No Sick Days

When you're a kid, being sick is almost more good than bad.  As long as it's not a life-threatening illness, you get to skip school, people feel sorry for you, and your mom brings you ice cream in bed. The Game Show Network still makes my throat hurt a little because it's all I watched for a week in sixth grade when I got the flu. 

But getting sick in college is an entirely different experience. Nothing stops for you to rest and recover.

On Saturday, I woke up with the familiar seasonal ache in my throat, meaning the next week was about to be hell.  Sure enough, as the day progressed, my symptoms increased.  Despite the gallons of orange juice I drank and the Vitamin C supplements I chewed and all the home remedies I subjected myself to, I got sick.

Instead of just burrowing myself into my bed, I was forced to continue interacting with the public. Deadlines looming, I was forced to push myself to the Carrboro Music Festival.  The bass drums thumping from every corner of the tiny town pulsed inside my head.

I was supposed to be interviewing people, but the unfortunate state of my face precluded my efforts.  I would approach a happy concertgoer, all smiles and sunshine, happy babies and tail-wagging puppies, and ask "So what do you think of the festival?" with a barely-there voice and a nose full of disgusting, dripping snot.

People would glance at me with a moment of disgust before social propriety contorted their faces into a more pleasing expression. "I think music, is, uh, great," they'd say. "The festival is, um, great." And then disappear into the crowd.  Clearly, my article suffered (but they do not make a Walgreens brand medicine to cure that).

I sat through all the classes, mumbling about the importance of the heroic code in Beowulf and whether or not you should anecdotal leads, while dreaming of the Nyquil waiting for me beside my comfy blankets. My presence in class was beneficial to no one.

I hope my cold hasn't damaged my GPA too much.  Can I attach an addendum to my grad school applications for this?

McCormick Family Commandments for Sundays

1. Thou shall not rise too late to prepare for the 1:00 games.

It takes a long time for five people to shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast. All of these activities much be accomplished by kick-off. It does not matter if your water or your toast is cold. Get it done. Game time is upon us.

2. Thou shall not wear civilian clothes.

What team are you supporting anyway?  Do your laundry on time.  Get that jersey on. If you must, a tshirt with proper logos is acceptable.  But you must be committed. Your team needs you. Show your support.

3. Thou shall not pass in front of the tv during a play.

They last six seconds on average and will be followed for several minutes by Matthew McConaughey Lincoln commercials, so you can wait to get your beverage. Nothing in the kitchen is worth missing the results of this 3-and-5.

4. Thou shall not move the pig.

The pig sits at a place of honor beneath the television and faces the direction the Redskins are advancing down field. He is an important part of their game strategy and tampering with him can bring sadness to thousands. Please, hands off the pig.

5. Thou shall not give up defeat before defeat is certain.

The game isn't over til the clock ticks down.  Your job as a fan is not to proclaim defeat the slightest setback.  You are to find the one way in which victory can be obtained.  There is no place for pessimism.

6. Thou shall not wash your jersey for the duration of a winning streak.

It must remain washed with the sweat of victory.  But upon a loss, the stains of disgrace must be removed with April Fresh Tide.  Don't dry it, though. You'll mess up the numbers.

7. Thou shall not switch teams.

This is the ultimate blasphemy, punishable by removal of NFL Sunday Ticket subscription.  You have one loyalty. Choose wisely.

8. Thou shall not speak of the team as 'we.'

You are not employed by the organization or on the field or drinking by yourself at the Hooters bar. Refer to the team in third person pronouns only.

9. Thou shall not flip channels during the fourth quarter.

No amount of commercial avoidance makes this sin pardonable.

10. Thou shall not spoil the game for those that must DVR.

It is tempting to send the text. Refrain. Nothing removes joy from the game than prematurely knowing the outcome.

The SOUL of Reporting

My fledgling little organization, SOUL (Student Organization for Undergraduate Literature), hosted a Banned Books event Wednesday night.  A reporter and photographer from The Daily Tar Heel covered it.

This semester, I have gained hypersensivity to reporters since I'm having to do an insane volume of reporting.  As I saw him typing all resigned on his Macbook, dreaming of what his Wednesday night could have been, I felt much sympathy for him.  He just seemed so bored by our little event.

SOUL events are tiny, nerdy affairs.  We have them every other Wednesday night on a topic we can somehow construe as literary. Next week, our topic is super heroes.  Previously, we've done fairy tales, Harry Potter, Coriolanus, depression themes in literature, feminism and Disney... the list goes on.

The discussions are famous for going in the direction of Marxism or colonism or strangely enough, how evil Disney is.  People bring varied expertise to the talks and we can rarely guess how they're going to go.  Attendees are primarily English majors (though one of our co-presidents is history and comparative literature) but anyone can come. The unifying factor is caring about literature and learning and cultural issues or phenomena that go along with it. Sometimes we bring in an (un)lucky professor to give a guest lecture and eat free pizza.

Since I've been with SOUL since the beginning, and I've been the secretary for three years, I'm very attached to it. So I was excited when the reporter showed up.  We could use some more publicity and get outside our niche of people.

I thought he was getting into it.  He even contributed to our discussion (by telling us about book banning laws in his native Algeria) and he kept pulling people out in the hallway for what appeared to be intense interviews.

So I looked up the article today.  My favorite section:

“Everything, regardless of your opinions on it, deserves to be discussed. Even if you disagree with it,” she said.

Sophomore political science major Stephanie McCormick agreed.

“You have to recognize alternative viewpoints than your own,” she said.

Sophomore physics major Emma Dedmond agreed. 

 The most interesting point about that is the fact that Stephanie is my cousin, and I didn't know she was majoring in political science. 

The article makes us sound like we just sat there and agreed for two hours. I suppose essentially that is true, but it just didn't really hit at the essence of the event. I am too involved in it to to view it objectively. 

But this experience re-invigorated my approach to reporting.  Doing so much is making me jaded. I start to hate the people I'm writing about because I had to get squished on a bus for thirty minutes, get to my car, navigate an unfamiliar city and get lost for another thirty minutes, before finally arriving flustered to the thing I'm covering.  But that's not their fault.  They still just want to be accurately represented, just like I wanted SOUL to be accurately represented, ruined Wednesday nights be damned. 

Or I might be just be bitter that he didn't talk to me. I don't know.

 

Pit Stop Scene

The Pit Stop is sleepy on weekday mornings.  The workers stand behind their registers picking at their fingernails and gossiping.  An older employee scans barcodes on Tylenol boxes.  Every now and then, a customer will glide through, grab an energy drink, get his card swiped, and toss the receipt in the trash can beside the sign that says not to throw the receipt in the trash can.

But one customer lingered.  He inspected the display of cast-off Krispy Kreme donuts, the candy-store throwback bins of so many Swedish Fish, the many varieties of off-brand deodorants. After searching the tiny store for about 15 minutes, he selected a bottle of soda and a candy bar, totaling $3.97.

The cashier, a younger student with freshly curled hair and a persistent yawn, stuck out her hand to accept OneCard payment.  She was halfway through "Flex or expense?" when she noticed he had deposited a one hundred dollar bill in her hand.

She popped open the register and examined the few bills inside. "I don't think we can break this..."

The customer did not answer.  He just slid the bottle closer to the register.  The cashier began counting money. 

"10... 20... 30... 40... 50... 55... 60..."

"Do you need some more cash?"

"I don't know. I lost count."

"10...20...30...40..."

After several more attempts, the customer finally had his change and his purchases. He stuffed the wad of cash into his pocket and left, sipping the drink.

The cashier's drawer was practically empty.

"This is the most excitement we've had all year," she said, to no one in particular.

The other cashier picked up a walkie-talkie and mumbled some technical codes into it. "Can we have some more 10s at the Pit Stop?"

Hanging Out in Carrboro

Carrboro residents have intriguing hair.  In a single brief pass down Weaver Street, I saw a grandmotherly woman with blue, pink, and purple streaks in her grey hair, a woman wearing a convincing electric pink wig, and countless bountiful dreadlocks glistening with sweat in the mid-afternoon heat.  Most colors of the rainbow were present, combs were optional.  

            The attire of the Carrboro crowd was in a similar vein, varied in cultural origins, degrees of shabbiness, and age appropriateness.  The median age appeared to be higher than I expected.  A remarkable number of older people sat around shopping and eating, a few accompanied by people of other generations but many alone.  They all seemed healthy though, despite the wrinkles and greyed hair that leads people to suspect walkers and after-dinner pills.  This makes sense though because Weaver Street Market, the seeming thoroughfare of town, sells organic groceries, including biodynamic grapes.  Basically nothing in Carrboro mirrors the flavor of anyone’s local Walmart.

            Carrboro just seems to have its own set of priorities.  The sides of businesses include huge murals—which I suspect might be protested in other towns—including one depicting all the Japanese Zodiac signs.  The murals add character and dimension to the buildings, and emphasize a priority for art.  The various shops follow suit, with many focused on artisans or selling unique wares.  The shops appear mostly empty though, and their keepers eye you eagerly if you linger too long in the doorway (and if you’re holding a notebook and pen). 

            All of the people seem to know each other—many greetings as people walk down the street—and the atmosphere is very friendly.  In Elmo’s Diner—a very busy place on a Sunday afternoon—the bus boys sing and laugh as they clear tables.  The waiters and waitresses good-naturedly implore diners eating on the patio to place heavy objects on their receipts after diners helped them hunt down a few blown away by the wind.  A hostess remarks to her co-worker after an older woman walks away that “They come here every weekend.  They always order the same thing.”  There’s a sense that many places in Carrboro have “regulars,” and the faces, while eclectic, are familiar.  There’s hominess even about the businesses. The patio at Elmo’s is adorned with the classic fly remedy of Southern porches—bags of water tied to the awning.  It’s hard to imagine such a device utilized in chain restaurants. 

            The traffic patterns also seem non-conformist, with roads intersecting at unusual places and stop lights difficult to determine what areas they govern.  The sometimes-confused cars mingle with many cyclists and pedestrians and joggers, creating a bit of chaotic harmony that tells you these people navigate these areas consistently.  It is only to the occasional outsider that the roads seem confusing.            

            Overall, Carrboro feels united in its uniqueness: all the shops and restaurants and people feel distinct but together produce the same feeling of rearranged priorities, favoring the less than mainstream and embracing alternative lifestyles, but doing it together. 

Leslie Profile

(Practicing profiling on my roommate)

Leslie's days are punctuated by cereal.  She climbs from her bed each morning and eats three bowls. She does not change clothes, chat, or even check her emails first.  She has the sugary-to-plain ratio down pat, creating the best texture and left-over milk tastes. 

Then she chooses clothes based on whether she's meeting her friends-with-benefits for lunch that day.  If she is, she puts on a brightly colored shirt of minimal fabric, short shorts. She brushes shimmery powder across her eyelids, curls her lashes, straightens her hair.  If she isn't, she puts on gym clothes and scoops her hair into a ponytail without even brushing it.

She usually forgets one of three essential items: her OneCard, her keys, or her wallet.  She's purchased $40 worth of replacement student I.D.s throughout her time in college, and keeps the old ones for when she loses the new ones.  Sometimes she can play dumb when the card doesn't work, and the dining hall staff will let her in anyway.

She doesn't talk much during class.  During the boring ones, she doodles microscopic dancing penguins wearing bowties and cows with speech bubbles saying cow-related puns.  She will study the  material later though, and probably get an A on the test.  Sometimes she gets a B, and gets mad at herself for not paying better attention.


Her days are filled with fussing at people for not recycling (she's an EcoReps coordinator), helping people get into dental school (she's present of the dental fraternity, and also afraid of not getting into dental school), and worrying about the environment for her classes (she switched from a biology major to environmental studies because she hates chemistry).

But then comes home, sits on the futon, and eats three more bowls of cereal before bed.  She buys a new gallon of milk at least twice a week. But she never goes to bed hungry.

Freedom Summer

(I taught a local Freedom School this summer--a program for at-risk or under-achieving kids sponsored by the public school system.  I am using that as fodder for scenes to practice writing.)

Lee Hunter swore the buses would be rocking when they rolled in, but at 7:45 everyone was still asleep.  Interns held up the "Good Morning" banner, but the glitter falling off in flakes was most energetic part.  Some interns appeared to be dozing standing up.

Children stepped off the buses at random intervals, holding the random things kids deign necessary to bring with them, hesitating at the school building they'd vacated a month before.  Some went to Freedom School the previous summer and weakly chanted "G-o-o-d M-o-r-n-i-n-gGoodmorningGoodmorningGoodmorning" with sleepy rhythm.

After being sorted into their classes, the 130 children made their way into the cafeteria to dine on a school-sanctioned, government-paid-for breakfast of a single strawberry Poptart and a carton of grape juice.  Interns stood around eating and attempting to facilitate conversation.  The tables were naturally segregated by gender but not by race.

The kids were dressed by poverty and prepubescence.  Pink and orange plaid shorts a size too small paired with an older brother's yellow polo shirt.  Shirts that were once middle-school-cool now out of date and threadbare.  Tennis shoes with popped open soles.  Sandals with brittle bands.  One sweet little girl with a long black ponytail and big brown eyes wears a Goodwill shirt that says "$tacks on $tacks on $tacks."

They left a landfill of silver wrappers and smashed cartons behind as they zigzagged down the hallway toward the media center, where the day would really begin.