A Lack of Meaning

Budget cuts affect students more than any political high horse in Lansing could dream. Limited funding takes away from the richness of a learning and turns schools into forced institutions rather than valuable life experience.

I first noticed something was up with the school district when in fifth grade the A.I. (Autistic Impaired) program at my school suddenly disappeared. My curiosity for people not like me and need to nurture made me closer to the kids in that program than many of my “peers”.

One boy in particular stuck out. Maybe because he was younger, maybe because I could related to him more, but most likely because of how he felt about me. For any reason, I remember Jacob very well. He had light, light hair and very pale skin. He was a little shorter than the ridiculous “intercom” on the upper-el playground. He wore the most peculiar ring around his neck that he sometimes chewed or sucked. His teacher said it was because he ground his teeth.

Initially I was drawn by how babyish he was. In his first year at McKinley, he was anywhere between five and eight, but he acted more like a one year old. Here enters my need to nurture.

So I followed him around the play ground for a day or two and “helped” him with the playground equipment. I asked all kinds of questions of the A.I. teachers, but they were for some reason unhappy about my curiosity. Their attitude towards me was so strange; in fact, I ignored it until they broke my heart.

The teacher I only remember from her wrinkled face and Bride of Frankenstein hairdo decided it was a bad idea for me to play with Jacob, and told me I wasn’t allowed to anymore. I brushed it off like I did with all upsetting things at the time, and put it aside to ponder later.

The next day I was sitting on the chains that I loved to balance on or swing from or hang upside on. Today, I was just sitting. The night away from school hadn’t been enough to pick me up.

I don’t think he was looking for me. It’s hard enough for a normal five year old to remember someone without any reason to, or hint about it. But when he stumbled across me I got up to walk away. I was literally turning around, and Jacob grabbed my hand.

As you can imagine, the Bride of Frankenstein was not pleased. She looked at me with a scowl as Jacob led me around to his favorite part of recess- climbing up the stairs and running across the bridge. I was flustered and at a loss of words when she opened her mouth, but my loyal friend came to my aid with, “He came to her.” The woman looked puzzled, then pleased. It should have struck me as strange, but I was so excited to have my friend back and still upset with her that all I could think of was escape.

The year after that was fifth grade. On the first day of recess I ran expectantly to the playground, only to find it empty for all I was concerned. After two days of a no-show, I peeked into the A.I. room to find it empty.

Again I was crushed, but I was too big now to fuss over my emotions.

The rest of the year was lacking something I now understand to be depth. When everyone in your environment is a bird of the same feather, it’s hard to find individual personality. Merging the elementary schools only increased this affect, but that is another topic for another blog.

If we want to mold well rounded, unique and sympathetic children, we can’t afford to cut special programs. If the goal, however, is to produce ill adjusted, apathetic drive by shooters, budget cuts are the way to go.

I would opt for the first, and be willing to lay the ground work for a better future, even if it means less money for state prisons and poorer roads. Unfortunately, what I want for myself and my future children, my niece and nephew, doesn’t match up with what the present generation wants for themselves.

New car anyone? How ‘bout an all interest mortgage?

My Take on World Hunger

You go throughout your entire day satisfied and nourished. Your mind is running on all cylinders and your stomach is calm and quiet. Never once do you wonder how else it could be. Never once do you have to ignore a growling stomach. Never once have you given up your food so that a younger sibling or your own child could eat.

This is not the case for millions of people worldwide. Men, women, and children go without food or even clean water on a regular basis. People here, in Livonia; people up the freeway in Detroit; people across the Atlantic in Europe, struggling through wars and nuclear accidents that cause devastation and, you guessed it, hunger. Starving people live near and far, all around the world. But many of the more fortunate people can only see the distended bellies of children in Africa.

World hunger is the most ridiculous, unnecessary, cruel problem we have today. There is enough food to go around, but people are selfish, ignorant, and unable to understand issues that don’t affect them. Human services groups are often turned away in countries that purposely want to starve their citizens.

Take Darfur for example. The government punished the citizens for protesting because of their awful policies by denying them food, help from other countries and even sending gangs to kill any citizens they can. Thankfully, there are some relief camps, but relief camps cannot solve all our problems and cannot last forever.

I think there is a lot more work going on today to help the hungry then there was in the past. Groups like UNICEF( http://www.unicefusa.org/work/), World Vision (http://www.worldvision.org/), and FreeRice, (www.freerice.com/), are working hard to help hungry people in many different ways. They are all organizations Americans can be a part of, and even children can help with. FreeRice is my personal favorite, because it teaches you languages, geography, math, and art while you help donate food.

The trouble now, when we have sufficient supplies to feed, clothe, employ, and house struggling people in broken down nations, is getting relief groups into the country and working on ground level to turn things around. I don’t think its too much to ask of powerful governments (take U.S. for example) to step in, even if they are unwelcome, and fix this problem.

It’s not too much of a stretch for us to invade Iraq for absolutely no reason. It’s not too much of a struggle for us to invade Afghanistan when they killed all of 3,000 people. Yet it’s too much for our government to invade countries that are starving their people. Or even to provide enough aide for people within the United States that are hungry.

Friend Dumping

Just before I walked into the computer lab for my fourth hour class, I was disturbed by an all too true comment. I had provided a "letter of grievance" that I tried to defend as a note to someone I usually call my favorite person. Its important for you to know this isn't because I like them more than anyone else. Its more of a admiration of their perspective, even though I often disagree. Anyhow, he was not pleased to address my grievance but has been caving a lot (comparatively) recently to my requests either out of lack of sleep, or my preferred theory, response to my endearing nature.

My problem was his insistence on doing the one thing that bothers me. By bothers I don't mean the same as irks, or upset or any of the other words I commonly use to spice up an opinion but don't really mean. By bothers I mean something that shakes me to the core; something that I take seriously. And said person has been not only doing the one thing that really bothers me, but I believe genuinely enjoying the reaction it takes a lot to get.

So aside from my true admiration for my favorite person, there is a bit of camaraderie that I value but I'm not sure if they do.... Its on a level with personal experiences that are hard to understand unless you have them in common. In fact, I have not yet found someone that can really understand it if they haven't experienced it themselves, and half the people who have deny the ramifications. So I appreciate what I assume they understands about me, and what I think I understand about them.

In response to my grievance, which I craftily posed as a question, they said, "You're right, I'm a complete blank. You should friend dump me. "

Now, I hope you understand how serious of a loss that would be. This is, after all, my favorite person. But its got me thinking about how common these scenarios go down. Usually without as clear a procedure, leaving people not only at a loss, but confused as to why.

How many teenagers are going around lost and confused? How many lost teenagers carry that into adult hood? How many adults pass those feelings on to their children?

It has recently been assigned to me to examine my own pattern of pushing people away. The whys, the whens, the hows. Its not pretty. But neither are other people's patterns. One person said to me, "If you don't like freaks, walk away right now." Innocent enough, and even a bit "clever" when considered amongst their close friends. But how serious is that below surface level?

I don't know.... It just bothers me how reckless people have become about their relationships. I don't think I'll turn my back on my favorite person. There has to be a way to make things work.