librarian – The View from a Drawbridge

Body Autonomy

“I can do whatever I want to you.”

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article entitled, “7-year-old girl traumatized after White school staff member cuts her hair”, and I was horrified by what I read.

It seems that little Jurnee Hoffmeyer, who is a Biracial girl with beautiful curls, was assaulted two days previously by a fellow student on the school bus. That student cut out a section of her hair. Her father immediately took her to the salon and let her choose her own style. (I like this man.) She came away feeling slightly better, with a beautiful crown of shoulder length curls. The father requested that the cutter in question not be allowed to sit next to Jurnee on the school bus. Case closed.

Or so you’d think.

Two days later, poor Jurnee came home in tears, her hair butchered. She now had less than three inches of hair all over her head. Her dad asked if it was the same kid, but to his shock, he found out that no, this time it was the library teacher, Kelly Mogg.

Insert the sound of my head exploding here.

HOW DARE SHE??? In what universe does a teacher look at a student and decide how he or she can be “sculpted”, like she’s a statue? Especially without talking to the parents first? What’s next? A tattoo on the kid’s wrist of the school mascot with a number underneath? How dare she even TOUCH that child? This is abuse and assault, and I’m stunned that the woman wasn’t ridden out of town on a rail.

Yes, hair grows back, but you don’t understand the trauma that is caused when you teach a child that he or she has no control over their own body. Here are just a few examples from my life.

In junior high school, I had lovely thick wavy hair down to the small of my back. A kid on the bus thought it would be funny to drop a big wad of chewing gum between my hair and the seat back. The only way to get it out was to cut it. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to live with the thought that a big glob of someone else’s spit was clinging to my hair until I got home. It felt like a violation.

And it also triggered me, because when I was around ten my mother chopped off all my hair down to a pixie cut against my will. I was mistaken for a boy for ages after that. I’d walk around hiding under a big floppy hat whenever I could, but they didn’t allow one in school. It took me years to recover from the theft of my autonomy and the theft of my gender. It still sticks with me.

And I’ll never forget the time a boy walked up to me and stuck his finger in my mouth and ran it along my gum line. I have no idea why he did that, but it was disgusting and inappropriate and so not okay that I can still feel the way I felt when it happened if I think about it for very long. Talk about your invasion of space.

I know someone who was in the midst of a horrible custody battle with her ex-husband and his new wife. The child was sent to the father’s house for visitation, and when she came home, it turned out that the stepmother had pierced the child’s ears, a permanent change, without discussing it with the mother. It was a smug little way to send the message that they were in control. Evil. Just evil.

And then, of course, there’s sexual abuse. I won’t go into detail here, but trust me when I say that it changes you forever. You are never the same after that. You never feel completely safe.

All of these things have one thing in common. They are aggressive. They are all about sending the message that you are not in control, little girl. I am. You don’t even get to have agency over your own body. I can come along and do whatever I want to you, and you have to live with it. You have no right to choose. Your saying no does not matter one whit. You are inferior. You are weak. Just lie back and take it. Stop being so sensitive and hysterical.

No wonder Jurnee’s spirit seems damaged now. Especially when you factor in the racial overtones of her assault. “You have bad hair.” “You are different.” “You look funny.” “I know better than you do how you should be.”

The Mount Pleasant Public School system is not viewing this outrage as a big deal. I’m glad lawyers are involved. I think this is the biggest deal of all.

Jurnee, if you ever read this, I want you to know that your hair is beautiful just the way it is. Grow it back out and be loud and proud. Oh, and I love your name, too.

A big thanks to StoryCorps for inspiring this blog and my first book. http://amzn.to/2mlPVh5

Heartfelt Hyperbole

It’s been proven time and again in this blog that I’m several years behind trends. Don’t feel sorry for me. I get to luxuriate in that fresh, new, exciting, trendy feeling even years later, simply because, while my discovery may not be new to you, it’s still new to me. Just pretend I’m in a different time zone; one of my own making.

If you have to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for yourself, dear reader, because you get to hear me rave about something that you’re most likely already over. Think of it as the penance you do to read my other, more current stuff. Am I asking too much, here?

Anyway.

This discovery came about because I was massaging my own ego. I was honored to hear that four copies of my book are now in the King County Library System, scattered in branches all around the Seattle area. Holy cow! I have a call number! Just call me 814.6 ABE.

So I couldn’t resist. I had to see what authors I was sharing my shelf with.

Omigod. Calvin Trillin? Rebecca Solnit? Seriously? I wanted to shout, right there in the library. But I resisted the urge. (I did tell the librarian at the checkout counter, but she seemed unimpressed by the enormity of it all. Buzz kill.)

But I thought that the best way to honor the event was to choose a book on my shelf (my shelf!!!) to read. So I chose Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. (Hence, the unsatisfying encounter with the checkout librarian.)

So here goes trendy me, discovering the most amazing book from 2013. I mean seriously, if you are as out of the loop as I am and you haven’t read it, do so. Right this minute. You can finish it in one sitting if you’re motivated. You’ll thank me.

Allie Brosh has the most amazing literary voice. I constantly found myself laughing in sympathy. I understand her. I suspect a lot more people do than would care to admit it. She has humorous angst down to a science.

Her spot-on description of chronic depression and how people react to it is quite the revelation. She talks about feeling nothing as if feelings are dead fish. And people are trying to help her by saying they’ll help her look for them. But she knows where they are. They’re right here. They’re just dead.

I get that. I have felt that way on and off for much of my life. Trying to help someone “snap out of it” doesn’t work. Trying to cheer someone up doesn’t work. But after reading Allie’s description of depression, I know what I will say to the next depressed friend I have.

I get it. I’ve been there. It feels like nothing matters. It feels blank. You don’t care, even though you want to. But here’s the thing: somewhere, deep down, underneath that wet wool blanket of utter despair, you still care just enough to stay alive in that bleak, painful wasteland that you find yourself in. You care enough about the people who love you to not want to hurt them by taking yourself out. That’s something. That’s huge, actually. It’s heroic. Hang on to that.

Hang on.

Since publishing this amazing book, Allie Brosh has dropped off the radar, depriving us of her amazing talent. But that’s her prerogative. If she wants to be left alone, so be it. But Allie, I hope you’ll hang on. I think you are a wonderful addition to this planet. Just sayin’.

“Enthusiosity”

There’s a streak that runs through my family, and it’s as wide as the Mississippi River. For lack of a better word, I call it “enthusiosity”. It’s curiosity mixed with a great deal of enthusiasm. My mother had it more than anyone else. She’d get interested in a topic such as Australian History, and she’d read every single thing that the library had on the subject. Then she’d move on to something else, like Anasazi basket weaving. She was an amazing woman, my mother. One of those people who could walk into a room and suddenly the lights would seem brighter. She loved to talk to people. She loved to learn.

I love this picture of her. You can see the “enthusiosity” written all over her face.

She would have chewed up college like locusts in a field, but her father, who intended to send her to school, unfortunately died in WWII when she was 17. I often wonder what her life would have been like had he survived.

She never lived to see the internet, and that’s a shame. If she had, we’d have been hard pressed to get her off line each night. She’d have been constantly saying things like, “Oh! Look at this! They’ve found a new species of lobster with HAIR!”

I think of my mother every time I go into a library. I remember her telling me one time that libraries were the most amazing places, because when you went inside, you could go anywhere in the entire universe. To this day, I get butterflies in my stomach whenever I enter a library, not unlike the kind other people would get by going to Disney World for the first time.

If you never lose your “enthusiosity”, if your mind is always open to learning new things, you will have riches beyond measure.