New Poem - Not Mine

Love
I couldn't say I love him,
I couldn't say I do.
I couldn't say he means the world
when he asks me to.

I couldn't say I love him,
I couldn't say I'm sad.
I couldn't say he means the world.
I couldn't. Sorry Dad.

-Andrew Collett

Hmmm...I'm not sure if this poet is trying to say that he doesn't love his dad, or if he's trying to say that he can't express his emotions.

Marty's abandoned me today...I'm sad. :(

Bitchy Women

Went to the library today - I changed clothes more times than a Gap model b/c things showed. Man, do I ever need to get my cheap ass a new binder.

An old issue of Esquire caught my eye - "Be a Better Man." Not like I feel I'm failing hugely in that area, mind you, but there's always room for improvement, and I was curious.

Mary-Louise Parker: "Don't make jokes about homosexuals, minorities or dead people unless you are one." Man, do I beg to differ. She probably meant tasteless jokes...still...I believe everyone should try to have a healthy sense of humor about everything. So, go ahead. Make jokes about homosexuals, minorities or dead people. Even if you aren't one.

Other statements that bothered me:

Kristin Davis: "Let the woman be right. For once."
Mary-Louise Parker (again): "Pick up your damn trash."

I so hate stupid, shallow or bitchy women. Now, I don't know these actresses, maybe they just chose this one opportunity to be bitchy, but... Really, if you consistently date men who can't clean up after themselves, whose fault is that? Maybe they were just addressing jerky men in general, but I don't enjoy getting bitched at.

Seriously, they sound like the girls in my school who dye their hair blond, wear too much blue make-up and jeans w/o waistbands, and then complain to me that boys don't respect them.

To which I reply, "Honey if you want a guy to respect you, first be worthy of respect." I love girls who are independent, and don't take crap off guys, but don't jump on the "bash-guys-'cuz-they're-all-stupid-assholes" bandwagon just to be cool. It's quite true that straight white guys are the only people it is still socially acceptable to bash.

Not to jump on the "we-poor-down-trodden-straight-white-guys" bandwagon, or anything. ;)

Crappy School Story

This is the story I promised elsewhere, one of my faves to tell...

When I was 9, my family moved from Saskatoon to Calgary (which I now consider my home.) I was not very popular at school in Saskatoon, kids thought I was a nerd, so I was happy to get a chance to start over. (Isn't any outcast? But how rarely hopes pan out...)

Unfortunately, I didn't do too well at my new school, either. (Big surprise.) The school was quite old-fashioned, with big wooden desks. The desktops were all individually patterned, and apparently the teacher saved the "best desk" for me, the one all the other kids coveted, because she wanted to make a new student who arrived half-way through the year feel "welcome." This didn't win me any friends...neither did being smarter than everyone and getting told I would be skipping a grade...neither did wearing boy's clothes and having a boy's bowl haircut. I simply had no friends at all.

As I've mentioned, the school was old-fashioned. They had separate doors for boys and girls to enter and exit by at recess. Maybe because these doors were right by the respective washrooms, strict rules were kept about kids only using the doors for their assigned gender. A teacher stood at each set of doors at the beginning and end of each recess period, and scanned for deviants.

I hung out by myself on the playground, making no effort to become friends with anyone. Subsequently, there was no one willing to defend me when I needed it.

One day, after I had only been at my new school for a couple of weeks, I got into trouble when the bell rang. The teacher "guarding" the girls door did not teach any class I had, and did not recognize me. I had been able to sneak past a myopic volunteer when she was absent, but now that she was back, she caught me. "Just where do you think you're going, young man?"

"I'm a girl," I told her, just like I was supposed to.

"What do you think I am, stupid? I know just what you're trying to pull young man, and you won't get away with it!" (I was 9. What did she think I was trying to pull?) "Get out of here!"

Girls streaming past up the steps giggled and gave me nasty looks, as if to say, "That's what you get when you look like a boy."

I had no better luck at the boy's door - the "guard" was my French teacher, stern, formidable and unyielding. When all the other children were inside, both teachers hauled shut and locked both sets of doors as if they didn't even see me, alone and near tears, sitting on the ground a few dozen feet from the steps.

I was terrified. What did I do? It was absolutely forbidden for a student to use the front doors during school hours unless they were arriving late. I knew my teacher, Ms. Green, would be mad at me. I sat and waited for someone to come find me. No one came.

Finally, I decided to risk a front-door entry. It was just my luck the principal was coming out of his office right then. He demanded to know what the hell I was doing. I couldn't answer. He told me I had detention with him and sent me to class.

Ms. Green went atomic when I appeared at the door, and gave me a chewing-out in front of the class about being late off recess, making her put me before all the other kids, and how unfair that was. (She put me first, huh? Why didn't she make an effort to find me for 20 minutes?) I got detention with her.

I served my detention with Ms. Green, skipped out on the principal, and had my parents fix the sitch. Thank God. Oh, and I didn't skip a grade, either. My parents moved me schools after I was there 6 weeks.

Sorry this is such a long entry. I'm amused by this now, of course...mostly.