How Things Have Been Done

When I was a young one in youth group, there were all these high school kids who seemed like whatever the early 2000’s version of the bees’ knees was. Probably something along the lines of, “Just the coolest.” The adults loved them, they walked naturally into leadership roles, and they all hung out together. They were this picture perfect group, the kind that you send to conferences as a representation of your youth group or send to interviews as a positive sampling of your youth choir. I guess they were the popular kids, just like any group has popular kids. To me, at the time, it just seemed that this was How Things Were Done, and you didn’t question How Things Were Done. 

Some year, I was probably in 8th or 9th grade, there was a meeting of youth choir directors at my church, and they had a kind of panel with some kids from our youth choir. It’s beyond me to say what the purpose of the panel was- maybe they wanted to hear what we liked or disliked about our choir and then take those insights and questions back to their own choir? Who knows. But I remember making a comment about how we had had these older kids who seemed like rock stars to me and how, after they graduated, we didn’t have that anymore (it was a transitional year), and how that was a tragedy of sorts. In response, one of the choir directors told a story, as adults who speak to children and teenagers are wont to do, about how when some of those strong voices graduated from his choir, the choir as a whole actually got better. It turns out that those strong voices had been singing flat.

As a Christian, I live and die by understanding the hidden meanings behind parables, so of course Middle or early High School Me would have read the meaning behind that statement. It was probably maybe about working better as a group even though the leaders had gone and finding new leaders or something. But, in fine Christian tradition, I misunderstood the parable, at least at first. It never occurred to me when I was a kid that the older popular kids could have ever been at fault. I  completely missed that bit of the story, the part with the flatness. 

Now, on the flip side of history, looking at that weird mess that is teenage life from the adult side, I see the same things happening. But now I have the problem of liking the popular kids. I weirdly seek their approval. This is something I completely don’t understand because it’s the opposite of what I would have done in the past. When I was growing up, I couldn’t have consciously cared less about what someone else thought about me, other than grown-ups. I was too busy reading or practicing or helping out adults to be worried about what people my own age thought. I got called an old soul and I want to claim that title, but I don’t know that I deserve it. I think I was just a focused soul, one that couldn’t be bothered with people her own age. 

But then I got to college and post-college and suddenly the people my age were people whose approval I wanted. I wanted friends who liked me and I wanted strangers to walk away with a positive impression of me and I wanted to excel at work because money and resumes and the future, and also, I want people to like me. I started to think more about how other people perceived me and how I measured up to others. And, as the story always goes, I started to see how much I fell short in those comparisons. 

That’s a shame, because I like the person I’ve become, with the exception of a few items that have left room for improvement. (I promise, Body, we’re going to start jogging again and taking multi-vitamins. Stop whining so much.) I have friends who like me. I have friends among the kids at youth group who like me. We’ve found the weird things that make us awesome and just embraced that. Given the option, of course I’d hang around with these kids.

And I want to tell them to say, “Screw it, I don’t need you anyway,” when the popular kids come around, but I also know that the popular kids have the ears of the adults. The popular kids are in positions of leadership. The popular kids can sway the direction of the group. If the popular kids don’t like you, even if they aren't vocal about it, you’re left to fend for yourself and that’s hard in teenage-land. The problem here is not with my wonderful little weirdos who’d be friends with anyone who walked their way with a smile on their face, it’s with the popular kids who know they can pick and choose and that others watch their picking and choosing. It's that they don't choose to wield that power for good. 

This is not new territory. These are not new stories to be told. We all went through this. My question, though, is why do we continue to go through this? Why do we, as adults, who know that this tiered structure of high school is happening, do nothing to stop its perpetuation? Is it because we know that the rest of their lives are going to be lived out in some semblance of a popularity contest? Or are we just too apathetic or self-absorbed or afraid to step in and make any real changes? 

I suppose it’s all a little revolutionary, telling everyone they’re equal even if they’re quiet or too loud or don’t know what to say when they meet someone or say the most awkward thing possible or don’t know how to connect with others. It must be really outside of the box to give a person value despite a lack of social skills. We are, after all, social creatures. It’s our default state to value those who can navigate the social waters with perfection. 

Only… can I ask you one thing? This week, this month, this year, use the energy you have to choose once, just once, to do something other than default. Get past that devaluing you want to do. Invest in someone, and not just someone you like. The world will be a better place if we do that. If we all do that.

Stories From the Bells

So I rolled up to handbells last night figuring there would be at least one person absent because there’s always one person absent. We always need a sub and typically that sub is me. Well, has been me for the past few years, as my job has really limited me from being available for bells of late, so the life of a sub it is. But at yesterday's rehearsal, when there wasn’t a place for me to be, I realized I was that person. I was still here in this college town despite having graduated four years ago. I was old. I didn't belong. I hadn’t really ever felt that way before.

I started playing handbells my freshman year of college. I mean, I had played as much handbells as you played in elementary school as a church choir kid (we’re a specific and special breed) and I can read music, but I wasn’t a part of a bell choir until freshman year. I had a campus minister ask me what that was all about. “I mean, you just don’t hear of many people going to college and joining a bell choir.” And if I had been the person I am today, I would have told him that the world would be a better place if you did, but at the time, the question stumped me. I had a straightforward answer: the chancel choir, who sang on Sundays, met on Thursdays and that conflicted frequently with marching band. I couldn’t give up band, but I could replace choir and that’s what I did. 

I didn’t realize that I was just trying to fill my college schedule the way my high school schedule had been filled because I didn’t realize that my college schedule would be under so much more academic strain than my high school schedule. But as other activities fell to the side when the physics major started heating up, I kept up with bell choir. It was a fun thing, an hour or so of my week where I interacted with people outside of my age group who weren’t trying to teach me something, tying me to the bigger group of the church proper.

I don’t know if all church bell choirs are like this, but our choir is full of the fastest wits and the most intentionally sassy women I know. They crack jokes about songs and composers and how there’s no way we could play any of this and after all that, they pull off songs with aplomb. They’re also some of the sweetest and most supportive people I know- for years, one of the members of the bell choir let me stay at her house so I could play at the Moravian Love Feast every December after the dorms had closed. So bell choir practice in and of itself is usually a party and a half. 

Take today for example. Today, as we were waiting for the other member of the bass bells pair to show up, one of the trebles made the announcement that she and her husband (the present bass bells player) were going to have a baby, which was accompanied by the typical shouts and squeals and smiles and questions, and then followed by jokes about why she’d make that announcement without the other bass bell player there. Then he arrived, about five minutes late,  and the father-to-be held up a pencil and said, “I came prepared for bells tonight! Also, we’re having a baby!” And the newly arrived bass player said, “You brought a pencil?!”

Which, yes, cheesy music situational joke, but I love it. I love hanging out with these people. It’s why I found myself on a warm April evening sweating in the choir director’s office, windows open, wondering to which committee one has to submit a request in order to get a fan installed and when they meet. Despite the heat, it’s a comfortable place. Like so many other parts of church, this is home. This is a constant in a university community where so many things change every four years. 

I’ve been ready to go. Just, the most ready to be somewhere else, doing something new. But this is something I’ll miss deeply and it’s tempting to hang on to that kind of thing for all it’s worth. I know there are things I won't want to leave. In my last few days in town, I’ll walk campus and take an Old Well picture and a bell tower picture and think about all the mornings walking half an hour up to class from Hinton James North or Rams Five. I’ll run an eye over the libraries and the pit and my junior year dorm and take that last opportunity to glory in the loveliness of this place. And after that, I’ll be able to let those things go.

But these people, these groups, I’m not ready to leave that. Which is good, you know, it shows that there’s something worth staying for and that I’m not just running. One of the podcasts I listen to takes question suggestions and mine was, “How long do you have to live in a place to be able to say you’re from that place?” and they tweeted back, “It depends on how much you hate where you’re from.” I loved that.

I’m not from Chapel Hill. I don’t think I’d ever be able to say that I’m from Chapel Hill,  not if I stayed five or six or ten years from now, even. Not that I’m ready to run back to Caldwell County (hi, family, I love you!), but this, this was not going to be a place that I was from. It’s good to see that. It’s good to know that. Ultimately, it’s gonna be good to leave that. 

Just not yet. 

Turn Back Time

(Editor's note: I explain the backstory behind this in this months Flight of the Vlogyries video, which you, if interested, are more than welcome to watch here.)

If I were to spend an afternoon with my 4th grade self, I'd take her bowling and rollerskating and to a planetarium and to go see some dinosaurs. I'd show her how to make a salad with spinach and cranberries and walnuts and have her help me make a casserole and a cake from scratch.

The whole time, I'd remind her of the important things, like brushing her teeth and listening to others, really, really listening. I'd remind her that the things we make up in our heads are dreams. I'd leave her with a notebook and a pen and tell her to keep her dreams there.

If I had a day with my 7th grade self, I'd give her a recipe for blackberry pancakes and a grocery list and take her to the store before making her make breakfast. Then we'd commander the TV and watch rented episodes of Buffy and Gilmore Girls and West Wing. I'd take her to buy nerf guns and frisbees and we'd spend the afternoon in the park.

I'd tell her that her body is a beautiful mess that she has to take care of. I'd make her promise, pinky swear, to talk to her mother about bras and makeup and periods and friends and basketball and boys, because I think her mother is just waiting for her to ask. I'd show her how to use a telescope and point it at the Orion Nebula and tell her that she can study things like this, if she wanted to. I'd leave her with a new toothbrush and floss, a copy of Sonnets From the Portuguese, a couple of script books, and a notebook and a pen, because there's a world inside of her that no one is going to know about until she tells them.

I'd spend a morning with my 9th grade self. We'd go to Target and after racing carts around the store and trying out all the furniture and perusing the music and movies, we'd go to the clothes. I'd have her pick out one outfit and then I'd pick one out for her. We'd go choose one pair of shoes each. I'd explain those intimidating walls of makeup and hair products, if I still needed to, and then I'd drag her home and show her the kind of pretty she can be when she wants. She can be the kind of woman that men want to look at, and that's okay. She can let a boy hold her hand and kiss her cheek- it's not going to crack her armor.

Then I'd take her driving with the windows down and the music up and teach her to sing along loud. I'd tell her that cars are perfect places for deep conversations and that when she meets a boy named Isaac, she should never ask him to try to change. When I drop her off, I'd stop her from leaving the car until she swore she'd ask her daddy to show her how to make a turkey dinner. I'd leave her with a reminder to brush twice a day, floss once, be present in everything, and to slow down when she talks to her elders. I'd put a notebook in her backpack with a list of movies and shows and books and bands for her to experience when she wants something new.

I'd spend the last week of the summer before sophomore year of college with myself because we have a lot to talk about and the hurt she carries can still sit me down today. I think we'd pull out the frisbee again, but this time take kites and sandwiches and make a day at the beach of it. We'd have a nerf gun fight, but I'd make her organize 7 person teams in the park. We'd see dinosaurs and stars and art and plays. We'd go shopping for a good cocktail dress and cosmetic basics and I'd buy her a pair of boots that she will adore.

In between driving the Blue Ridge parkway and listening to the Avett Brothers and cooking Sunday dinner for the family, we'd watch Lost or The Office and I'd tell her about how purpose is an amorphous blob until you find what you love, and that it will bounce you around all the way up until it solidifies and smacks you in the face. I'd tell her that she doesn't owe her Ideas of Who She Is or the Things She Said She'd Be anything. She is not beholden to the sadness she takes on her shoulders. I'll remind her that she is an old soul, one that maybe took too much joy the last time around, but that that doesn't mean she can't have any this time. I want to find her a boy that will spin her around and tell her that she gets to be happy and watch that stupid glorious hope dawn in her eyes.

And while she's distracted, I'd leave her with a set of pots and pans, $500 in a retirement account, a prepaid Netflix account, and a binder with core strengthening exercises, recipes, approximate cost of dental fillings and root canals, and articles on creativity, the large scale structure and fate of the universe, feminism, and false dichotomies. Beside the binder, I'd put a beer glass with a Star Wars toothbrush, the perfect shade of lipstick, and an empty flash drive.

She'll know what to do.