I don't have a car on campus. First, I don't have
the money to buy a car, pay for insurance and upkeep, and I'm simply not
so suicidal as to think I could easily find a parking space anywhere on campus
when I needed one. I have a big enough issue getting to classes on
time on my own two feet. My parents, very proud of their youngest daughter's
success are good enough to put up with driving the 55 miles from Eastpointe
to Ypsilanti whenever I feel homesick. That said, the conversation
between me and my parents on one of my recent rides home went something like
this:
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"And I LOVE
my acting classes. I mean, I don't act much, or, you know, ever, but
the professors are just great. We're reading Neil Simon plays, which I bet
I can find at David's or Second Story really cheap, and I might not have
to actually buy any other books for a while. [breath] My English professor,
though, I think he's been at this for way too long, I mean - he's obviously
insane. Did I tell you what we have to do?"
"Hmm?" Both of my parents together,
a collective sound of gentle curiosity.
"We have to 'create our own writing technology'.
We have to write something that uses only things found in nature. No
pencils, no pens, no paper, no computers."
"A typewriter?" says Dad, cutting
off a guy in a little red Neon.
"Nope, still counts."
"Well, that's…different." This was Mom,
trying, as always, to never say anything bad about anyone.
"You can say that again. I have
NO IDEA what to do."
"How about a tree? Carve something
into the one in the backyard." Dad, again.
"Can't. He said that trees aren't completely
natural, because they haven't always been where they are now. Someone,
at one time, put them there."
"Huh. Toothpicks!" Another unexpected swerve
followed by a stream of curses about the other vehicle's driver, their mother,
nationality, and sexual preferences.
"Nope. Those have been processed into little tiny
sticks."
Mom, who has been gritting her teeth in response to Dad's unique driving
techniques, finally speaks up. "Maybe pasta? It's sort of natural food."
From the back seat, where I, too, am cringing
away from the edges of the car doors, in the event of a bump or a crash on
I-94, I speak up, mostly to myself. "Hmm. That might work.
Wait, no. Because it's been processed, too, from flour and stuff."
"Sand? From Bellview. It's not frozen up
there yet." Mutters Dad, looking relaxed, even as every other driver on the
freeway seems to simultaneously do something to annoy him.
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Once
safely home, I make a trip, during the all-too-short daylight hours to Bellview
Elementary School, my alma mater of ten years earlier. The plan is
to dig into the sand with a big stick yanked off of the nondescript (and
almost dead) tree in my front yard. After poking and prodding the cold
ground for twenty minutes, and succeeding in only making holes and breaking
my stick, I opt for chipping up a few chunks of playground sand, in which
I fondly remember writing "S.R. luvs T.D." when I was in fifth grade.
They get tossed into a Tupperware container that Mom lent me weeks ago, that
never got returned to it's proper place in the kitchen, and then settled
down by the heating vent in the kitchen to warm up, and maybe melt down.
It'll be a few hours still before I can attack this project.
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I let the
sand melt for a day and a half before I really have the time to do something
with it. The sand kind of looks like chunks of mud in its clear plastic
bed, so my first idea is to look up the definition of mud, and 'build' it
into the sand. I settle down on the living room floor, with an old
piece of newspaper down so mud doesn't get ground into the carpet.
I start with the first line of the "M". The sand-mud is much too goopy
for this. It won't hold its shape. Next idea: to squish it flat
and carve into the mush with my finger. I get all of the "M" in before
looking it over and noticing that I can't even read it, let alone will the
class be able to see it. I squish over the mess again, sigh, and go
get my much-maligned stick from the car. I have to strip off some of
the bark, but it looks like it will be a very serviceable stylus sort of
tool.
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I have to
resettle myself on the floor, and rethink this. I can pour a little
of the goop and water off of the edge, but it's still not sturdy enough to
make little castle-letters. And it's not really mud anymore.
With tree-branch stylus in hand, I set about writing "It was too cold at
the beach, so I brought the beach in." It's true enough, as the weatherman
has said it'll be 15 degrees or less the entire weekend. No one in
Michigan, save the polar bear club, will be going to the beach any time soon.
I got most of it out; correcting my capitals and trying not to dig up too
much grit, so that the letters can be seen. It works. It's not
the best-looking patch of sand ever, but it has a little more permanence
than "S.R. luvs T.D." T.D. and his friends erased those very quickly.
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Truthfully, getting
a good picture taken was one of the harder parts of the assignment.
I tried putting my creation on the porch, in the sunlight, under the fanlights
in the living room, and finally resorted to a special lighting setting on
my camera, which works well enough.
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Like most of the
class, I learned that this was not really a 20-minute assignment. It
took real thought. It brought to mind another assignment from many
years before, in the writing of this paper. In sixth grade, we had
a morning "Homeroom" class, and also an afternoon "Resources" class.
Once every two months, we would swap teachers for "Resources". In mid-April
of my sixth grade year, I was lucky enough to land my favorite teacher for
"Resources", Miss Casey. Her mother had been my fourth grade teacher,
and my father's fourth grade teacher before that. We were as good of
friends as a teacher and student can be during school hours. Miss Casey,
being fascinated with science and technology (this being when Macintosh computers
were the height of said technology), chose "Inventions" for her topic.
By the end of the class, we would invent and build something to make life
easier. To start our education, Miss Casey had us write a journal entry
(because journals were the thing to subject kids to, then), on what inventions
we could not live without. Most of the kids in that sixth grade class named
technological advances - computers, light bulbs, cars. A pen and pencil
were nowhere on that list, because I didn't consider them to be 'inventions'.
Was I ever wrong!
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For this slightly
similar assignment, I had to sit and think - not an easy task for a child
of the 'E-Generation', as my boyfriend has named it - I am by far more used
to settling at the computer with a keyboard across my lap, and Google-ing
my way to a solution. I thought of it not as something that needed permanence,
but asked, "What would I do if I couldn't write? If, silly as it sounds,
I was stuck somewhere without pens and pencils and needed to leave a message
for someone?" Sand did work, and while it did possess the ease of erasure
- I could smudge over one letter and putt another in with relatively little
hassle - the displacement of sand to make letters was something I hadn't
accounted for. Given more time, I doubt I could have done anything
completely revolutionary, without bending the rules in some way. An
inventor I am not, though I do not put myself beyond seeing where I could
learn a few things about my habits and the things I take for granted.
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