue which one. And if you get a whiff of it, it smells nothing like butter. And at the end of the day, we did the same thing that we did with the popcorn...pour the leftover butter back in the container and put it back on the shelf.
#3 Yes, you are being ripped off.
You're being ripped off because the theater is being ripped off. Only a small portion of ticket sales goes to the theater. 90% of their profit is from selling food. That large popcorn that you paid $7 for only cost 15 cents to make. If it were not for the high concession prices you would be watching the movie on a folding chair in a closet.
#4 I don't eat here.
The cleanest theater that I ever worked at required us to remove all of the nozzles from the soda dispensers nightly and soak them in solution. We had to spray the popcorn bins with sanitizer and we disassembled the hot dog and slushee machine components and cleaned them off. That's the cleanest theater. The average one I worked for...I didn't even know half of that stuff could come apart and be cleaned. We used to wipe the outside of the popcorn glass to get the fingerprints off and that was it.
Now the dirtiest theater I ever worked for was also one of the most popular ones. During my first week the shift lead asked me if I was afraid of mice. When I told her no, she added throwing away mice traps to my list of duties. The room with the candy and all the popcorn always had two or three mice on the traps daily. We'd assign the boxes of Raisinettes and Goobers to spoilage when we found gnaw marks going through them. We'd discard the popcorn IF we caught the fact that there was a hole in the bag where they'd been eating it. And you don't even wanna know how many times I found rat droppings in the ice bins. You wouldn't even think that rats would go near an ice bin. The only reason we stayed in business was because the state I worked in didn't do random health inspections. Instead they scheduled them and the night before we all had to stay late to clean up. So no, I don't eat movie food.
The list could go on and on, but we're at 750 words and I try to keep these things as far away from 1000 whenever possible.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Random Word Generator
I can't really think of anything to write about today. I'm tired. I don't want to leave you hanging, so I just went to a website that randomly generates words. Whatever word comes up...I'm gonna write about the first memory associated to that word.
Tongue.
Okay. That really is random. Hmmm.
When I was about seven or eight my grandmother asked me to carry a TV upstairs. It was a small 13 inch black and white TV so it technically wasn't "Prince of Egypt...Build My Pyramid...Let My People Go" slave labor. Anyway, I didn't think to wrap up the cord before I picked it up, so of course I tripped on it half way up the stairs. They all came running when they heard me fall (to see if the tv was broken) and when it was determined that the screen wasn't cracked they walked away. I started crying and that brought them back.
Somehow I bit a hole through my tongue...literally. It went straight through and that freaked me out. By now you should know better than to think that this story ends at a doctor's office. My grandmother gave me some salt water and told me to swirl it around for a while...then go lay down. That's the whole story.
That's only 211 words. What else you got, word generator? Wheel of Morality turn, turn, turn. Tell us the lesson that we should learn!
Fence?
Ooookay. I feel like I'm in a memory freestyle battle.
Uh, one day me and my friend were playing basketball on a court that closed after dark. We climbed over the fence to get in because the gate was locked and after we were done we went back the way we came. Now this was in the "welcome to puberty" years when the new "manly" features attracted the ire of the police for no apparent reason. The cops used to stop me for all kinds of random things around the ages of 13-15. I remember one time a cop rode by me, backed up the car and got out to tell me to stand against a wall and prove that I'd purchased the 35 cent CVS Gold Emblem generic Sprite that I was drinking...Or Imma lock your ass up! Um, there's a receipt in my pocket next to a pack of Reese Cups.
Anyway, I remember one of us seeing a cop ride by and thinking they'd try to lock us up for trespassing, so we tried to hurry up and get over that fence. Of course when I got to the top of it and had one leg over it, I slipped. I didn't fall to the ground though because the wiry part of the fence got caught in the crotch of my jeans. I tried to get the other leg over, but I was caught...not just in the fabric of the jeans but in some other place near and dear to my heart.
Now this fence was like eight or nine feet high, and not really made for climbing, so I was trying to wiggle free without tearing anything open and at the same time without falling to the concrete below. In my head the situation was as intense as the scene in Jurassic Park when they're climbing over the electric fence as the lady is turning the power back on.
My friend didn't know why I was working so carefully to free myself and he decided to climb back up to "help" me. Somewhere in his deranged mind he thought that he could just pull my foot or something and that would wiggle my jeans free. I was in too much pain to explain that the jeans weren't the only thing caught, but I just couldn't find the words to explain. Words were coming out, but it was more like an opera performed by an all-Tourette Syndrome cast.
So he made the decision to save himself and run. At that point I was actually hoping it was a cop, because he could call for the fire department and an ambulance. It ended up being a HUD Cop who was parking to go to the store. He didn't pay me any attention. I ended up slipping and falling off completely. Miraculously, I was okay. Slightly perforated, but okay.
Tongue.
Okay. That really is random. Hmmm.
When I was about seven or eight my grandmother asked me to carry a TV upstairs. It was a small 13 inch black and white TV so it technically wasn't "Prince of Egypt...Build My Pyramid...Let My People Go" slave labor. Anyway, I didn't think to wrap up the cord before I picked it up, so of course I tripped on it half way up the stairs. They all came running when they heard me fall (to see if the tv was broken) and when it was determined that the screen wasn't cracked they walked away. I started crying and that brought them back.
Somehow I bit a hole through my tongue...literally. It went straight through and that freaked me out. By now you should know better than to think that this story ends at a doctor's office. My grandmother gave me some salt water and told me to swirl it around for a while...then go lay down. That's the whole story.
That's only 211 words. What else you got, word generator? Wheel of Morality turn, turn, turn. Tell us the lesson that we should learn!
Fence?
Ooookay. I feel like I'm in a memory freestyle battle.
Uh, one day me and my friend were playing basketball on a court that closed after dark. We climbed over the fence to get in because the gate was locked and after we were done we went back the way we came. Now this was in the "welcome to puberty" years when the new "manly" features attracted the ire of the police for no apparent reason. The cops used to stop me for all kinds of random things around the ages of 13-15. I remember one time a cop rode by me, backed up the car and got out to tell me to stand against a wall and prove that I'd purchased the 35 cent CVS Gold Emblem generic Sprite that I was drinking...Or Imma lock your ass up! Um, there's a receipt in my pocket next to a pack of Reese Cups.
Anyway, I remember one of us seeing a cop ride by and thinking they'd try to lock us up for trespassing, so we tried to hurry up and get over that fence. Of course when I got to the top of it and had one leg over it, I slipped. I didn't fall to the ground though because the wiry part of the fence got caught in the crotch of my jeans. I tried to get the other leg over, but I was caught...not just in the fabric of the jeans but in some other place near and dear to my heart.
Now this fence was like eight or nine feet high, and not really made for climbing, so I was trying to wiggle free without tearing anything open and at the same time without falling to the concrete below. In my head the situation was as intense as the scene in Jurassic Park when they're climbing over the electric fence as the lady is turning the power back on.
My friend didn't know why I was working so carefully to free myself and he decided to climb back up to "help" me. Somewhere in his deranged mind he thought that he could just pull my foot or something and that would wiggle my jeans free. I was in too much pain to explain that the jeans weren't the only thing caught, but I just couldn't find the words to explain. Words were coming out, but it was more like an opera performed by an all-Tourette Syndrome cast.
So he made the decision to save himself and run. At that point I was actually hoping it was a cop, because he could call for the fire department and an ambulance. It ended up being a HUD Cop who was parking to go to the store. He didn't pay me any attention. I ended up slipping and falling off completely. Miraculously, I was okay. Slightly perforated, but okay.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Baby on Board
Last night I went to yet another Yelp Elite event. It was at a place called Lime in Columbia Heights. It's like Chipotle with more alcohol and more of an adult crowd. Good food by the way, so there's your free advertising for the day. Anyway, as I said before, I'm trying to find my inner social butterfly, and that thing got loose last night.
So the theme of the evening was high school stereotypes. You could come as a nerd, a jock, or whatever came to mind. I decided to take it someplace I was certain no one else would go. I put on my old backpack from college and tied the straps together in the front. Between those two straps, I placed my daughter's doll baby and carried around a sippy cup. Ladies and gentlemen, I went as a teenage parent (The jackass is strong with this one).
Talk about a great icebreaker. I spoke to more people last night than I have in the last year. Some people were drunk and thought it was a real baby from afar. As they came closer to curse me out, they realized what it was and told me how creative it was. Other people came up to tell me how offensive it was and how that made them like it even more.
The highlight of the night was when the dance floor got going into a pseudo Soul Train line and me and the baby cut a rug. It started with some knockoff electric slide dance and quickly progressed into the running man during You Can't Touch This. About ten minutes later, the baby was high fiving people (literally) and dancing with various people on the floor. The baby and I were also asked to take several photos. The baby may or may not have been holding a bottle of Dos Equis at the time.
Suffice to say, I had a lot of fun.
So the theme of the evening was high school stereotypes. You could come as a nerd, a jock, or whatever came to mind. I decided to take it someplace I was certain no one else would go. I put on my old backpack from college and tied the straps together in the front. Between those two straps, I placed my daughter's doll baby and carried around a sippy cup. Ladies and gentlemen, I went as a teenage parent (The jackass is strong with this one).
Talk about a great icebreaker. I spoke to more people last night than I have in the last year. Some people were drunk and thought it was a real baby from afar. As they came closer to curse me out, they realized what it was and told me how creative it was. Other people came up to tell me how offensive it was and how that made them like it even more.
The highlight of the night was when the dance floor got going into a pseudo Soul Train line and me and the baby cut a rug. It started with some knockoff electric slide dance and quickly progressed into the running man during You Can't Touch This. About ten minutes later, the baby was high fiving people (literally) and dancing with various people on the floor. The baby and I were also asked to take several photos. The baby may or may not have been holding a bottle of Dos Equis at the time.
Suffice to say, I had a lot of fun.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Playtime
Lately I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone and rediscover high school Ordale. That guy was fun. He was in every club and organization. You used to see him walking down the halls talking to everybody and making people laugh. He was the president of the SGA so he used to speak to every single person, especially the ones who looked sad or lonely. You could call him a social butterfly, but he was more like a social dragon. Everybody knew Ordale, even people who didn't go to the school.
That's the guy I'm trying to get in touch with. Somewhere between high school and college, he got kidnapped and locked away in some subconscious cerebral prison. Popularity was fun, but it had its downside. After a stress filled senior year where popularity became more annoying than rewarding, I decided to stay to myself in college. It was never my intention to become antisocial. It just happened.
So fast forward seven years since college and I'm trying to break out of this artificial shell. I've done some Yelp Elite parties and I even integrated kayaking a week ago. This past weekend I went to something called an Adult Playdate. Teams of four compete in field day games that you'd find at an elementary school: tug of war, wheelbarrow, leapfrog, crabwalk and piggyback races, etc.
That shit sounds fun until you actually start doing it. There's a reason grown people don't have playground equipment behind their office buildings...we might die. It didn't help that someone thought it'd be more of a challenge to lump events together. Instead of having a wheelbarrow race be one event, we had to do that and a leapfrog race and a piggyback race and then finish up with a crabwalk up and down a field. And all of that was just one event. There were like fourteen events.
By the time I got to our last event--which only became the last event because it started raining--my legs, arms, and 35% of my internal organs had adopted "cramp" as their official religion. I was in so much pain that my blood hurt. When the uterus that I don't even have started to hurt, that's when I knew it was time for me to go home, so I limped away without hearing the final results. My team won overall and got a bunch of prizes as a result. Sadly, you had to be there to actually claim your prize, so I don't get shit...except an epsom salt bath and coupon good for 50 cents off my next bottle of Ben-Gay.
The moral of today's story is that you're only as old as you feel. I'm dead based on that fact.
That's the guy I'm trying to get in touch with. Somewhere between high school and college, he got kidnapped and locked away in some subconscious cerebral prison. Popularity was fun, but it had its downside. After a stress filled senior year where popularity became more annoying than rewarding, I decided to stay to myself in college. It was never my intention to become antisocial. It just happened.
So fast forward seven years since college and I'm trying to break out of this artificial shell. I've done some Yelp Elite parties and I even integrated kayaking a week ago. This past weekend I went to something called an Adult Playdate. Teams of four compete in field day games that you'd find at an elementary school: tug of war, wheelbarrow, leapfrog, crabwalk and piggyback races, etc.
That shit sounds fun until you actually start doing it. There's a reason grown people don't have playground equipment behind their office buildings...we might die. It didn't help that someone thought it'd be more of a challenge to lump events together. Instead of having a wheelbarrow race be one event, we had to do that and a leapfrog race and a piggyback race and then finish up with a crabwalk up and down a field. And all of that was just one event. There were like fourteen events.
By the time I got to our last event--which only became the last event because it started raining--my legs, arms, and 35% of my internal organs had adopted "cramp" as their official religion. I was in so much pain that my blood hurt. When the uterus that I don't even have started to hurt, that's when I knew it was time for me to go home, so I limped away without hearing the final results. My team won overall and got a bunch of prizes as a result. Sadly, you had to be there to actually claim your prize, so I don't get shit...except an epsom salt bath and coupon good for 50 cents off my next bottle of Ben-Gay.
The moral of today's story is that you're only as old as you feel. I'm dead based on that fact.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Let Me Know
[caption id="attachment_1038" align="alignnone" width="286"]
At your best, you are love[/caption]
Before I head out today to go do whatever it is that Ordales do, I want to give a quick RIP to Aaliyah. It's been eleven years and I still feel some kind of way about her passing. I never met the girl, and honestly I only had one of her albums. Still, there's something to be said about a person who can touch you simply with their absence. Or as Jay-Z put it, Even if my absence, my presence is felt. That's gotta tell you I'm the king if nothing else.
I first really took an interest in her one day when I saw her on Vibe. Not the magazine, the failed TV Show. Yeah, that long ago. I think I was in my room doing pushups or something in my quest to grow up to be He-Man one day. She performed Hot Like Fire and I remember immediately taking my workout up a notch. I started doing sit ups and crunches and all kinds of random exercises thinking, I have to get my ass in shape because I'm gonna marry that girl!
By the end of her performance, I was smitten and also hobbling around the room trying not to wake my grandparents up because my entire abdomen had curled up into a fist. I even had a cramp in my bladder, and I don't even think that's possible. But I got right back to the workout...Aaliyah don't want no punk!
Sadly, I never got the chance to meet her. Ironically, on the day that I walked into my Management class and met my wife I was listening to At Your Best.
At your best, you are love[/caption]Before I head out today to go do whatever it is that Ordales do, I want to give a quick RIP to Aaliyah. It's been eleven years and I still feel some kind of way about her passing. I never met the girl, and honestly I only had one of her albums. Still, there's something to be said about a person who can touch you simply with their absence. Or as Jay-Z put it, Even if my absence, my presence is felt. That's gotta tell you I'm the king if nothing else.
I first really took an interest in her one day when I saw her on Vibe. Not the magazine, the failed TV Show. Yeah, that long ago. I think I was in my room doing pushups or something in my quest to grow up to be He-Man one day. She performed Hot Like Fire and I remember immediately taking my workout up a notch. I started doing sit ups and crunches and all kinds of random exercises thinking, I have to get my ass in shape because I'm gonna marry that girl!
By the end of her performance, I was smitten and also hobbling around the room trying not to wake my grandparents up because my entire abdomen had curled up into a fist. I even had a cramp in my bladder, and I don't even think that's possible. But I got right back to the workout...Aaliyah don't want no punk!
Sadly, I never got the chance to meet her. Ironically, on the day that I walked into my Management class and met my wife I was listening to At Your Best.
12 Months and Counting
There's something seriously wrong with my mind. I'm in here listening to History by Jay-Z and I got to the part...
Now victory is mine, she tastes so sweet
She’s my trophy wife, she's coming with me
We'll have a baby who stutters repeatedly
We'll name him history
He'll repeat after me
He’s my legacy, son of my hard work
Future of my past, he’ll explain who I be
Rank me among the greats
Either 1, 2 or 3, if I ain’t number one
Then I failed you victory
Ain’t in it for the fame, that dies within weeks
Ain’t in it for the money, can’t take it when you leave
I wanna be remembered long after you grieve
Long after I’m gone, long after I breathe
I leave all I am, in the hands of history
That's my last will, testimony
This is much more than a song
It’s a baby shower, I’ve been waiting for this hour
History, you're ours
He rapped this at Obama's inaugural dinner for obvious reasons, and a normal person would probably think about that when they hear this song. I'm not normal. I keep thinking about my daughter's first day of preschool. After all the smoke is gone, and the battle's finally won. Victory is finally ours!
The new school year for DCPS starts next week and that means I have twelve more months before my daughter goes to preschool. And this is a fact that I've been annoying my wife with for the last month or so. She's in mommy-mode and has that whole, My baby is growing up so fast. How can I slow down the hands of time?
Meanwhile on the battlefield...
I'm thinking How many more months before this tour of duty is over and they ship me back to the states? Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love my daughter. I don't say it enough. My wife says that one day she's gonna find this blog and think that I hated her. Nothing could be further from the truth. I joke a lot about her being a gremlin and I share all of the headaches only because I detest those people who dote on their children at the expense of others.
You know the type. The ones who beat you over the head with how intelligent their kids are because they blinked when exposed to light. They're the same ones who equate getting pregnant with curing cancer and are quick to bash someone else for either not having children or not raising them according to their standards. I promised to never be one of those people, so that's why I give you a truth-in-advertising parenting blog.
Life's all about balance. There's heaven and there's hell. You have millions of websites telling you how this is the most rewarding job you'll ever have.I'm here to tell you that you will cry uncontrollably in the shower one day. You will spend all of your hard earned money on toys that they will chuck into a corner in favor of the box the toys came in. You will learn to calculate how much of your money just went down the drain in the form of unconsumed formula, baby food and diapers that you have to change because just a speckle of baby-shit came out and it would be cruel to leave it on them.
Friends without kids will forsake you. The friends whom you secretly consider to be horrible parents will be dumbfounded by your refusal to take their advice. In the end it'll just be you and the kid (and the other parent if they're in the picture). You'll cling to little milestones like didn't take a dump in the tub today, but when something big like preschool comes along...it's different. It's that glimpse of a lighthouse in the distance signaling me through the fog. And like everything else, it represents balance. Heaven and hell.
I only have a little longer to go until I reach land. Heaven. But that means that our journey is coming to an end. Hell. She's growing up, moving on to something new and soon all the things that make me want to pull my hair out will be the memories I cling to as she begins a journey of her own that will ultimately lead her away from me. Now of course, I'm not going anywhere soon, but if the time when I see her 24 hours a day can fly by so fast, then I'm sure the next 16 years before she goes to college--when I only see her in the evenings and even less when she starts hanging out with her friends--will go by even faster. And that brings me back to the song, History.
She's my legacy, daughter of my hard work
Future of my past, she'll explain who I be.
Rank me amongst the greats
Either 1, 2 or 3. If I ain't number one
Then I failed you victory
Ain’t in it for the fame, that dies within weeks
Ain’t in it for the money, can’t take it when you leave
I wanna be remembered long after you grieve
Long after I’m gone, long after I breathe
Maybe she won't be the only one crying on the first day of school.
Now victory is mine, she tastes so sweet
She’s my trophy wife, she's coming with me
We'll have a baby who stutters repeatedly
We'll name him history
He'll repeat after me
He’s my legacy, son of my hard work
Future of my past, he’ll explain who I be
Rank me among the greats
Either 1, 2 or 3, if I ain’t number one
Then I failed you victory
Ain’t in it for the fame, that dies within weeks
Ain’t in it for the money, can’t take it when you leave
I wanna be remembered long after you grieve
Long after I’m gone, long after I breathe
I leave all I am, in the hands of history
That's my last will, testimony
This is much more than a song
It’s a baby shower, I’ve been waiting for this hour
History, you're ours
He rapped this at Obama's inaugural dinner for obvious reasons, and a normal person would probably think about that when they hear this song. I'm not normal. I keep thinking about my daughter's first day of preschool. After all the smoke is gone, and the battle's finally won. Victory is finally ours!
The new school year for DCPS starts next week and that means I have twelve more months before my daughter goes to preschool. And this is a fact that I've been annoying my wife with for the last month or so. She's in mommy-mode and has that whole, My baby is growing up so fast. How can I slow down the hands of time?
Meanwhile on the battlefield...
I'm thinking How many more months before this tour of duty is over and they ship me back to the states? Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love my daughter. I don't say it enough. My wife says that one day she's gonna find this blog and think that I hated her. Nothing could be further from the truth. I joke a lot about her being a gremlin and I share all of the headaches only because I detest those people who dote on their children at the expense of others.
You know the type. The ones who beat you over the head with how intelligent their kids are because they blinked when exposed to light. They're the same ones who equate getting pregnant with curing cancer and are quick to bash someone else for either not having children or not raising them according to their standards. I promised to never be one of those people, so that's why I give you a truth-in-advertising parenting blog.
Life's all about balance. There's heaven and there's hell. You have millions of websites telling you how this is the most rewarding job you'll ever have.I'm here to tell you that you will cry uncontrollably in the shower one day. You will spend all of your hard earned money on toys that they will chuck into a corner in favor of the box the toys came in. You will learn to calculate how much of your money just went down the drain in the form of unconsumed formula, baby food and diapers that you have to change because just a speckle of baby-shit came out and it would be cruel to leave it on them.
Friends without kids will forsake you. The friends whom you secretly consider to be horrible parents will be dumbfounded by your refusal to take their advice. In the end it'll just be you and the kid (and the other parent if they're in the picture). You'll cling to little milestones like didn't take a dump in the tub today, but when something big like preschool comes along...it's different. It's that glimpse of a lighthouse in the distance signaling me through the fog. And like everything else, it represents balance. Heaven and hell.
I only have a little longer to go until I reach land. Heaven. But that means that our journey is coming to an end. Hell. She's growing up, moving on to something new and soon all the things that make me want to pull my hair out will be the memories I cling to as she begins a journey of her own that will ultimately lead her away from me. Now of course, I'm not going anywhere soon, but if the time when I see her 24 hours a day can fly by so fast, then I'm sure the next 16 years before she goes to college--when I only see her in the evenings and even less when she starts hanging out with her friends--will go by even faster. And that brings me back to the song, History.
She's my legacy, daughter of my hard work
Future of my past, she'll explain who I be.
Rank me amongst the greats
Either 1, 2 or 3. If I ain't number one
Then I failed you victory
Ain’t in it for the fame, that dies within weeks
Ain’t in it for the money, can’t take it when you leave
I wanna be remembered long after you grieve
Long after I’m gone, long after I breathe
Maybe she won't be the only one crying on the first day of school.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Hug
Lately I've been doing a best of the best list in my head. I can't remember where I got the idea, but I find that it's so easy to think about things that piss me off so I wanted to see how hard it would be to do the opposite. What's the best meal I've ever eaten? What's the best movie I've ever seen? What's the hardest I've ever laughed? With it being back to school season, I started wondering who's the best teacher I've ever had. The jury is still out on that one, but I know who wins best principal.
As I get older and look back over my life through more mature lenses, I realize that my academic career was often affected by some of the things going on at home. Throughout elementary and junior high it seemed to be intermittent. I always got good grades in core subjects, but that citizenship grade was always iffy. Someone could've made a fortune by making a talks too much in class rubber stamp. But high school was a different story.
Maybe it's a little bit whiny now, but around Ninth Grade I went through the emotional equivalent of World War III outside of school. Whereas I'd always been a little angry growing up, I progressed into full on hatred. Truth be told, I was in a lot of pain, but I'd developed this mentality as little kid that anger was more useful than sadness. So despite how I truly devastated I felt about things going on in my personal life, anger was the offense that's the best defense. I lashed out at everyone. I cursed out teachers, administrators and students, because--as weird as it sounds--it felt like the right thing to do. I couldn't let anyone run over me. I had to stand up for myself.
The fact that I was in a magnet school that posed the first academic challenge in my life didn't help. I'd never gotten so much as a C before, so getting Fs really didn't go over well with me. I think that was the final straw that caused me to go over the deep end. I went into full on depression. The idea of killing myself started swirling around in my head, but I wasn't quite there yet. Subconsciously, I think I started self-sabotaging so that I could get there. I did even less in school, cursed out even more people and just stopped caring about everything. I wanted to get expelled.
So what does this have to do with my selection for best principal? Within the first few months of school I was probably sent to the office about a dozen times. Usually the principal was busy and I ended up talking to the Dean of Students or the Vice Principal. On one particular day I got sent to the actual principal. I let her have it. I said enough to get myself expelled from every school in the country. This was pre-9/11 when anger used to excuse people saying stuff like, I'll burn this motherfucker down!
When I had nothing left to say, I waited for her to give me the get out speech. She stood up, walked over to me and gave me a really tight hug. In the calmest voice in the world--and I will never forget it--she said, I love you. This was in the fall of '96 a year or two before Good Will Hunting came out, so I don't know where she got the idea from, but it had the same result. She hugged me and said:
I love you. I don't know what you're going through to make you feel like this and I know you think that no one else in the world cares about you, but I love you. I know what you're trying to do. You think that if you act out and keep coming in this office that I'll expel you. That's not going to happen because I love you too much to give up on you or to let you give up on yourself.
I don't know what possessed her to do that, but I cried like everything I'd ever cared about died at the same time. That lady's shoulders had to have been soaked by the time she let me go. Then she handed me some tissue and told me to get myself together and go back to class. She never spoke of it again, and I don't think I ever told anyone else about it. I won't lie and say that all of my problems went away, but I don't think I ever cursed anybody else out after that. Don't get me wrong, I expressed my opinion A LOT up until I graduated, but not like I did before. Something changed that day. I can't explain what it was, but I was different after that.
My only regret in the last few years is that I didn't go to my high school reunion, because she was there. She's retired now, so I'll probably never see her again. But if she ever stumbles across this...
Thank you Ms Linette Adams. You might have actually saved my life that day.
As I get older and look back over my life through more mature lenses, I realize that my academic career was often affected by some of the things going on at home. Throughout elementary and junior high it seemed to be intermittent. I always got good grades in core subjects, but that citizenship grade was always iffy. Someone could've made a fortune by making a talks too much in class rubber stamp. But high school was a different story.
Maybe it's a little bit whiny now, but around Ninth Grade I went through the emotional equivalent of World War III outside of school. Whereas I'd always been a little angry growing up, I progressed into full on hatred. Truth be told, I was in a lot of pain, but I'd developed this mentality as little kid that anger was more useful than sadness. So despite how I truly devastated I felt about things going on in my personal life, anger was the offense that's the best defense. I lashed out at everyone. I cursed out teachers, administrators and students, because--as weird as it sounds--it felt like the right thing to do. I couldn't let anyone run over me. I had to stand up for myself.
The fact that I was in a magnet school that posed the first academic challenge in my life didn't help. I'd never gotten so much as a C before, so getting Fs really didn't go over well with me. I think that was the final straw that caused me to go over the deep end. I went into full on depression. The idea of killing myself started swirling around in my head, but I wasn't quite there yet. Subconsciously, I think I started self-sabotaging so that I could get there. I did even less in school, cursed out even more people and just stopped caring about everything. I wanted to get expelled.
So what does this have to do with my selection for best principal? Within the first few months of school I was probably sent to the office about a dozen times. Usually the principal was busy and I ended up talking to the Dean of Students or the Vice Principal. On one particular day I got sent to the actual principal. I let her have it. I said enough to get myself expelled from every school in the country. This was pre-9/11 when anger used to excuse people saying stuff like, I'll burn this motherfucker down!
When I had nothing left to say, I waited for her to give me the get out speech. She stood up, walked over to me and gave me a really tight hug. In the calmest voice in the world--and I will never forget it--she said, I love you. This was in the fall of '96 a year or two before Good Will Hunting came out, so I don't know where she got the idea from, but it had the same result. She hugged me and said:
I love you. I don't know what you're going through to make you feel like this and I know you think that no one else in the world cares about you, but I love you. I know what you're trying to do. You think that if you act out and keep coming in this office that I'll expel you. That's not going to happen because I love you too much to give up on you or to let you give up on yourself.
I don't know what possessed her to do that, but I cried like everything I'd ever cared about died at the same time. That lady's shoulders had to have been soaked by the time she let me go. Then she handed me some tissue and told me to get myself together and go back to class. She never spoke of it again, and I don't think I ever told anyone else about it. I won't lie and say that all of my problems went away, but I don't think I ever cursed anybody else out after that. Don't get me wrong, I expressed my opinion A LOT up until I graduated, but not like I did before. Something changed that day. I can't explain what it was, but I was different after that.
My only regret in the last few years is that I didn't go to my high school reunion, because she was there. She's retired now, so I'll probably never see her again. But if she ever stumbles across this...
Thank you Ms Linette Adams. You might have actually saved my life that day.
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