One of my goals this summer is to spend one day without my iPhone. While smartphones are incredibly useful and have revolutionized how I (and many people) do things, they can also be soul-sucking, obnoxious burdens. I want one day when I can’t receive phone calls, texts, and e-mails.

However, there is an overwhelming positive to having my iPhone on me at all times that ties all the way back to childhood.

From the age of five, I wanted to be a writer. As a result, I was gifted lots of journals. Apparently some people believe that writers want nothing more than a quiet prairie, a shade tree to sit under, and a journal in which to write their deepest thoughts about puffy clouds and butterflies.

Amazon: You’re not helping the stereotype about writers and readers.

The problem, however, is that I hate writing by hand. It takes too long. My handwriting is awful. I can’t save, copy, cut, paste, click, or drag a piece of paper. Mostly, I can just fold paper eight times, stick it in my pocket, and then pick the shreds out of the dryer a week later.

Almost all of my creative writing has been done on technology, going all the way back to DOS prompts and floppy disks. Now I use my laptop and my iPhone.

My predilection for technology presented some problems in the pre-smartphone era, which for me included my college years and most of graduate school. Way back then (all the way at the start of the 2000s!) technology wasn’t that portable, even laptops. This meant any writing I did on the fly was handwritten, presenting all the same problems, including that I would eventually want to transcribe it into a computer anyway.

This is one of the photos I took on the trail.

These days, life is easier. This past weekend while on a hike, I came across a bridge on a forest trail. The image intrigued me and, in less than a minute, I took multiple photos with my iPhone, opened my Google Drive app, created a new document in my “Poetry” folder, and wrote a stanza. Rather than shoving a piece of paper in my back pocket to be forgotten, that file is now saved, sorted, and accessible from any device with internet access.

Turtle Hall of Famer Tricia Lunt sent me this photo recently after a discussion we had about remembering to actually experience the world around us.

Of course, as useful as technology is for writing, it has its drawbacks. One of the largest goes right back to a reason I want to ditch my iPhone for a day: sometimes we are so busy communicating and documenting our lives via text, e-mail, websites, and social media that we fail to – ya know – experience the world around us. And in my quest to scribble notes and take pictures with my iPhone, I may sometimes be robbing myself of the best writing material of all.

Ultimately, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives in terms of how the smartphone has revolutionized my approach to creative writing. It has significantly increased my organization and productivity. So, now I save handwritten creative writing for meetings at work. My colleagues think I’m taking notes, but I’m actually writing about puffy clouds and butterflies.

I had a professor in graduate school named Dr. Daniel Melnick who rarely gave student work a full-fledged “A”. He nearly always wrote, “potentially excellent, A-“. Many years later, I am accustomed to imperfection, still happy with an “A-,” still encouraged by the word potentially. Unfortunately, I still make foolish mistakes; take every post I have written for this blog, for example. Even though I have drafted and edited each at least five times, the minute I re-read it online, I spot an error.

I am a ceaseless critic of my students’ work, by necessity, but also of my own work and life, generally. It has a lot to do with the training I received in undergraduate and graduate school, and I am grateful for the capacity to be critical, but I must defend against my proclivity to become overly so (I am sometimes referred to as the “Dream Killer” when rushing to identify problems instead of pausing to provide encouragement). Recently, I did what I too often do: I jumped to the fault. I pointed out the one tiny error in a truly useful info-graphic my friend Hanna made for a class for which she was to be a guest speaker. Only after realizing how ungrateful my behavior was did I retreat and praise her efforts and thank her again for kindly sharing her expertise and advice with my students, devoting both her time and her knowledge without pay. In my haste to correct problems, I must remember not to diminish the larger accomplishment.

Perfection is not attainable, despite what my friend Ian’s mother might say. I share the truth as embodied by baseball batting averages; a phenomenal batting average is .400, or “batting 400”.  I discuss the implications of this statistic with my students. In ten attempts, we should expect six failures, hope for no more than four successes. I find this analogy immensely comforting. Nevertheless, I feel foolish when what I write contains errors since I am supposed to know better. Well, I suppose I do know better, I just don’t do better. Fortunately, this realization does not paralyze me with fear because my colleague and fellow turtle member, Paul, has given all who write for this blog the gift of a revolutionary idea: “perfect is the opposite of done.” This motto allows us to accept the inevitability of flaws as part of the larger process of building something that has lasting value.

My friendships are the best example of something spectacular I have built over the years. Coincidentally, friendship provides a different perspective on flaws. The longer a friendship lasts, the more accepting friends are of each other’s foibles. At some point (around about the one decade of friendship mark, it seems), something rather extraordinary happens: the flaws and eccentricities and imperfections become what we love most. When I behave in my peculiar way; lining up M & M’s in color-coded rows, insisting Chris Rock was not in that movie, packing seven scarves for a three-day weekend, or arriving entirely too early for a party, people who have loved me for ten years are charitable enough to view these quirks as part of my charm. Flaws are noticeable, often painfully so, but being loved in spite of, or even because of, our flaws creates a powerful connection established in the understanding that though we are imperfect creatures, we are magnificent, too. Besides, when a thing is flawless, there’s really nothing left to say. 

My first posted blog was titled, “How I Met My First Canine Love” and I admit that my first canine love had some ups and downs.  Correction: continues to have ups and downs.  We’re working it out.  And by that, I mean he gets his way- and I modify my life completely.

Allow me to explain.

Duke, my half-German Shepard, quarter German-Shorthaired Pointer, quarter Wire-Haired Pointing Griffon (yes, he was saliva-DNA tested!), looks like a black lab but is anything but, and loves summer.  Specifically the plethora of water options available to lunge at.  From barking at me while washing my car, to barking at the neighbor kids with squirt guns and slip-and-slides, to barking to get access to the garden hose or sprinkler … well, I’m sort of losing my mind, truth be told.  We won’t even go into winter and shoveling.  That truly is another story that involves expensive window replacements.  Ah, but the windows now look amazing.  Again, another story.

Duke is a canine handful.  And I love him.  While losing my mind.

This story is about my second canine love.

A little background: I serve as the president of the board of directors for the South Suburban Humane Society, located in Chicago Heights.  Over the last five years I have had some involvement with this 40-plus year privately funded organization, including fund-raising (at this point many of you are having flashbacks to me cajoling money out of you, Mr. David Pyle, I hope you are reading this!) and operations, including working at off-site animal adoption events.  I volunteered at such an adoption December 3^rd of 2010 and was asked if I wanted to handle (hold and tell people about) Smoochie or Rocco.  I smiled when I heard the name choices.  “I’ll take Smoochie, of course!”  The name made me smile and I noticed what a friendly, approachable dog this was (as soooo many of them actually are, including Rocco).  I’m competitive and figured he’d be adopted straightaway and that I’d be able to work with another dog that day, placing someone else in a FURever home.  Pun intended.

He wasn’t.

December 3^rd, 2010, outside of the PetCo in Tinley Park there were few people who had any interest in stopping and looking at dogs up for adoption.  It was the start of winter, cold with no snow, and as anyone from the mid-west can attest to, we start comparing the new weather to whatever we experienced the week before.  If this same weather was in place in March we’d all be talking of the coming of Spring.

After three hours of walking, playing and talking up Smoochie, while he was on leash with me, I had to take a biologically necessary break.  I asked someone else to hold Smoochie’s leash while I popped into PetCo.  During the three hours I was with Smoochie, talking him up, him getting petted and not much more, and basically ignoring me, the second I handed over the leash he started whimpering for me.  These were the first sounds he made – and the seeming first awareness he made that I, Jennifer, was at the end of the leash.  Smoochie emitted a high-pitched “hmmm, hmmm , hmmm”.  Re-imagine this as high pitched as possible.

He sounded just like Duke, when Duke knows he can get something and wants to manipulate my mind.  Like water hosed at him.  Or ice tossed his way for catching.  Or a piece of my gourmet, 10-year-aged Asiago cheese.  Or – well, the list is infinite.  And through reinforcement he has learned whimpering pays off big time.

I took my necessary biological break and then returned to handle Smoochie.  The volunteer event was wrapping up.  No one expressed anything resembling a lead on Smoochie.  I was shocked no one seemed to share my amusement at his name or with his gentle persona.  My competitive spirit of having a 100% placement rate (based on two prior dogs!) was crushed, balanced by my growing fondness of this dog.  He had been at the shelter for 6-weeks, a second returned trip.  He was 11-months old and had been in two homes already, mine would be the third.

He came home with me as a foster dog.  And never left.  I’m a terrible foster dog mama.  And I am okay with that.

We assume much about shelter dogs: there is something wrong with “them”.  I’ve learned that people take advantage of those who have no voice, assuming no one will ever know their story.  I’ve learned firsthand, through this affable and gentle creature, that love comes in many forms.  Maybe we should be open to it when it presents itself.

I’ve learned The Joy of Smooching.

This year it was mulch.

It’s that time of year again.  The time when my wife orders a huge pile of compost and dirt, has it delivered to our front yard and then decides where this fresh earth is needed most.  Of course, all three cubic yards of this will be moved into the ever-expanding vegetable and fruit garden she is constructing.  It began a couple years ago with one raised-bed in our backyard, and now takes up our entire property.  Granted, we live in NE Oak Park, so it is not like we have a huge yard, but covering even such a moderate area in fresh compost/dirt can be quite a chore using only a shovel and a red children’s wagon (we don’t have a wheel-barrel).  It is a physical job; your hands get dirty, your fingers get calloused and your arms and back ache.  Though this doesn’t sound like an enjoyable task, it actually is quite fulfilling.

I think many people love the ‘good’ muscle pain of a hard day’s work. To me however, this job is enjoyable for another reason.  The question I have been asking myself the last week is why?  Why do I enjoy this seemingly mindless chore?  Well, I think I may have a reason.  It’s the ‘natural’ way to work.

In his brilliant 1967 essay “Work, Time-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism”, the English historian E.P. Thompson illustrated how pre-industrial, agricultural work was ‘task oriented’. This was very different from our modern way of working, in which any down time is usually thought to be ‘wasted’.  The modern notion of time really began with the industrial factory where time was to be ‘spent’ specifically and exclusively for production.  Any time ‘spent’ otherwise was time that was lost, and hence, profits. This was new. It was not called the Industrial Revolution for nothing. 

Obviously, most Americans don’t work in factories, but our modern style of labor still is based upon this industrialized ethic.  I learned this at 19 when I worked at a certain, infamous fast-food chain. It was constantly reiterated in that job if you had “time to lean, you had time to clean.” In other words, don’t rest (or think), just work.

As Thompson pointed out, this type of labor was “unnatural” in the sense that humans had never worked in such a structured manner.  Instead, people had always worked based upon ‘task orientation’, which had three major differences to the industrialized method: “First, there (was) a sense in which it (was) more humanly comprehensible than timed labor. The peasant or laborer appear(ed) to attend upon what was an observed necessity. Second, a community in which task-orientation (was) common appear(ed) to show least demarcation between “work” and “life”. Social intercourse and labor (were) intermingled – the working day lengthens or contracts according to the task – and there (was) no great sense of conflict between labor and “passing the time of day”. Third, to men accustomed to labor timed by the clock, this attitude to labor appears to be wasteful and lacking in urgency.”

It must be stated, I am a college professor, and am very lucky in the sense that I am one of the few who still work based largely upon this “task orientation”.  But still, I often don’t have that strangely ecstatic feeling of completing a manual task.  I rarely get the sensation that Stephen Duck wrote about in the eighteenth century:

At length in Rows stands up the well-dry’d Corn,
A grateful Scene, and ready for the Barn.
Our well-pleas’d Master views the Sight with joy,
And we for carrying all our Force employ.
Confusion soon o’er all the Field appears,
And stunning Clamours fill the Workmens Ears;
The Bells, and clashing Whips, alternate sound,
And rattling Waggons thunder o’er the Ground.
The Wheat got in, the Pease, and other Grain,
Share the same Fate, and soon leave bare the Plain:
In noisy Triumph the last Load moves on,
And loud Huzza’s proclaim the Harvest done.

My labor of moving dirt from one place to another in my small yard is of this nature.  I feel like proclaiming a “loud Huzza” as I finish this task. 

All this being said, let’s not get too romantic.  The thought of moving dirt from one place to another everyday instead of preparing for my history classes is not very appealing.  But, without such physical tasks I believe I would be missing something intensely human. Even in our labors, the immortal and wise words of the Oracle of Delphi ring true: “In all things moderation.” 

Last week, I went hiking at Starved Rock State Park. The area is beautiful: there are sandstone canyons with waterfalls, outlooks perched over the Illinois River, and miles of forest trails.

The trails are clearly, and perhaps excessively, marked. The full trail map is posted at regular intervals, there are markings that indicate whether you are moving toward or away from the Visitor’s Center, and the squirrels have been trained to answer questions. (But sometimes their advice is nuts.)

Additionally, areas that look like trails that aren’t are subtly marked, “NOT A TRAIL.”

Naturally, whenever I saw those, I went that way.

This isn’t necessarily advisable. Actually, it’s against the law, as the ample signage points out. 

Starved Rock’s neighboring park, Matthiessen, also notes on its website: “Hike only the marked trails. Unmarked areas are dangerous. Numerous people have been seriously injured or killed in this park. Be off the trails by dark.”

(What terrible things are wandering the forest at night? Ghosts? Monsters? A really dedicated Deliverance reenactment troupe?)

A quick Google search turns up plenty of news stories about people heading off trail at Starved Rock to terrible results. One was about a woman who fell 40 feet into a canyon, had to be airlifted to a hospital, and THEN got ticketed for being off the marked trails. Because police thought the ticket would teach her a lesson.

Eschewing logic, safety, and legalities, I went off trail multiple times. One time, I scrambled down sandstone, over tree branches, and battled a persistent wasp to get a look at one of the canyons. While climbing down, had I hooked my foot on anything or taken a misstep, I would have fallen down jagged terrain, but that would have just been a good storytellin’ scar.

It was later on in the day when I had second thoughts.

You can’t see the ground underneath me? Exactly.

I climbed down another “NOT A TRAIL!” to look at one of the park’s many waterfalls. A winding strip of land led to a canyon, narrowing to mere inches where I finally stopped to take pictures of the waterfall spilling down about 40-60 feet. While playing amateur photog with my iPhone, I looked down and saw how close I was to the edge.

For a moment, I felt like a kid again who recognized he had just done something stupid, and I could hear my mother’s voice in my head reprimanding me, making sure to use my first and middle name the way mothers (and girlfriends) do when you’re in trouble: “Paul Thomas, get away from that ledge!”

I sidled back to safer ground and then looked back at where I was standing. I would consider it insane to climb onto the ledge outside my 6th floor office window at work,  but apparently if you put a waterfall within my sights, I’ll dangle happily from that height.

We all have different interpretations of what qualifies as dangerous, and sometimes our personal perspectives are contradictory or even absurd. Take for instance:

1. I have never been on a motorcycle; it just seems dangerous. Yet on numerous occasions, I have driven a waverunner in excess of 60 mph out to secluded waters by myself while doing every dangerous thing the user manual likely says not to do.

2. Furry animals don’t bother me no matter how large, how angry, or how much white foam is coming from their maws. I’d happily cuddle a man-eating bear like Brick Tamland. Yet, snakes horrify me; I truly have ophidiophobia. The most terrifying part of Starved Rock was

Even this doe-eyed cartoon snake with eyelashes terrifies me. Actually, the eyelashes make it even scarier.

the sign that warned visitors to be aware of poisonous snakes that may be basking on the trail. But it’s not just dangerous, poisonous snakes – it’s all snakes: big, small, cartoon. Two weeks ago at Kankakee River State Park, I saw a snake the size of a pencil and nearly ran screaming from the woods. My phobia wasn’t quelled any by the fact that the snake was also terrified and desperately trying to get away from the dumb, gigantic, lumbering mammal who spotted it.

3. I have heart palpitations just looking at pictures of that architecturally sound and completely safe deathtrap-looking box at the Willis Tower Skydeck, yet I’m not bothered by the heights of a canyon I was warned not to go near.

Whether a fear is learned or instinctual, sometimes our sense of danger is triggered even when danger isn’t present (see: tiny snake). And other times, when it should be going off, it doesn’t. Sometimes fear is what drives us or creates a thrill. And sometimes, we just ignore signs, logic, and laws, because they’re all just suggestions – right?

I’m moving at the end of May, so I spend a small amount of time each morning packing a box or two. I am not going far; I found another apartment Logan Square, approximately seven blocks away. Nevertheless, the process of moving has been revelatory. The first observation for all movers is the same: I have more stuff than I thought.  As I slowly pack, carefully wrapping things and nestling them according to similarity of purpose and placement, the boxes have begun to pile up, and I still have more stuff. I don’t even own much, really. I certainly don’t own things of much value, except the sentimental kind.  Moving forces individuals to confront their relationship with their possessions, and I am pleased to see how my things beautifully align with the life I have chosen.

Like most American women, I own entirely too many articles of clothing. However, the clothes I own are inexpensive, enabling me to rationalize buying more than I need and buying from thrift stores ensures that no one else will be wearing the same thing. I have already packed most of my considerable scarf collection. There are two segments of the scarf collection, the winter variety, at least fifty scarves that range in size, color, and pattern, including special scarves handmade for me by Ruthie, my brilliant friend from graduate school; Jackie Couch, my best friend’s mom; and other crafty friends Ingrid and Hanna.  The non-winter variety includes another fifty whimsical, colorful bits of fabric, many gifts from friends who recognize scarves as my accessory of choice because they are unique and appealing and make any outfit infinitely more fabulous.

A growing number of boxes are filled with items for cooking, baking, and entertaining. Even though I live alone, I have (mismatched) service for 12 or more in order to feed as many people as will fit in my modest apartment. I grew up in a crowded, rowdy house, and can think of no better definition of home than a small space overflowing with people and laughter. My incomparable book club cycles through my place twice per year. I host brunches and dinners for my Urban Family on designated holidays and birthdays, and just for the hell of it. I cherish oddities, a fair amount of serving “fish dishes” and accessories shaped like fish (I like rhyming). The best example are gifts from Leah, twin fish salt and pepper shakers, and a completely adorable and utterly inaccurate set of fish-shaped measuring spoons that are the mysterious secret behind my perfectly salty chocolate chip cookies.

I have beloved books, and plenty of them. I love books, but not all books are worth the trouble it takes to lift and lug them across states, or even around the corner. I keep the countless books I have received as gifts, specially selected for me by my tremendously thoughtful friends and family. I buy a book every time I travel, being careful to select a title meaningfully tied to the place. On my recent trip to San Francisco, I visited City Lights Books and bought a poetry anthology from its own publishing imprint. I have inscribed copies of all the books written by Dan Chaon,a phenomenal writer who was my professor in graduate school. Books comprise a majority of my possessions, which seems reasonable to me.

The last major segment of my possessions consists of works of art, relatively inexpensive art, but art nonetheless. As I eagerly anticipate hanging them on new walls, it occurs to me that these things are the most prized. I have wonderful souvenirs from my travels, a Huicholi yarn drawing from my trip to Puerta Vallarta. Austin Kleon’s  work wowed me online, and bought one of his limited edition “Newspaper Blackout Poems.” Chicago festivals are a treasury of local artists, including Jay Ryan. I’m incredibly lucky to know artists. My dear, old friend, Emily made me two fantastic pieces, and gave me one more. I bought a marvelous reclining nude hand-drawn by the wonderfully creative Chas Appleby, my former student and forever friend. Matt Schlagbaum knows he owes me a work of art, too. All this art makes my walls sing.

Despite all the trouble and strain, moving affords the chance to look carefully at the stuff of life. If you’re lucky like me, you’ll discover you are very rich indeed.

Noah and Lane

I met Jen when we were both twenty years old.  We were half-way through college, and had plans to go to graduate school. We were instantly inseparable.  We wanted to move to the big city, experience independence and live our lives. In other words, we had no thought of having children.

In our early twenties, Chicago was the place to be and graduate school took up all our energy.  After graduation, Jen and I were both lucky enough to find jobs at Robert Morris.  Economically stable, we figured we might as well get married. We were 26, and we were Chicagoans through and through. Each weekend we hung out with friends, disposing all of our disposable income. Still, no plans for children.

At 29, things changed. Jen and I made a decision. We wanted a child.

Our first daughter, Noah, was born when we were 30 years old. Though both Jen and I had advanced degrees, and full time careers, we never knew hard-work until Noah arrived.  From Noah’s first three months, when she inconsolably cried every night from 6-9pm, to today when she has the attitude of a 16 year old in a 6 year old’s body, every day was, and has been a new challenge that continuously tests us physically and psychologically. We have come to the realization that our 9-5 jobs are relaxing in comparison to our grueling occupations as mom and dad.

But, we were not done.  Since one offspring didn’t break us, why not sire a second child?  Lane was born when we were 32 years of age, making us parents twice over.  The second is definitely easier than the first. However, the problem was Jen and I no longer had numerical superiority. It was 2 against 2 on the best days.  1 against 2 when Jen or I had an evening class. On those nights,mom or dad was outnumbered and outgunned.

I sometimes wonder: What would have happened if Jen and I had had these two kids when we first met? I shudder at the thought. At 20, both of us were still children ourselves.  We were self-centered and immature. Everything revolved around our needs and desires, and there is no doubt that emotionally and mentally we would not have been prepared for children. For us, the correct decision was to wait until our thirties. We needed the extra decade for psychological stability.

Yet, biologically, and physically, the opposite is true.  Women reach their peak of fertility at 19. Men around the same age. 19!  That is when nature intended for us to have Noah and Lane. At 19, my wife and I were in college, living on 4 hours of sleep, eating terrible food, and, yet, feeling indestructible. At that age, we would have physically been prepared for children much more than our 30 something selves.

The only thing I can figure is that Mother Nature must love a paradox.

One post could never do my mother justice, but I suppose I better start somewhere. I’ll think about the marvelous things my mother did. My mother raised my brothers and sisters and I (all 7 of us) essentially alone. She was a single mother for my entire life, and like all single mothers, she did the unimaginable: she provided for her family. This, in itself, is extraordinary. The current statistics in the United States indicate that as of 2011, over 10 million American women are single mothers. I need a minute to process that. No, I need a lifetime. I simply cannot imagine how she managed. Like every appreciative adult child, I look back and think, “how in the hell did my mother do it?” The truly amazing thing about my mother is that not only did she manage to see us all fed and clothed and educated, she did beautiful motherly things, too.

The special things that my mother continues to bake for her family helped establish charming family traditions. When I started teaching, I would reference family traditions, and my students were dumbfounded. Their mothers never made homemade jellies and pretzels and cookies and cakes. As she was baking, she would explain things: tell stories, inviting the memory of the recipe’s original author into the kitchen, distant relatives and former neighbors. Mrs. Keller contributed a fair number of dishes. My mom would prompt me, “you remember Mrs. Keller, don’t you?” I didn’t, but what did it matter? Different memories were embodied in each dish, and the traditions evolved over the years. A story I typically share with my students involves my mother’s tradition of celebrating the first day of school with homemade doughnuts. This means that my mother woke up at 4am that day, every year for two decades. It makes perfect sense that I ultimately became a teacher. My mother taught us to celebrate school. Just think of that. My sister Theresa now carries on the tradition with her three boys, making doughnuts the day before the first school day, and many of the 12 nieces and nephews come when they can. A few years ago, I noticed that my brothers and sisters and I all eat the doughnuts the same way; we close our eyes, take a bite, and are transported.

My mother also has a deep love for flowers, which makes sense as she was raised on a flower farm. Sadly, I never had a chance to see the farm where she was raised, but she brought her knowledge of flowers to her home. I recognize the first signs of spring in the early flowers, crocuses and forsythia which she taught me to identify. There were daffodils, of course, and later in the summer a tiny swath of violets. The house where I grew up has had over the years a remarkable preponderance of blooming and fruit trees: lavender lilacs, white dogwoods, Japanese weeping cherry, crabapple, pear, and plum trees. The special additions my mother made were rose bushes planted in front of the three front windows: red and white roses in front of her window, and yellow roses in front of the girls’ room because they were her eldest daughter, Betsy’s, favorite. My mother planted colorful annuals in beds by the back door, something my eldest brother Ralph does for her now every Mother’s Day.

By Paul Gaszak, English Faculty

On Tuesday, I took advantage of the beautiful weather by going for a run to my local park. When I arrived, I took a break on the basketball court and took a picture of the hoop with the pond in the background.

And at this moment, I made a decision.

When I was 21, my dad and I would walk in the evening to the park where I spent countless days and nights playing basketball. We would shoot around and then I would spend the remaining daylight pursuing my goal:

Dunking.

I’m not exactly built to dunk. I’m 5’10″, over 200lbs, and I have the wingspan of a T-Rex. However, I was (and I suppose I still am) a deceptively good athlete, meaning people are surprised I have any athletic ability at all.

Explosive jumping ability was not born into me, but I was still very close to my goal. I could grab the rim, and I could get high enough to jam the ball into the rim, but not through it. I was mere inches away, but by my mid-20s, I declared myself “too old” to accomplish this feat and accepted that I would simply never dunk.

On Tuesday, I changed my mind:

I am going to dunk.

Of course, I recognize how counterintuitive (ie: ridiculous) this sounds. If I couldn’t dunk during my “athletic prime” when  I played basketball constantly, then what chance do I have now, particularly since I was only able to hit the backboard on Tuesday?

I have a good chance, but I base my odds more on my mind than my body.

One of the charming aspects of teaching college is being around bright, enthusiastic young people who are pursuing their dreams. It is refreshing when students declare what they want and believe with every ounce of their being that things will turn out that way. I was one of those students at 21. I used to say I would be a rich and famous writer by the age of 25. Nothing made me believe otherwise, except for turning 26. (I’m kind of a famous writer now, though. How many ‘LIKES’ does the Flaneur’s Turtle have on Facebook?)

I was a fairly typical 21-year-old. I worked hard – I was going to school full-time during the day and working full-time during the night – but still, my concept of “hard work” was lackluster, and my concept of how to make dreams happen was clearly and lazily off the mark.

And my quest to dunk proves that.

Ten years later, I realize that some training (particularly plyometrics) would have gotten younger me over the rim to my goal in a few months, or even sooner. That’s how close I was. But I didn’t identify my goal, figure out the solution, and then dedicate myself to carrying out the plan.

At 21, a few inches seemed insurmountable. I had myself convinced that I was working hard at my goals and dreams, but if I couldn’t do something with relative ease, I either didn’t try or gave up.

At 31, an entire foot seems inevitable. If I’m far away from my goal, I’ll figure out how to achieve it, and the hard work will just make the payoff sweeter.

To achieve goals, to make dreams come true, to have something special in your life – it takes hard work, dedication, commitment, and sacrifice. It takes figuring out how to make things work and then ACTUALLY trying to make them work.

If 21-year-old Paul had honestly bought into that philosophy, I would have dunked a decade ago. But now I have bought in, and that’s what gives me a shot to throw it down.

A couple of weeks ago, MSJ (to whom I happen to be married) said something cool: “I’m more interested in what’s unfamiliar to me than what’s familiar.” As I ALWAYS do when he says interesting things, which he does so often, I thought about it for a while. For once, I agree.

N.W.A.

As you may know, my current intellectual pursuit/guilty pleasure/obsession (depending on your perspective) is rap music. I’ve created a new RMU course called The History and Poetics of Hip-Hop, and I’ve been studiously following blogs, reading criticism, and bobbing my head to Nas’s Illmatic, Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers, and N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton, while my students school me on Lil’ Wayne, Lupe Fiasco, and Kanye West. (I know; my job is friggin’ awesome.)

So, many of my friends and colleagues have been all: “Say what? YOU like rap music? YOU? A 30-something, Oak Park-living, food-and-fitness-obsessing, intellectual-pretending, white-being mom?” What interest could you possibly have in the world of hip-hop?

Haters.

First of all, I do happen to have some familiarity with the music and the culture, even if it is simply because I was a suburban (read: white) kid in the 1990’s going to an urban (read: black) high school, and the distributors of rap music, both in tape/CD sales and in the media (MTV) in the ‘90’s made the smart marketing move to target white kids whose disposable income was growing and who needed a new rebellious consciousness to identify with, because Madonna was mainstream, punk was no longer available, and grunge, well, was just too grunge-y. So, my friends and I would ride around in our parents’ cars rapping every Digital Underground, D.O.C., and DJ Qwik lyric at the top of our lungs. We even got into the 2-Live Crew. No joke.

This was the unfamiliar. We were fairly privileged teenaged white girls with a pretty limited sense of how messed up the world really was. Sure, we knew kids at school who were in gangs, our friend groups were quite economically and racially diverse, and we occasionally went to “the east side” to find that lady who would buy beer for minors (good god, I hope my kids never do this). But, for the most part, the larger culture validated our own limited, sheltered experience, and, from the teenager’s perspective, this was WAY too familiar to be cool.

Los Angeles, 1992.

Our exposure to hip-hop was a cultural awakening to something truly unfamiliar: the reality of lack (said KRS-One) and what it’s like to have a larger culture that marginalizes and, even, villain-izes you. That, frankly, was cool. When we learned of the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots, we were, I think rightly, compelled to make sense of that marginalized experience. And, in what I now know was a complicated and immature reach toward eliminating the inner racism that made a spectacle of “the ghetto” to people like us, we totally embraced gangsta rap. We recited the aggressive lyrics with all of the white chick swagger we could muster, and complained when our parents or teachers talked about how inappropriate “our” music was as that same distribution and media network slapped the “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” sticker over the cover art, compelling us even further to shout “You don’t like how I’m livin’, well f**k you!” and “Me love you long time.” No joke.

After years of New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson, which validated our suburban-girl experience and rarely challenged us, we were ready to be challenged. So we embraced the marginalized identity, and the marginalized art that went along with it. Perhaps it was just rebellion, but I think it might be a yearning to empathize with the unfamiliar, really, that draws us to art we don’t immediately understand. Sure, much of what we enjoy and admire is grounded in the universal-ization of our own experience, but, what is REALLY interesting is art that makes the unfamiliar familiar. Regardless of my claims to street credibility simply due to the fact that my friends were diverse and I knew Too $hort’s real name (Todd Shaw, yo.), white privilege rendered me, and the culture that represented my experience, incapable of really understanding what it was like at the time to be outside of the mainstream (read, mistakenly: cool). Embracing rap music was a transgression that both irritated my parents AND gave me a sense of myself as someone unjustly misunderstood and anti-authority, even if it was inauthentic and, looking back, kind of embarrassing. Plus, it felt pretty damn cool to act “hard”.

These days, as I research the social and cultural movements of the 1980’s and 90’s that helped make hip-hop what it is today and apply critical poetic analysis to “6 ‘N the Mornin’” and “Get ‘em High,” I’m a little more self-reflexive in my response to the “Say, what?” question. I’m into rap precisely because it comes from a place that I have little familiarity with, but that I long to feel empathy toward and, for whatever foolish reason, to identify with.

Plus, much to MSJ’s dismay, I can’t resist a phat beat, a dope flow, and a smooth voice.