My new BFFs

This summer, I had two gargantuan celebrity encounters. I saw Britney Spears in concert and I met Sandra Bullock in a restaurant. I suppose the Britney experience wasn't an "encounter," as there were 20,000 other people there too, but I was standing really, really close to the stage, so in my mind, we're now BFF's. Sandra too.

My 2.1 readers will know that I have long harboured a not-so-secret-interest in Britney Spears, which is mainly fueled by my immature taste in music and appalled fascination with people who get pulled through the Play-Doh-Fun-Factory-of -Stardom. I have also been a longtime fan of Sandra Bullock, despite feeling only lukewarm about many of her movies.

(Note: This is not true of Bullock's breakout role in the movie "Speed," where she and Keanu Reeves drive a bomb-rigged bus on the highway, through Los Angeles, on the airport runway and, for an inexplicable 10 seconds, into thin air. I LOVE that movie. I had just broken up with my university boyfriend when it came out and every time I started feeling blue, my friend Graham hauled me out to see that movie in the theatre. It was cheap, wonderful, bicep-filled therapy. "Crash" and "Infamous" also prove that often the material she works with does not match her true abilities as an actor.)

As these two moments were certainly the most momentous of the summer, I thought I would do a compare and contrast treatment of the two life-defining moments. Students, take note; you're going to have to do this soon with books that I force you to read.

Similarities:

1.) Prettiness.

However pretty you thought Sandra Bullock was from the movies, multiply it by 1000 and that's what she looks like in real life. The fact that America thinks of her as "the girl next door" only makes sense if America lives next door to the "America's Next Top Model" house. Britney doesn't fare so well in this respect when it comes to how she has been seen on the billion feet of celluloid that have captured her every meltdown, but let me assure you, in real life she is pretty stunning. She may not look great in all of those candid shots of her, but her genetic material is pretty darn good - when she's all dressed up, she's awful purdy.

2. ... um ... well, maybe there's just prettiness.

Differences:

There is only one here too, and it's big. Life. Sandra Bullock has got one, Britney Spears doesn't.

When my friends and I were eating in the restaurant that Sandra (Sandy) owns in downtown Austin and she and her husband and stepdaughter took a table right next to us, we were all floored. After all, we had been joking all week, to ANYONE who would listen (and several people who didn't really care to) that we were going to meet Sandy there and we would become best friends forever. And here we were, eating together! Or near each other, at least.

I was instantly overcome with shyness, but I had to take advantage of this opportunity. I had to say SOMETHING to her, didn't I? I mustered my courage and blurted out:

"We like your restaurant!"

Sigh. Oh well, it could have been worse. I could have told her how much I liked her in "Pretty Woman," or something.

But then the most amazing thing happened. She turned to our table and had a conversation with us, like a real human being. About the restaurant, about her plans for a bakery down the street, about what she liked to eat there. It was short, but it was genuine. And as I looked around the restaurant, I realized that in this place, she wasn't a celebrity. Nobody in the restaurant was reaching for their cameras and cell phones when she walked in. The waitress asked her about the health of her dogs. There was no TMZ crew stalking her, no security detail. It was just a pretty lady out with her tattooed husband and their adorable daughter, and nobody lifted an eyebrow. Sandra Bullock seems to have found a balance between fame and anonymity; she is at once exceptional and normal.

Sadly, the same could not be said of poor Britney. She is exceptional in every way. Her show, I am not ashamed to say, was spectacular. There were jugglers and magicians and acrobats and circus freaks and in the centre of it was Britney herself. She certainly has that "it" factor; the Corel Centre was packed to the rafters with screaming Britney wannabes, and none of us, me included, could take our eyes off the stage. And for a moment, when she is performing in front of her adoring crowd, it seems that she has the best life in the world.

But of course, she has no life. At least when she was spiralling downwards into the mire two years ago she went out in her car for coffee and cigarettes. She has virtually disappeared from the tabloid media radar, and I'm sure that it's not for a lack of hunting. She is so carefully managed that we don't even see her at Starbucks anymore. You know that she is still drinking frappachinos, but you also know that now there is a team devoted to getting them for her while she is relentlessly shielded from the tabloid glare. Britney has become the most rare of all circus animals - one that is taken gingerly out of its cage for the performance of a lifetime, only to be packed carefully away again and whisked to the next town under the cover of night.

The concert was mesmerizing, but it was pre-fabricated and structured down to the last millisecond. No interaction with the audience was planned or permitted. When she slowed the show down for it's one ballad of the night, she did send out a "What's up, Ottawa?" but that was all we were allowed to see of non-singing, non-writhing Britney. Upon reading reviews of other shows in other towns, I see that the exact same pithy phrase was inserted in the exact same point in the show each night.

Most stars dread fading into obscurity. This is made painfully clear every time I turn on MTV only to learn that Biz Markee needs to lose weight or that Scott Baio is 45 and single. But Britney must yearn to have the kind of anonymity that is now enjoyed by former child stars like that kid from the Sixth Sense or the kid who played Natalie on "The Facts of Life," or the Karate Kid. (Although I do actually remember the name of the guy who played The Karate Kid - it was Ralph Macchio and he is the same age as Barack Obama. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, children of the seventies!)

I kind of wish that Britney would move to Austin. After all, she's a good old southern girl, and maybe she could learn a thing or two from beautiful, gracious Sandra Bullock, who took time out of her own dinner to converse briefly with a few stammering patrons of her lovely restaurant. Maybe she and Sandy could be neighbours and end up sharing iced tea on the porch and clucking their tongues about the latest Miley Cyrus exploits.

If that ever happens, I really, really hope they invite me. After all, they are my BFF's.

"Fashionista" or "Why I should try harder."

Note: This didn't actually happen today, as is written here. I just had trouble posting it last week for some reason.

Yes, another academic year is upon me, and as I think of how I will inspire my students to write freely and with aplomb this year, I turn shamefacedly towards my own, neglected blog. Poor little blog! How I have missed you!

Luckily for me, several elements of the universe have aligned to inspire me to pick up the blog again.

1.) It's September. For everyone in the world besides teachers (and perhaps students) years end on December 31 and begin on January first. But teachers begin each September with a vow to be better, stronger, faster and more organized than the year before, and to pick up things again that we have neglected over the summer.

2.) I saw Britney Spears in concert. If there is a more blogworthy topic, I'm not sure what it is. That will not be the subject of TODAY'S blog, however, because ...

3.) The weirdest thing happened to me today.

My faithful 2.1 readers will remember that I wrote a blog last year that detailed a highly entertaining and surreal ride in a taxi with a driver who (swear to God) claimed that he drove aliens around downtown Toronto. I will admit that this event isn't quite as cool as that, but it's pretty darn funny.

While my students will not return to school until next week, I have already been going in for a week, attending meetings, arranging my datebook, attending meetings, making photocopies, planning lessons and units attending meetings and attending meetings. Once this week I thought I was just eating my lunch, but it turned out that that was a meeting too.

I never find the transition to going back to work easy. It's not that I'm unhappy to go back to school - quite the contrary. It's just that I have forgotten how to get myself ready and out the door in an organized way. My showers take longer, I can never find my keys, I have to go back into the condo to get my forgotten laptop power cord, etc. It's only going to get worse when the students return because then I'll try to have to look nice too.

For many people, looking nice just seems to happen, but for me, it's not quite so simple. I don't really wear a lot of makeup, and no matter how long I spend, or how nice my hair looks when I leave the condo, by the time I get to the elevator it's all flat and insipid, so what's the point?

But hair and makeup is the least of my worries - my big problem is that I don't really know how to dress myself. I blame this on the fact that since I was about fourteen years old I had jobs where looking nice was not only not required, but downright foolhardy. My first job was at a horse stable, and my second was at a summer camp. Then a ranch, where I cared for and fed a myriad of animals which included (but was not limited to) 55 horses, 5 goats, 2 sheep, flocks of chickens and ducks and two giant pigs named Amos and Sochee. Then another farm. By the time I moved to Toronto to begin my teaching career, the only clothes I had were second-hand and came from Value Village. If I ever happen to actually look nice, rest assured, it's either a total fluke, or because I have allowed my friend Em to dress me.

(Note: I am not making this up. Em takes me shopping twice a year, picks out clothes for me and tells me what to buy and then tells me what outfits to wear. Conversations usually go like this:

Me: "Really? I should put a BELT over a SHIRT?

Em: "Yes, really. I'm telling you - it looks great."

Me: "Is it ... you know ... IN?"

Em: (patiently) "Yes, Alison, it's "in." I promise."

Me: (panicked) "What if it goes "out?" Will you tell me? Because I'll never know! I'll never know!"

Em: (soothingly) "Yes, yes, I promise."

Then we move to another store and have the exact same conversation about shoes or nail polish or pairing navy with black. I can't believe she puts up with me.)

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that because I am still in "meeting week" and I wasn't actually teaching today, I didn't put a whole lot of effort into my appearance. I just threw on a T-shirt and a long "hippie-ish" skirt and some sandals and ran out the door with wet hair. And this was all fine until I was engaged in conversation with the guy ahead of me in line at my local Tim Horton's. I was thinking about all of the things I had to do today which was mostly made up of ... you guessed it ... meetings ... and the guy looked at me and said:

"How are the meetings going?"

At this point I panicked. I thought that he must be someone involved with the school that I should know, but don't recognize. This happens to me fairly often - I can have trouble placing people when I don't see them in their usual context. Then he surprised me with:

"It's a good program, isn't it?"

This made me certain for a moment that he was connected to my school, because we do teach a very good program - the International Baccalaureate. But because I still had no idea who he was (or indeed, why he was talking to me) I decided to ask for clarification.

"I'm sorry ...what program are you talking about?"

And he said, "A.A."

At this point I thought he had mistaken me for someone else. "No, no," I clarified quickly, "I'm not in A.A.!"

He cocked his head to one side and looked at me quizzically. "Huh," he said. "You know, seven out of ten times, I get that right."

Yes folks, that's right. He looked me up and down and thought that I was an addict of some kind. And he was convinced enough to make his guess publicly, in a very long Tim Horton's line. Publically and loudly. Needless to say, I was somewhat taken aback.

I mean, I knew that I wasn't dressed up, but I did take for granted that people would look at me and assume that I wasn't addicted to ... say meth, for example. I would have been hurt, if it wasn't so funny. The more I thought about it, the more restraint it took me to keep myself from bursting out laughing. At the next moment he was called forward to a cashier, and I to another, and so this life-changing exchange ended.

It did make me think about possibly trying a little harder with my general appearance. Therefore, in the spirit of the new school year, I hereby promise to try to move up to the fashion level of "trying but clueless" or perhaps even just "lame," rather than "obviously addicted to an illegal susbstance."

I do wish I had had the presence of mind to ask him WHAT he thought I was addicted to, though. In the grand scheme of things, it's not important, but honestly, I'm really, really curious.

Next blog - the Britney experience. Promise.

Get your degree, sell some bras.

My best friend and I have a running joke that neither of us know anything about "typical" teenagers, despite the fact that we run across them all the time at work.

The reason for this joke is that, as a police officer, she routinely sees the "worst of the worst" - kids who damage property, steal, or hurt other kids. I, as a teacher at a small, private high school, see the "best of the best" - kind, motivated, thoughtful kids with exemplary support at home. Between the two of us, one could argue that we have never actually seen a "typical" teenager before (if such a thing actually exists; I have a feeling that it doesn't.)

Unlike my friend and I, there are lots of people who DO think that they understand the typical teenager, and they have been writing newspaper articles about them lately like nobody's business. Specifically, the articles lambaste teenagers for being lazy, infatuated with digital technology and completely unprepared for university. Well, I've got something to say about that.

First of all, I remember reading those articles when they were written about ME. Born in 1973, I am part of the much maligned "Generation X" who are technically people born between 1965 and 1980. (Note: who makes those "date" decisions about terms like "Generation X anyway? Probably some "Baby Boomer.") We were routinely described by the media in the early 90's as lazy wankers in plaid shirts (thanks to Cobain, Vedder et. al.) who had an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and extreme reluctance to move out of our parents' houses.

It was all hogwash, of course. Articles at the end of the 90's pointed out quite rightly that it was harder for university and college graduates to find work than it had ever been before, which explained both the disillusionment of the generation and the prolonged time in the parental home. I can relate: after I graduated in 1996 into an oversaturated teaching market, I had to work at four part-time jobs to make ends meet; teaching horseback riding lessons, doing publicity for a children's theatre company, selling camping equipment at the mall and, just down the escalator from the camping store, selling lingerie at La Senza.

Note: I am not making any of this up. I had four different sets of work clothes; casual for the theatre company and ultra-grubby for the horse ranch. I would work a morning shift in dressy black, white or navy clothes at La Senza (the only colours permitted unless it was Christmas, when you could add red) and then "click click click" my heels up to Hikers Haven and change into khakis and hiking boots and a uniform shirt. It was a ridiculous year. I liked Hikers Haven because I got lots of great discounts on clothes, tents and sleeping bags, but La Senza was way easier because, as a part-timer, I didn't actually have to know anything about lingerie. "That? That's a bra. It goes on your boobs." All that expertise for only $6.90 an hour.

So, as you can understand, I have read the recent articles about ... who are they? I suppose they are the tail end of "Generation Y", "Millennium babies" or "Echo boomers ..." with more than a little skepticism. If the media is to be believed, they are the "unprepared" generation. See this Toronto Star article which ricocheted around high schools and universities last week: Profs Blast Lazy First Year Students and this one about the effect that Facebook is having on university students that appeared a mere 6 days later. And if you think the articles are interesting, check out the "comments" sections that accompany them; they're full of parents blaming the schools, teachers blaming the government, professors blaming the parents, etc.

Here's what I think. I think that all of these people; the parents, the schools, the teachers, the professors and the government, haven't really thought this thing through. And I think that they're giving teens a bum rap.

It never crossed my mind that I wouldn't go to university. Both of my parents are very academic, and on my 18th birthday, two months before I graduated from high school, my dad gave me a suitcase and a dictionary. The message couldn't be clearer than that. Besides, I loved reading and analyzing novels and plays. I wanted to go to university and I was a good university student. But it also never crossed my mind that if I made another choice, I might starve to death.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but in a workforce that increasingly seems to value academic credentials, it's easy to see how today's teens WOULD feel that way. An undergraduate degree seems to have become the basic requirement for employment in any job, and if it isn't a requirement, it's certainly preferred. That undergraduate "piece of paper" has become synonymous with proving diligence and societal worth and, perhaps more alarmingly, can seem to a high school graduate like the ONLY way to prove it.

Of course, teenagers shouldn't feel this way. Community college programs, apprenticeships and life experience can teach as much as university can and ... dare I say it ... in some cases ... more. But more teens are opting for an undergraduate degree than ever before, and I'm willing to bet that it's not because they're more interested in European History or Chaucer than before. I think it's because they feel like it's the bare minimum needed to get ahead. So they go into a liberal arts program (students who feel like university is a hoop to jump through rarely sign up for applied mathematics or organic chemistry) but they don't really enjoy it. And then professors wonder why they seem unmotivated?

I really think we need to reevaluate how much respect we give to alternative forms of education and life experience. I have one friend who left university to volunteer for 3 months in South America, and was so moved by the experience that she stayed there, working on community projects for the next five years. When she finally did return to Canada, she felt tremendous pressure to complete her degree, because she was nervous about her future prospects without it. Somehow, she felt like she had something to be ashamed of because she lacked an undergraduate degree.

Now is it just me, or is that INSANE? She worked for five years for minimal pay in order to make other people's lives better; surely that's an indication of her worth as a person and a potential employee. I'm sure that she felt a real sense of accomplishment when she completed her degree, but that's what it should have felt like - an enriching accomplishment - and not an anvil hanging over her head.

I'm not saying that kids shouldn't go to university ... not at all. I have spent the last 11 years working in highly academic high schools where university is the next logical step for 98% of them. But I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't come across the occasional kid who was sweating though courses to prepare him for engineering when what he really wanted to do was be a carpenter and spend his days building things. Or the kid who really wanted to do an NGO internship but was too worried about delaying her university education by a year to go through with it.

So you professors who are lamenting the work ethic of "those kids today", perhaps you should take a moment and ask yourself why they are there in the first place. Many of them are there because it's the right place for them; indeed, my friends who are professors said in response to the Star article that they felt that they have had some of the best students in their career in the last few years. But others are probably there because they really do want to succeed, but they feel like they have to bide their time in a program that doesn't really interest or suit them, because our society doesn't offer enough respect to college programs, internships, apprenticeships or life experiences. And that's not their fault; that's ours.

Who knows? Maybe I'm just spouting off here. But remember that job I had at La Senza Lingerie? There were five part-timers there, and four of us, including me, had two degrees; an undergraduate and a teaching degree. Did those degrees help me get that job? They probably hired me over someone that didn't have them.

I guess that's not all bad though. The teaching degree certainly helped me be a true educator at La Senza:

"That? That's a bra. It goes on your boobs."

Laziness, Procrastination ... you know.

Well, here it is. February, 2009. The last time I wrote a blog was before Halloween. Disgraceful.

The thing is, I love writing this blog. I love it. And yet I still fell off the bandwagon. How did that happen?

I guess I could throw all of my excuses out there. The school play was in full swing and it was consuming all of my free time. I was navigating a new relationship after three years of stolid independence and general bolshiness. It was the lead up to Christmas. There were some health issues in my family.

All of those reasons are valid to a degree, I suppose. And every time I thought I that I had a great idea for a blog I would get caught up in something else, the moment would pass, and I would find myself unable to write. But, excuses aside, I know that the truth is that sustaining anything, even something you LOVE, takes some pretty solid commitment and effort.

This is something that I have only realized in my adulthood, I think. I guess it comes with the realization that the things you love involve one or more of the following: time, money, energy. As I get older, I realize in a way that I didn't as a child, that all of these are things are finite, and a lot of them get used up while you are working.

Take reading, for instance. I love reading. I'm an English teacher for crying out loud. But I buy wayyyyyyyyy more books than I have time to read. It's ridiculous. My shelves are groaning under the weight of books that I look at and think "I'm going to read two of you this weekend! Get ready, books!" And I start the books, but I never finish even one in a weekend anymore - it often takes weeks of snatched paragraphs on the subway or right before bed before I finally hit the denoument. I'm so grateful to my book club because a) it forces me to read books I wouldn't necessarily pick up on my own and b) it keeps me to a deadline. And I need it; Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy is a whopping 1474 pages, true, but that doesn't excuse the fact that I have been reading it off and on for nearly a year. When I was in high school I read Steven King's 1134-page behemoth The Stand in three weeks.

I'm never more aware of the effort needed to keep up things that are important to you than I am when I am at the gym. Any gymgoer knows that this is the worst time of year at the gym because it is suddenly overrun with people my brother refers to as the "resolutionists." The resolutionists, of course, are the people who haven't moved since Hoobastank had their "hit" (note the sarcastic quotations marks) and decide in January that "this is the year for fitness!" and off they dash to clog up the cardio machines and hog the free weights. I won't lie; my resolve to work out is often stronger in January too. But as we all huff and puff on our treadmills like a group of marathoners who will never reach the finish line, I think of myself running joyfully as a child; not for fitness or thigh reduction but because it was the best way to get where I wanted to be. Or because I had the energy to burn. Now, despite the fact that I love how I feel when I come home from the gym, it still feels a bit like a second job.

But that's the thing about growing up, I guess. When you're a kid you don't see that you can freely indulge in the things you love because of the amount of time you have, the fact that you're not paying for your own food and hydro and dental work, and because someone is usually around to drive you to where your fun happens to be located. When you grow up, you see that your fun takes commitment and effort, and it's not always fun in the process, but hopefully, you'll find that the end result is worth the commitment.

This is a long way of saying that I felt so busy and stressed that I thought my creativity had dried up, and before I knew it, months had passed and my blog remained unchanged. But it wasn't really about my creativity - I just got overwhelmed and lazy. So, you know ... sorry about that. The truth of the matter is that I could have been writing this whole time if I had turned the damn TV off now and again. But I'm back on the wagon now, I promise. And I've even got a few ideas for future blogs ... ready? I'm sharing them with my 1.2 readers now (if you're even still here) so you can keep me honest.

I'm going to tell you about the bike ride that is going to kill me. I'm not joking about this - I think that this bike ride might actually end my life. I'm also going to tell you about how I think that the decline of western civilisation is directly related to the decline in the use of consonants in everyday speech. I'm also going to tell you about how becoming a condo owner is like joining a cult, but with less moral relevance.

So get ready ... 'cause I got some crabbin' to do.

A