| Monday, December 11, 2006 |
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Why do We do What We do? |
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Driving across the Midwest for three days and logging more hours behind the wheel than I did sleeping can make the mind do strange things. Sleep deprived and numb from looking at vast expanses of dead grass and plowed fields, my brain begins to wonder why I do this to myself. No one made me drive to Fairfield, Iowa and spend time with my co-worker who believes more in sustainable living (read: no car, doesn't like them) than in the church for which he works, so that I could be trained on how to manage my section of our website. He said he could have told me everything on the phone. He has never seen me try to learn without doing, but I have, and I am confident that the phone would not have worked. I could have skipped the meeting in Des Moines and let 25 teens and adults argue amongst themselves about how much harrassment is OK and whether our "traditions" are really institutional hazing in a party dress. "Why do I love my work?" I wonder as I drive all over my district which consists of eight really big states that are sparsely populated and suffer from inclement weather nearly year-round. I work part-time, have no benefits per se, and sleep on cold, hard, concrete floors in buildings that seldom have wifi so that I can tell teens not to play baseball in the church with oranges while the bruised oranges cover the smell of their leaking pheremones and stinky feet. This does not sound like a dream job, but I love it. I wish I could articulate why. In all honesty, I wish I knew why so that I could then explain it. I know it is the teens that really keep me going back. The adults I work with are pretty cool, but older than me for the most part and their kids are on their own. I learn from them and they welcome my presence as district staff. Volunteers are the heart of any organization, and I heart them. The teens are total weirdos - they are obnoxious, have hair of unnatural colors in dreadful cuts and styles, full of angst and self-conciousness hidden behind snarky comments, go to alternative high schools, and I really heart them. We don't get the mainstream kids that play sports, shop at Abercrombie, or wonder if anal sex counts as sex - thus maintaining their "virginity" if they only take it up the bum. We get the kids who are in band, theatre, dropped-out, homeschoolers, geeks, not popular (at least not with mainstream parents), gay, bi, trans, straight, hypersexual but most likely abstinent. We get kids who are dying to prove to someone that they are individuals and can't be lumped in with anyone else. They are amazingly independent and incredibly in need of some care. They are just like I was when I was a high schooler, and I was in desperate need of a place where I could go and be my weirdo self and not feel bad about being so left of center. A place for weird people to fit in, like when carnies all live in the same trailer park. I guess that is why I love my job. I get to be for someone else what I needed so badly for myself at that age. It's some sort of payback, or pay forward for Kiddo's future, so that safe spaces are perpetuated and we weirdos never have to feel alone.
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| posted by Rosie @ 12/11/2006 08:42:00 AM |
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