People Surprise You
Today has been an utterly fascinating day. I mentioned a few days ago that one of the girls (we'll call her Bee) in my group for my youth cultures project is hard to love and that I was trying to understand her and not judge her. And I think because I was willing to try to understand her instead of condemn her, today I was given the opportunity to actually get to know her and see that there are so many things I was wrong about; so many things I didn't know.
We were supposed to meet at the View (the apartment building where Bee lives) at 7 P.M. tonight but everyone was running behind (including me, but only by five minutes) so I wound up sitting in the lobby, waiting for my group for twenty minutes or so, and then Bee showed up and took me up to the fourteenth floor (where she lives) and told me all about her night and how she got stuck in traffic in a taxi and had to pay $17 for it and she went grocery shopping with her mom after physical therapy and her swimming class and then that brought about this whole conversation about how she broke her ribs because she has osteoporosis and has to eat 7,000 calories a day so she eats three pints of ice cream every night before bed and has to get up at three in the morning to eat because she gets so hungry. She has some kind of condition that screws up her metabolism so she has to go to therapy to maintain her muscle mass or else she can't function properly. She was telling me all about the different complications from the disease and how she's actually gained 45 pounds this year, but at one point when she was 15 years old she spent months at a time in the hospital. Then she was asking about me and I was telling her about "growing up on a farm" and she asked what I'd been doing that evening and I told her about spag and the Newman Center, which brought on questions about my faith and I had thought that she was a Christian-hater but it turns out that she thinks that religion is beautiful, as long as people don't try to shove it down your throat. Which I agree with. Obviously, Bee isn't perfect--no one is. But I realize now how wrong I was about her and I'm glad I got the opportunity to actually get to know her instead of just making snap judgments off of my ridiculously small knowledge of who she is.
Bottom line is: people surprise you. Just give them a chance. Your first impression is usually egregiously wrong.
ALSO! What the heck, I was told I look like a mom at least three times today, if not more, and that doesn't even count the number of times I was called a mom in the last two weeks! It's like everyone decided to jump on the "SE Is Now a Mom" bandwagon and I missed the memo. Since when do I look like a mom? Have I always looked like a mom? Is it the hair? Speaking of the hair: Bee told me that her friend Ash who is also in our youth cultures class asked her about me cutting my hair off and he said that I look like "an activist" now but that "it looks good". What does that mean?! "An activist"?? An activist for what? Feminism? Well fine then. I am. I'm a feminist activist conservative Christian mother of twelve. I'll embrace it.
Day 1103 Song Recommendation: "Video" by Indie Arie. I heard this song on Pandora on the train coming back to Philly and recommended it to DL and then when we were trying to think of a song to put in the background of our feminist video I thought of this one and Bee and my other groupie loved it! I felt cool. Well, they were already familiar with it, so I didn't mention that I'd just heard it on Sunday. But still.
-SE Wagner
We were supposed to meet at the View (the apartment building where Bee lives) at 7 P.M. tonight but everyone was running behind (including me, but only by five minutes) so I wound up sitting in the lobby, waiting for my group for twenty minutes or so, and then Bee showed up and took me up to the fourteenth floor (where she lives) and told me all about her night and how she got stuck in traffic in a taxi and had to pay $17 for it and she went grocery shopping with her mom after physical therapy and her swimming class and then that brought about this whole conversation about how she broke her ribs because she has osteoporosis and has to eat 7,000 calories a day so she eats three pints of ice cream every night before bed and has to get up at three in the morning to eat because she gets so hungry. She has some kind of condition that screws up her metabolism so she has to go to therapy to maintain her muscle mass or else she can't function properly. She was telling me all about the different complications from the disease and how she's actually gained 45 pounds this year, but at one point when she was 15 years old she spent months at a time in the hospital. Then she was asking about me and I was telling her about "growing up on a farm" and she asked what I'd been doing that evening and I told her about spag and the Newman Center, which brought on questions about my faith and I had thought that she was a Christian-hater but it turns out that she thinks that religion is beautiful, as long as people don't try to shove it down your throat. Which I agree with. Obviously, Bee isn't perfect--no one is. But I realize now how wrong I was about her and I'm glad I got the opportunity to actually get to know her instead of just making snap judgments off of my ridiculously small knowledge of who she is.
Bottom line is: people surprise you. Just give them a chance. Your first impression is usually egregiously wrong.
ALSO! What the heck, I was told I look like a mom at least three times today, if not more, and that doesn't even count the number of times I was called a mom in the last two weeks! It's like everyone decided to jump on the "SE Is Now a Mom" bandwagon and I missed the memo. Since when do I look like a mom? Have I always looked like a mom? Is it the hair? Speaking of the hair: Bee told me that her friend Ash who is also in our youth cultures class asked her about me cutting my hair off and he said that I look like "an activist" now but that "it looks good". What does that mean?! "An activist"?? An activist for what? Feminism? Well fine then. I am. I'm a feminist activist conservative Christian mother of twelve. I'll embrace it.
Day 1103 Song Recommendation: "Video" by Indie Arie. I heard this song on Pandora on the train coming back to Philly and recommended it to DL and then when we were trying to think of a song to put in the background of our feminist video I thought of this one and Bee and my other groupie loved it! I felt cool. Well, they were already familiar with it, so I didn't mention that I'd just heard it on Sunday. But still.
-SE Wagner
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