My Brother is in Afghanistan, Santa Claus is Still Dead, and Two Tutors Save me from Hating Everything: PART TWO, discovering the virtue of doing something when nothing's expected of you.

DISCLAIMER: This post contains uncensored, foul language – something I generally try to avoid on this blog.

...and I may have downed nearly a whole carafe of coffee while I was drafting this.
And please realize that there's a part one to this.

Jake’s dead battery had him stranded in the Humanities parking lot. The door of his VW Bug was ajar, and he stood between it and the car’s body while he waited for a tow truck. Or somebody with jumper cables (whichever came first).

He spotted me storming, propelled by my personal feelings of betrayal and general pissery, down the sidewalk that borders the lot. “Hey, Kathryn,” Jake said.

“Hey, Jake.” I stopped. “Have I asked you about the Constitution yet?”

“No.”

“Do you remember signing something saying that you’d support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic?”

“Yeah. I remember all four times I signed it.” (Air Force + public middle school + some other thing + tutoring lab = 4) “What about it?”

SOMEONE REMEMBERS! “Can I quote you?” (I’ve since learned that you don’t initiate an interview with this question, but, ya know… live and learn.)

“Sure. Do you have jumper cables?”

Without acknowledging the inquiry, I plopped down on the concrete, whipping out my pink notebook with Strain Zero and Free Bradley Manning stickers on the front, because, you have to remember, for some people, after hella NOT sleeping for a while, common courtesy dissolves between two and three AM and never comes back.

Jake thinks the Oath is “vague” and “weird”, and surmises that it’s designed for anti-discrimination purposes. Given the McCarthy revelation, the forefathers of this FUCKING document intended the absolute, polar opposite, but at this point, I wanted to drop the facts and go with Jake’s theory. I really did. Because I liked believing in Santa Claus and ignoring the fact that puppies die. I thought this Oath would mean something good, too. But it’s hard to listen to the anti-discrimination lullaby over the thundering collapse of my almost-patriotism – FUCKING MCCARTHY! The truth sets no one free. What the truth does is RUIN CHRISTMAS FOR EVERYONE.

Jake also thinks some senators pose more of a threat to the Constitution than terrorists. “And Sarah Palin,” Jake said.

I paused my furious scribbling. “Sarah Palin?”

“Yeah, sometimes I think she’s anti-Constitution…” Before Jake could expound on this, someone with jumper cables came to the rescue. That’s okay. It’s like the conversation I had with the army recruiter outside the campus bookstore that ended before I could ask him exactly what he meant when he said supporting and defending the Constitution means fighting for my right to purchase a vanilla latte. I take sound bytes. I put them out of context. To amuse myself. Fishy and advantageous? Yes. Even a little morally corrupt? That, too.

Of course, I would be amiss if I didn’t keep in mind others who remember singing the Oath – like Anita. Anita not only remembers signing the Oath, but remembers stopping to think about whether or not she was willing to sign it before she put the pen to paper – I LOVE YOU ANITA. Ultimately, she decided that, since she would be fulfilling this obligation in the setting of the tutoring lab, it would be a matter of, if anything, defending Freedom of Speech. This was something Anita could get behind, although there may be other circumstances where she wouldn’t be willing to sign it.

I loved these beautiful optimists. I really did, and still do. But, at the time, despite the few, remaining embers of desire to find real meaning in this thing, disenchantment was winning. I was ready to go home, throw together a eulogy of sorts (in this vein) for my dead Constitution-blog project, post that sucker the way it was, and get on with my life. But with a whole bucket of NO SLEEP comes a weakened immune system, and I was promptly knocked out for about a week with a wretched cold that left me helpless to do, like, anything save for falling asleep on piles of clean, unfolded laundry, and watch hella Breaking Bad and illegally uploaded Rob Bell shit on YouTube.

That eventually abated enough for me to muster the energy to take the dog for a walk. I was still in the process of accepting the Oath’s, and therefore the almost-blog-project’s, perceived meaninglessness. I lamented my ideas and how they would never be realized in blogposts. Like, I had hoped to write about the Black Panthers being prime examples of what it means to support and defend the Constitution.

This is because the Panthers were responding to a very REAL violation of Constitutional rights in their neighborhood, where cops – who are made to swear their own version of the Oath, mind you – were all kinds of corrupt. Instead of lying down and taking it, the Black Panthers organized, and exercised their Second Amendment rights to police the police. They were a volunteer militia.

That’s when it dawned on me. Right there on the street, as I stood waiting while the dog shat in the bushes, shit started adding up.

Volunteer militia. Keyword: VOLUNTEER.

Everything – all the more preferable explanations I’d gotten – like Jake’s anti-discrimination fairy tale, and Anita, at one point, musing that defending the Constitution is more about protecting the people than protecting the government…

It all coalesced. Santa may be dead, but it gets better than overweight North Pole residents in red suits, because I realized my duty to support and defend the Constitution has ZERO to do with my status as a government employee (employees = hired = money = technically not a volunteer). It has NOTHING to do with the government or any kind of institution or third party, and everything to do with my preexisting status of being an American citizen. The choice of whether or not to participate, of how politically active or aware I will be is a choice I make independently.

Make no mistake, America: your
government is STILL on Team Edward.

And, the way things are, that’s not a radical statement. At all. Even if this were being read by a power-hoarding head of state, I think it’s more than safe to say that I wouldn’t get blacklisted, and my phone wouldn’t get tapped – which would be a profound waste of resources anyway, unless the CIA’s priorities are warped enough to find value in overhearing my fellow, twenty-something burnout friend and I organize Twilight marathons, or coordinating carpools with the Anarchist to the next Anti-Flag show. Until there is any expectation of action from a lowly English major / tutor like me, this reads conjures big, fat zero on the radical-o-meter. If we remember what was said in the previous post, the Oath could “literally apply to [me] never.”

Well, in that regard, to the Man, I lovingly say, FUCK YOU.

If you didn’t WANT or EXPECT it, you shouldn’t have ASKED FOR IT.

This dog walk realization, actually, is more in sync with the original hypothesis: the one I formulated before I went on an Easter Egg Hunt for subjectively novel sound bytes to add to my collection of things to laugh about later, which does little-to-nothing to cultivate comprehensive understanding. Revisiting the notion after the thundering collapse of my almost-patriotism only grounded it, revealed more dimension of meaning for an individual citizen like me to have REAL conversations with people, and knowing my history, and watching Democracy Now!, and actually reading the REAL LIVE Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California for myself, and writing letters and participating in political demonstrations where I discern that’s due, and having conversations with people and knowing my history and conversing with people conversing with people conversing with people. Doing it for real. Asking real questions. Exchanging real ideas. Getting real answers.

Furthermore, if I were to really start a blog that explores what it means to support and defend the Constitution in the context of being an English tutor, it couldn’t be kathrynsupportsanddefends.blogspot.com. Kathryn cannot do this alone. For such a project to really work, and really be awesome, it would have to be more than ONE English tutor observing and analyzing what all this means, and how the Constitution is and is applied around in the country, in education, in other places, whatever.

There you go. That’s what I've got say. Hopefully at least Sophia will appreciate the scattered outbursts of frenetic nonsense.

Ball’s in your park, Citizens of the World. Hit me up with comment love. It’s tax deductible in select states, and I like hearing what y’all have to say.

My Brother is in Afghanistan, Coffee and Mosh Pits are the Best Parts of Waking Up, and my Best Friend is an Anarchist: PART ONE, I fell on my face for the rhetoric of empire. And spit teeth.

Dear few and cherished readers of this blog (I love you more than coffee and mosh pits):

Remember back in February when I was like, I’m gonna start a blog exploring what it means to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California from all enemies, foreign and domestic” because I want to remain loyal to the oath I took when I became a government employee? It’s okay if you don’t remember. I’m a big girl. I realize I’m not The World. Even if America doesn’t.

Well, anyway.

Screw that.

To explain metaphoric, non-sexual screwing, I’ll take you back hella dayz, circa the start of April.

DISCLAIMER:  I use dirty words.

I was storming off campus because I was fucking pissed. I know some could successfully argue that the volume of pissery was disproportionate to the situation, but manic fixations are manic fixations. A firm grasp on reality is not among its symptoms listed in the DSM-IV.

In my journalistic pursuit for the meaning of the Oath of Allegiance, I lost much sleep. I neglected academic obligations. I missed buses. With all the time we spent together, I was practically BFF with the unconsummated ringing of the DHS Public Comment Line. I've been labeled a domestic terrorist, a dork, and I have good reason to believe that, to at least two of the women who work in Payroll, I’m That Girl.

I had conversations with a lot of people and got a lot of responses, running the gamut from intelligent to witty to hollow and useless. I’ve been told that it’s optional. It’s conditional. It’s incredibly important, and it’s utterly meaningless. It’s a state thing, a federal thing, a post-9/11 thing. Payroll insisted that it has absolutely nothing to do with education and everything to do with not giving government information to terrorists. Another source said it signifies a duty to “defend English grammar to the death.” Others surmised that it requires me, in the event of encountering an unpatriotic term paper, to immediately report to my supervisor, who will in turn notify the feds by way of the direct line installed behind her desk, so that they may come to the English Lab and whisk the dissenter to a secret location where ...things will happen to them. Things we’d prefer not to know about.

As entertaining as the witty ones were, the sheer volume of unhelpful responses was getting to me. I was tired of veterans shrugging and saying they hadn’t given the Oath of Enlistment a second thought. As much as I love my colleagues, I was growing weary with the increasing number of tutors I spoke with who plumb don’t remember signing it at all.

Lots of swearing going down here. Not a lot of it solemn.

It meant something to me. It meant a lot. How could it mean nothing to all these other people?

On that fateful day of pissery, I was already approaching empty as I sat in the corridor outside the Anarchist’s history class, waiting to spot his mohawk in the stream of exiting students.

“Are you ready for how out of control this’s gotten?” I said to him. “I was ready to ditch oceanography – and it’s a very important day in oceanography! – to visit a professor’s office hours to talk about the Oath.”

He didn’t even blink. “I’ll go for you.”

…this is why I practically, not definitely became BFF with the DHS Comment Line ringing.

The DHS Public Comment Line doesn't stage dive at Anti-Flag shows.

I debriefed him, had him read the copy of the Oath I had on my person at all times – he got a good laugh out of the “without mental reservation” part – and proceeded to class. I spent seventy-five minutes not taking notes on, let alone paying attention to, the very important oceanography lecture; instead, turning over in furious contemplation* all Oath-related information I’d gathered.

Then I met up with the Anarchist.

And broke.

As previously stated, I already knew that, of all the swearing going down at Payroll, not much of it was solemn. Despite its fancy wording and loaded language, the oath fails to stir enough patriotism in most people for it to be anchored in their memory. Furthermore, I believed Payroll when they told me multiple times that it was a post-9/11 thing. I was ready to stick that information in a blogpost after I got home that afternoon, because enough people had told me that I believed it to be fact. So, imagine my surprise when I found out that countless people have been signing and forgetting this since THE FUCKING MCCARTHY WITCHUNTS! That’s over HALF A FUCKING CENTURY!**

SAYS FUCKING WHO?

This professor guy. Who remembers signing it vividly, and whose friend was fired for not signing it back in the seventies.

That bloody terrorist...

The Anarchist continued to recap the visit, reporting that it doesn’t mean anything, and it can’t mean anything. The only people it could possibly, maybe apply to are our military, and even then, the only enemies there could be are suspected enemies – you know, like Dorothy Parker – or spies, and the Constitution is an American legal document, and despite all delusions, America is not The World. You can’t impose or defend the Constitution where it is not law. Even if it was a legal document in Canada, Afghanistan, Italy, wherever… it wouldn’t even be our place to defend it because it’s NOT OUR COUNTRY. Sovereignty. Look it up.

No one’s willing to get rid of the oath.

It doesn’t mean anything.

It could never mean anything.

“It could literally apply to you never,” the Anarchist told me. “Yes, you can quote me on that.”

“Puppies turn into dogs. Who grow old. And die.”

It wasn’t like someone had proven to me that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. It was like watching Santa Claus get shot in the fucking face.

I was in a one-sided relationship. America would never love me back, especially not to the unhealthy measures to which I had loved it. Nobody really seemed to care. Not enough to remember. And the unhealthy measures… yeah, you could point to that and roll your eyes and discredit.

You could be like, geez, Kathryn. Don’t take it so personally.

It’s just a piece of paper. A dead legal document.

Frankly, my disappointment, however exaggerated it appears to be, isn’t totally ungrounded. I started off on this project because I actually, really felt like I had a duty to fulfill. It’s not like the Oath is some sober, cut-and-dry business contract that lays out x, y and z: here are the stipulations, here’s what’s expected of you, here’s what you can expect from us, sign and date.

It’s abstract idealism and loaded language. Start talking about swearing oaths, and putting faith (it does use that word) in something or other… that’s fucking personal. It’s emotional manipulation.

Santa is dead. Puppies will die. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

As I stormed off campus. I had half a mind to turn back and run through the faculty offices until I found a history / sociology / whatever teacher and ask, trying not to scream, although that’s all I could do in my head, “SINCE MCCARTHY! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!” And really, “Why would they do this to me?” Why would they lead me on?

But mostly the screaming.

Then I ran into Jake.




* Assuming one can contemplate with ferocity…

** As it turns out, a more careful Google search would have revealed this to me. But I’m not sorry I asked, like, everyone and their mother first, because I would have missed out on such gems as my hypothetical domestic terrorism, and a sergeant recruiting outside the bookstore telling me that it’s my constitutional right to purchase vanilla lattes. That guy was nice.

My Brother is in Afghanistan, the Dog Poops in the Afternoon, and I am the Government: in which all your tax dollars go to Twilight marathons.

Prepare to feel deceived.

The title of my blog, “Musings of an Unemployed English Major,”* is a lie.

…okay, “inaccurate” might be a better word than “lie,” and as much as I loath to toot my own horn, I don’t think this inaccuracy injures my overall credibility. At the time of the blog’s inception, I was not telling a lie when I proclaimed myself to be unemployed (save for occasional, few-and-far-between house-sitting gigs, and getting paid under the table to escort the neighbor’s dog around the block for his midday bowel movement). It wasn't until last September, when I went into the payroll office at my school and filled out a bunch of paperwork, that the title officially became inaccurate. These days, not only do I work…

I work for the government.

I tutor English at a community college, which is financed partially by student fees, and a-lot-ly by those crazy kids in Sacramento doing their darnedest to run the state. If you were to do something highly illegal (which I wouldn’t encourage at all), and sneak into Payroll to rifle through their files and find the paperwork I filled out that day, my government employee status might be especially evident to you when you find the oath I signed to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

I want YOU to identify the independent clause.

My very best friend, the Anarchist, asked me if this meant I was to physically assault any unpatriotic nebbish I might encounter on the street. And, well… no. Just, no. All the violence stuff is more up my brother’s alley, who made a VERY SIMILAR PLEDGE when he joined the army about two years ago. But I'm an English tutor, and English tutors don’t suit up in fatigues and polish guns when they defend the Constitution.

Even though I can confidently assert how not to do my job, I can’t confidently assert how an English tutor properly fulfills the “Oath of Allegiance” required for employment at our fine a-lot-ly government-funded establishment. I’ve been helping students defend their papers from scrambled theses and run-on sentences, but when it comes to protecting the Constitution, I am amiss.

The oath is worded with such authority and idealism, I’ve often found myself in a tailspin of endless guilt for neglecting the duties it prescribes. This provokes the grandiosity gland (a close sister of the eject button for any rational conceptions of how the world works) in the tempestuous organ that is my brain, and the thinking mutates as such:

I work for the government. Therefore, I am the government. Or part of it. Well, this is a democracy, so, ideally, everyone’s participating in government affairs. The government belongs to the people. I think I’m mostly a person. I am the government. This calls for a Slurpee. (Can you follow that? My shrink couldn’t.)

Therefore, America, your government is not working for you.

Your government is not defending the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Your government would prefer to watch the Twilight movies with her fellow, floundering, twenty-something chum to mock the poor quality of cinema and abysmal emotional intelligence of its characters so that they may feel superior and compensate for their shortcomings.

Your government is on Team Edward.

BUT NEVER FEAR, AMERICA! My priorities will shift! I will start exploring how an English tutor is to go about supporting and defending the Constitution in a new blog! Although I currently teem with ambition for departing on this odyssey of wholesome patriotism, I’m sure I will publish posts far less than I wish to if I have any modicum of a healthy desire to pass math.


UPDATE (May 30, 2013):  The proposed project has since been pronounced dead.
*  ANOTHER UPDATE (May 31, 2013):  The title of this blog has been changed to something more accurate.

Ayn Rand's Space Ship: in which the Tragic Gamer Kid's shameless audacity gets him what he thinks he needs.

This time last year, on Monday evenings, you could find me in a small classroom on the second floor of the Liberal Arts building at my school. My best friend, the Anarchist, had a class on the first floor – a class taught by one of those subversive professors who will start talking louder to compensate for the complacency of others. One of those professors who pulls back society’s curtains so that his students may catch a glimpse of its pretension, its pitfalls, its capitalist corruption… the whole, miserable, bureaucratic, human-rights-violating shebang. One of those professors who teaches classes from which students are sent home under a heavy black cloud, looking like they got the wind knocked out of them, and experiencing a touch of resentment that the blissful ignorance they enjoyed at the breakfast table that morning is lost. Or at least the students who cared.

…anyway…

On these Monday nights of yore, my history class on the second story would get out earlier than the Anarchist’s, so I would sit and wait on the concrete outside Professor Subversion’s room. Sometimes he walk outside after clicking “play” on a YouTube video or DVD to run to his office or something, see me sitting there, and invite me to go inside and watch it.

One night, I left history, turned on my family’s “emergency” cell phone, and stuck it in my sweatshirt pocket as I descended the stairs. I was starting across the LA building’s quad when I saw the Tragic Gamer Kid standing outside the closed door of Professor Subversion’s classroom. As much as I’ve waxed about lecture hall logistics and inconvenient truths, this story is really centered on the Tragic Gamer Kid (and the cell phone).

Sorry if you feel misled.

Being the Anarchist’s senior by not much, and my junior by a little more than not much, the Tragic Gamer Kid wasn’t a kid per se. But he did play a lot of video games, and shouted his life’s narratives as if they were as tragic, important, and ignored as the ones Professor Subversion would speak of with increasing volume.

The Tragic Gamer Kid… actually, we’ll call him Horatio, because “Tragic Gamer Kid” is cumbersome …was supposed to be in his Farsi class in the next building over, but, no. Horatio was here, the light from the door’s tiny window illuminating his face, and his fingers that twinkled and pointed to places he wasn’t supposed to be.

I knew exactly what Horatio was doing. He did the same to me last week.

“Horatio!” Although I wanted to get his attention, I also didn’t want to disrupt any classes, and he was all the way across the quad. My voice came out mangled and croaking, a confused stage whisper. I broke into a run, which prompted the family “emergency” phone – which I frequently carried because, to my small, self-serving mind, aimless texting with the Anarchist and the Fundamentalist Atheist were equivalent enough to emergencies – to bounce out of my pocket. Its major parts cleanly cracked away from each other when it hit the pavement.

I paused, torn. It’s not like the quad was teeming with collegiates like it was during the daytime, but there was still something uneasy about the notion of leaving cell phone innards on the ground in the dark. As I stooped to pick up the closest piece I could locate, I realized that rescuing the cell phone and stopping Horatio weren’t possible.

If it weren’t for that phone, I swear, I could have stopped him. Because in the modicum of time I spent in conflict over the splattered device, Horatio made his move. When I looked up again, his hand was on the doorknob, and me and my mangled croaks of, “HORATIO! HORATIO!” weren’t even close to half-way across the quad. He disappeared into the room.

From what I’ve been told, it transpired like this:

When Horatio initially entered, Professor Subversion offered, “Would you like to take a seat? We’re about to watch a video…”

Horatio stopped the professor, saying, “Excuse me, Mr. Subversion,” then pointed at my best friend when he addressed him: “Anarchist.”

“What do you want, Horatio?” It’s hard to tell if the Anarchist couldn’t help but to laugh at the absurdity at the time of the event, or it was just him laughing as he recounted to me later.

“We need to talk after class,” Horatio said, still pointing at the Anarchist.

“This couldn’t wait until later, Horatio?”

“No. See you then,” Horatio said, and left.

Although the Tragic Gamer Kid had never been a student of his, Professor Subversion knew Horatio well enough have an acceptance that, That’s Horatio. He’ll do what he wants… and resume where he left off.

Horatio was exiting the classroom when I finally caught up to him. “Horatio!”

“Kathryn!”

“You’re helping me find the pieces of my cell phone!”

I’ll give Horatio this much – he didn’t bail on me while I groped around on the cement. After he returned to Farsi class, with the image of him exceeding the threshold replaying in my mind, it struck me how extraordinarily human Horatio was: a parable, an extreme illustration of what I either actually look like, or of what I am afraid I’ll look like when I ask for help.

Horatio needed a lot of help, to levels at which he would be obnoxious in seeking it. It was a battle to maintain boundaries while in his company. Once any desire to leave was expressed, Horatio would do his best to manipulate his guests into staying longer. Suckers like me (or the Anarchist, although he wasn’t a sucker for as long as I was) would get stuck in phone “conversations” that would last upwards to four or five hours, with nary a word in edgewise. The average call would begin with Horatio complaining about girl problems, which would turn into confident and searing statements that all girls in California were c-nts and whores, or how everyone and their mother were bottom-feeding “betas.” Then it might end with some long verbal dissertation of how Mexico has an “inefficient culture,” why the Germans should have won the war, or how all of Horatio's problems could be attributed to Ayn Rand.

Horatio the Tragic Gamer Kid, makes me not want to ask for help, because I don’t want be obnoxious and overstep my boundaries, blinded by a personal audacity I can’t even tell is there, and misjudging exactly how urgent my First World problems are not. I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I’m not saying all of Horatio’s problems were First World or trivial – I’m just saying that if I need to ask for help, I don’t want to be more of a bother than I can avoid.

At the same time, I have to admit that I also admire Horatio’s boldness in asking for help. At some point, life’s going to rip me a new one (or at least it’ll feel that way) in ways where I can’t deal it by myself, and I’m going to need to go to someone and say, “I need help.” You know, situations like...

Where did the “emergency” cell phone charger go?
What the hell is wrong with my car defroster?
All these people showed up at my house! Would you happen to have any bread I could feed them with?
My space ship crash-landed and got stuck in the mud!
My girlfriend just left me, and she was the only one who knew how to make the baby's diarrhea go away!
I have two broken arms / a bad case of vertigo / suicide ideation / a burst appendix, may I impose on you to give me a ride to the hospital?
I told my friend, who’s in the hospital because she broke both her arms / got a bad case of vertigo / told everyone she’d eat three bottles of sleeping pills and was serious / her appendix burst, that I’d bring her clean socks and underwear, but her parents aren’t home like we thought they’d be. Do you have a key to her house?

I guess it comes down to some things that are obvious, and simple enough: knowing what’s truly worth making a spectacle out of yourself and interrupting Professor Subversion’s lecture, realizing you may very well annoy someone when you ask for help but that shouldn’t be the reason why you decide against it, and empathizing when someone goes to very stupid lengths to get you to help dislodge their space ship from the mud.

What does it come down to for you? Do you know of any special trick to make diarrhea go away? What do you think of Ayn Rand? Would you ask Ayn Rand to help you fix your space ship? How about my ex-girlfriend?