A Character Sketch (With Comments)

Our conversation took place in the "Female Products" aisle of Target.
Where the very best conversations take place.
Kidding.
Anyway, it all struck me as strange at the time. Now it's just ironic.
A few guys had just been caught trying to steal a TV from our store. Apparently they had hit up Walmart recently, so we were anticipating a visit as well. (Note: Target has not asked me to write this, but don't try to steal from us. You'll get caught. And I have a mean roundhouse, thanks to my friend Denise Austin.)
Anyway, he and I were discussing the attempted theft while pulling boxes of tampons forward on the shelves.
And he went on and on about how whenever someone stole from our store, it really rattled him. How it made him jumpy and nervous, and how, most of all, it made him not trust people. He talked a lot about that. Not trusting people.
As I pride myself on my deep faith in humanity, I didn't empathize. I simply pitied him a little bit for living what I saw as a cold existence. This too is ironic.

But still, despite his revelation to me in the Feminine Products aisle, he was someone to be depended on in our store. If the lanes needed backup, he was the first to respond. If someone needed a team lift, if someone couldn't find an item for a guest, if someone didn't know how to do something on their PDA, he was the go-to guy. He was just a high schooler, but he was relied on by people much older.

The third bit about him is that he is the one I wrote about last summer, the one who gave my car a jump that afternoon in the Target parking lot. It was after my very first day of work, I had never talked to him in my life, and yet there he was, asking me if I could use some help.
For the year that's passed since that parking lot act of kindness, I have held it up as the nicest thing a stranger has done for me. I have asked myself if I would do the same for someone I didn't know. I have hung the act over the person's head as a red badge of sorts, admiring him for it and defining him by it.

And then I came back to work for the summer, and found out that he had been fired from Target for stealing. Rumor has it that when a guest would purchase an ipod, he would take two out of the case, and drop the extra into his pocket. Rumor has it that he had been doing it for a while. The person who told me all of this also told me that he (car jumper, ipod thief) is some kind of genius. I gave the teller my wryest raised eyebrows: Yes, because truly smart people steal ipods from their places of employment.

When I first heard this news, I was shocked.
Now I'm purely disgusted.
It makes me sick to think that he got a job at Target. That he got to know the wonderful people who work here, that he gained their trust. That he dared to build himself a reputation as a good kid, as someone who was helpful and dependable. That he jumped people's cars and told people sob stories about his cold view of humanity. That he did all of this and then stole from us. When I told this to the guy who told me the theft story, he rolled his eyes a little: Holly, we didn't lose any money by it. They got it all back. Besides, it wouldn't have come out of our paychecks anyway.
Gee, thanks. That makes me feel better. Because there is absolutely no deeply immoral aspect to the situation that is more troubling than the financial aspects.

I lay on my stomach here in my bed, laptop propped on pillow, and I think back to that day in the Tampon Aisle (who're we kidding, here; that's what it should be called) and I feel (oh so ironically,) like maybe he was right all along. Maybe people can't be trusted. Maybe people don't have bits of bad and bits of good swimming around inside their chests. Maybe it has to be all one or the other.

And then I look into myself and I see both. But the good, the good is always trying to stand over the bad, to put it into the shade forever. And I think that maybe other people's chests are similar. That they hold both, that they hold everything. And that even when the bad gets a trump it doesn't mean that the good isn't following behind with the ace of something.

I think that perhaps jumping a car in an afternoon parking lot shouldn't be overshadowed by a petty theft. That I shouldn't let it be.

Get Up and Work

This morning, as you know, I had to wake up at 2:30 a.m. to go to work. I only managed about an hour and a half of sleep, and when my alarm went off this morning, I was not amused. My hair was still wet from my evening shower, I felt like I had shut my eyes only moments before, and it was raining a cold, depressing December rain outside my window.

I lay in bed and pondered all of this for a few minutes, and then on a whim reached for the daily devotions book Dad got me for Christmas. The book is meant to be read every morning (in fact, it's titled "Starting Your Day Right"), but as I normally don't find time to read in the morning, I've been reading the entry for each day the night before. Last night, however, I had forgotten to do so.

Clumsily, then, I fumbled to the December 30th page, and what should the title of the entry be?

Get up and Work

And so I did.

The Consequences of Folly

While writing the majority of a 10 page research paper at about 5 a.m. this morning (after having pulled at all-nighter), I was suddenly reminded of a certain chapter in Betsy Was a Junior, entitled "The Consequences of Folly:"

"We bought the paper covers and the glue and things ages ago."
"But then we forgot all about them."
"And now he wants them turned in tomorrow and he says they will count for one fourth of our year's marks! It's awful!" said Betsy, summarizing. "It's a perfectly awful situation!"
The rest of the Crowd had gone riding in Carney's auto, but Betsy, Tacy and Tib had not been able to go. They had come face to face at last with the matter of herbariums.
"'A herbarium,'" said Betsy, "'is a collection of dried and pressed specimens of plants, usually mounted or otherwise prepared for permanent preservation and systematically arranged in paper covers placed in boxes or cases.'"
"You know the definition all right," said Tib. "But you can't turn in a definition tomorrow."
"How many flowers did he say we had to have?"
"Fifty."
"We might as well tell him we haven't made them and all flunk the course," said practical Tib. "At least we can all take it again together in the fall."
"But we'll be seniors then!" cried Betsy. "I don't want to be in Gaston's biology again with all the juniors! Why don't we try to make the herbariums tonight? There have to be at least fifty kinds of flowers up on the Big Hill! We can label all night long."
Tacy's eyes began to shine. "Let's try. It would be fun."
"All right," said Tib. "I'm willing if you are. You can come, I think, but we can't let Papa and Mamma know we're awake all night."


After a long night of picking, drying, pasting, and labeling, along with discovering that there was a reason the herbariums had been assigned way back at the beginning of the year, Betsy, Tacy and Tib come to the very realization I came to at around 3 a.m. this morning:

"I think," said Tib, as they walked down Hill Street, "that this was an idiotic thing to do."
Betsy and Tacy grunted.
"Why, I realized last night that I would have enjoyed making a herbarium. I like to do that sort of thing. I could have made a good one."
"So could I," admitted Tacy.
"Well, I couldn't," said Betsy. "But I should have been interested at least. I'm crazy enough about flowers."

Carrying the Cross

I attended a Catholic school all the way from preschool to 8th grade. Did you know that?
Well I did. I won't go into detail about the experience, although I will say that while I felt all through my public high school years like things would have been easier for me in the friend department if I had just started public like everyone else, I still value my time at private school. I made tons of friends there that I still have, I got to go to school where my mom worked (that's right, I was a teacher's kid all the way up. Even had Mom for homeroom in 6th grade), but best of all, I got to be a server at various Masses (services) in the adjoining church.

What is a server, you might ask? A server is someone (usually a child age 12-15, although for important services and at important churches (i.e. the cathedral), they use adults) who assists the priest throughout the Mass. Servers (usually 2 or 3 at a time) bring the book for readings, help set up the altar for the blessing, and most impactfully, carry the candles and cross down the aisle at the beginning of Mass, and carry them back after the Mass is done.

Now, being me, I had a number of clumsy experiences while serving. There was the Candlemas Mass when I spilled hot wax all over the hand of a small boy who's candle I was trying to light with mine (his parents glared at me as he screamed). There was the time when I went to kneel when there was no kneeling going on.

The incident I remember the most, however, seems to top all the rest in my mind. It's also incredibly ironic (which only just occurred to me as I began writing this post).

You see, as I mentioned before, the servers are in charge of carrying the candles and the cross in at the beginning of Mass with the rest of the procession, and carrying them out again at the end. The candles are light; each one is about as thick as a can of tomato paste, and mounted on small posts only three feet high. The cross, however, is another story. The crucifix itself is as wide as a checkerboard, with Jesus in the middle of course, and it's mounted on a solid wooden post that is (or so I was told) a piece of railing leftover from when the new school was built. The whole cross together, then, is about 7 feet tall (much taller than a 6th grader), and extremely heavy.

It had always been a tradition among the servers, at least as long as I could remember, to fight over who got to carry the candles and who had to carry the cross. Usually the first two servers to arrive would call dibs on the candles, or in the case of 2 girls and 1 boy serving, the boy would be on cross duty. On this particular occasion, however, no one was late, and we were all female.

I think all three of us were thinking about the cross beginning the second we donned the scratchy cream-colored servers' robes, but being friends, we put off discussing it.

Suddenly, though, it was almost ten o'clock, we were at the back of the church, the candles were being lit, and the priest was looking at us expectantly. "So?" He said impatiently, "who's carrying the cross this time?" His eyes wandered over the three of us, and settled on me. Oh no, I said silently to myself, but it was too late. I was the tallest by far, solidly built, and (I suppose), fairly strong-looking. I was to bear the cross.

As soon as I lifted it, I knew there was going to be trouble. It wasn't unbearably heavy, but it was heavy enough to make my hands shake as I clutched it. Not only that, but the crucifix made it top-heavy and unbalanced; a slight tilt to the side and the weight would shift, making the whole thing just about crash to the floor. The cross was also (as I said) much taller than me. I had to constantly look up at the top of the thing, and even then it was hard to judge how close I was to bonking it on something.

The procession down the aisle was excruciating. Despite reassuring looks from the kindly old ushers, I was sweating bullets and praying that I wouldn't drop the holy cross onto anyone's newly-christened infant. I didn't, though, and breathed a sigh of relief when we reached the steps up to the altar. There was a pause while the priest bowed, and then the lucky candle-bearing servers started up the steps after him. I started to follow, but neglected to lift the cross high enough to clear the first stair. The resounding clash made my ears turn red. Even worse, I wasn't even supposed to take the cross up to the altar. The priest's wild hand-signaling reminded me that I was supposed to go around to the back, and prop the cross against the wall there.

Forgive me a slight rant, but first of all, who in their right mind expects a 12-year-old to successfully manage a huge, heavy cross without some incident? Second of all, who in their right mind expects said cross to lean peacefully against a wall (with nothing holding it in place) for the better part of an hour? Just saying.

Anyway, once I had managed to successfully balance the cross against the wall at the back of the altar, I went through to my seat beside the priest. My ears were still bright red, but I figured, most optimistically, that the clank against the stair could have gone unnoticed by a lot of people. They had been, after all, in the middle of singing the opening hymn. Yes, that was it. No one had even heard it.

The next noise, however, cut through the now quiet congregation like a gunshot. The cross, leaning against the wall, was starting to slide. Everyone could hear the slow, screeching scrape it made as it slid lower and lower. Then, as I held my breath, there was a pause, and in the same instant, with the loudest crash I have ever heard, the cross hit the floor. Wood on marble, it continued to bang as it settled.

After what seemed like an age, there was only silence again. That was when I noticed that the priest was looking at me. Kate and Claire (the other servers) were looking at me. My mom and dad and sister were looking at me from a few pews back. Yep, the whole congregation was looking at me.

My ears,still red from the first clank, now felt like they were on fire. I briefly considered crawling under the altar to hide, but as everyone was staring at me, I decided hiding wouldn't be the most effective plan. Instead, I just sat there. And fiddled nonchalantly (or so I hoped) with the ends of the rope tied around my waist.

Eventually, the priest regained his senses and continued on with his prayers. The Mass went on as usual with no more incident. Heck, I even managed to get the cross safely back down the aisle at the end (after picking it up off the floor).

Mom and Dad were surprisingly silent on the car ride home. I guess they knew how embarrassed I was and didn't want to make things worse. I certainly appreciated it.

I was back at that church a few years ago for the first time since I attended school there (nowadays my family goes to a Catholic church closer to our house). Mass began with the same old procession down the main aisle, and when I turned in my pew to watch, I saw that the cross I had carried, the tall, solid, unbalanced one, had been replaced with a new cross. The new one was small and light; the server held it easily out in front of her. She did not clank it on the stairs (she knew to go around), and this new cross did not tip over in the middle of the service.

While I'm happy that no more generations of preteens have to bear that old heavy cross, I sometimes wonder if it would be any easier for me to carry now. I wonder if I have something that I didn't have back then. And not just strength or coordination, but something deeper. I wonder if I now have the peace of mind and sense of self needed to carry that cross. I wonder if I have the faith. Some days I think I do. But other days, my ears still turn bright red as I hear that ungodly (forgive me) crash behind me.

The Poem Stuck in my Head

Whilst studying for a German test this fine evening, I had a poem stuck in my head.
Do you ever have that?
It's very similar to having a song stuck in your head, only even more annoying because you can't hum or whistle the refrain.
You can only say it.

Ironically enough, I first heard about this particular poem in a movie.
Also ironically, the movie was Must Love Dogs, which I didn't really like because I felt the plot was all over the place, and because I was actually getting annoyed with Diane Lane, lovely actor as she is.

Christopher Plummer was the one who recited the poem in the movie, though, so that makes everything all right. Captain Von Trapp can do no wrong in my book.

Anyway, here's the poem. Enjoy:

"Brown Penny," by William Butler Yeats

I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

That'll Do, Pig. That'll Do.

Maddie, King and I were walking across the Mall today. We were talking about our favorite childhood movies, and from there we got on the topic of the movie Babe.
We then realized that there was a catch phrase of sorts in that movie that the old farmer says to Babe after Babe successfully herds the sheep.
We walked to dinner trying to figure it out.
We talked about it at dinner.
When we got back to the dorm, Maddie and I decided to go downstairs to talk to Tim.
On our way to Tim's room, we walked past Brochman's room. Brochman came out to chat, his fingers holding his place in Arabian Nights.
I asked him about the book, saying that I had never read it and had always wanted to.

Brochman: Arabian nights is basically a story within a story within a story. It starts with a princess who's going to have her head cut off. She starts to tell her captor a story to prolong her life. In her story, there's a genie who pops out of a lamp and begins to tell a story, and in the genie's story someone else is telling a story, and it just keeps going on.*

Maddie: Have you ever seen the movie Babe?

Brochman: Well that was random. Yeah I think I have. Why?

Holly: Because we've been trying to figure out what the old farmer says to Babe after he herds the sheep. It's like 'atta pig' or 'good pig' or something like that. It's a catch phrase of sorts.

Brochman: I have no idea.

-random boy walks in-

Brochman: Do you know what the old farmer guy says to Babe after he herds the sheep?

Boy 1: No idea.

-another random boy walks in-

Boy 1: You know in the movie Babe, when Babe herds the sheep? What does the old farmer say to him?

Boy 2: Gosh, I don't know. I haven't seen that movie in a really long time.

Boy 1: I'll look it up.

-Boy 1 goes in room and shuts door-

-Boy 2 goes in room and shuts door-

-Maddie, Holly, and Brochman continue chatting-

-Boy 1 opens door of room, and steps into hallway-

Boy 1: That'll do, pig. That'll do.

-Boy 1 goes back into room and shuts door-

-Boy 2 comes out of room-

Boy 2: That'll do, pig. That'll do.

-Boy 2 goes back into room and closes door-


Pretty sure we accidently semi experienced the chain reaction of Arabian Nights in real life.

College is epic.

*Note: I paraphrased Brochman's summary of Arabian Nights (as did he, probably, when he summarized it). May not be completely accurate.

That Itchy Feeling

I'm having that feeling again. That itchy, late-night feeling that makes me want to run and sing and then sit down and write something wonderful.
Current problem: I don't know what to write about.
It seems like whenever I have a story idea I don't have anything to write on, and whenever I'm sitting in front of my computer, fingers poised, my mind is completely blank. Oh, the irony of inspiration.

Despite my lack of lightbulb in certain literary areas, I do have a few bits of good news to share with you...
1. I won the College Writing Essay Contest. When I got the congratulatory email from one of the English professors at UMM, all I could do was lay back on the floor of my room and laugh. It's been three months since I turned in that essay. By now, winning feels stale because I've thought about it for so long. I am grateful, however, and I intend to spend $15.00 of the prize money on an itunes card, just like I said I would from the beginning. Despite my excitement at the prospect of buying new music, I'm thinking that F. Scott didn't buy an itunes card when his stories won prizes at Princeton. In all fairness, though, he probably bought booze.

2. Second bit of happiness: I just checked my Spring Semester grades online, and so far I have an A- in both CMR and Physical Anthropology. While I was expecting an A in CMR (still don't understand how I went down), I expected a B+ at the highest in Anth. I must have done really well on that final! Here's hoping that when my Brit. Lit. and Crusades grades come in, they don't detract from my current happiness.

Well, that's about all the big news on the home front.
If you're really looking for details this fine evening, you may be interested to know that I am currently reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I started it ages ago, got to page 200 and became tired of it. I'm just now picking it up again. It's not that it's a bad book; it won the Pulitzer, for heavens' sakes. I simply got distracted.
I also began Ivanhoe last night. I'm only on page 8, so I hate to judge, but so far things are moving rather slowly in the chivalric world of Walter Scott. Because he is Sir Walter Scott, however, I'm trying very hard to have faith.

That Side of Paradise

Here's something ironic:

About a month ago, I was taking a quiz for my Intro. to Lit. class. I hadn't studied as much as I should have, so I was stuck on a few questions. In desperation, I wrote one of my favorite quotes in the margin: "Stop using so many exclamation points. It's like you're laughing at your own joke." That's a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why is this ironic?
Because I was thinking about it the other day while lying in bed reading my "History for Every Day" book. Just then, I discovered that yesterday (December 21st) was the anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald's death.
Now that's ironic.

In light of this irony (which I'm sure F. Scott himself would have appreciated), I have decided that the next book I read will be "This Side of Paradise."

"This Side of Paradise" (wow I'm tired of these quotation marks) is F. Scott's first novel, and was a big success when it came out. Best of all, he started writing it when he was just twenty-one. That's two years older than me. And while I can't see myself having time to start a novel while in college, I think it'll be an inspirational read.

This entry strikes me as rather pompous (perhaps it's the quotation marks?)
I don't think I'm pompous, so I won't let it bother me. Pip pip.

In Which Holly Writes About Writing (How Unique!)

I just started writing a story today...it's historical fiction (as many good stories are), and concerns eugenics.
What is eugenics?
a. You don't really want to know
b. Okay, ready?
c. It's basically when you decide to 'purify' the human race by eliminating any undesirable traits/genes such as:
1. Certain skin colors
2. Mental Disabilities
3. Conditions such as epilepsy, blindness, or deafness
4. Insanity
5. Criminal Tendencies (because evidently they're genetic)
6. Pretty much anything you can think of that someone somewhere may consider to be 'undesirable'
d. Is it as horrid, disgusting, and wrong as it sounds? Yes.
e. Prime example: The Holocaust
f. In the United States, eugenics even became legal for a few decades in some states (darn that Indiana), and expanded to include compulsory sterilization.
g. Compulsory sterilization is what it sounds like. When you make someone unable to have children just because you don't want their undesirable genes (see above) passed on to future generations. And it wasn't voluntary, folks, needless to say. They even did it to some African American and Native American women without them knowing it. They would go to the hospital to have a baby and come out unable to have any more, thanks to a few choice doctors.
h. Supporters of eugenics? Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Graham Bell, Teddy Roosevelt, and Adolf Hitler, to name a few.

Why did I choose this disgusting topic for a story? Because horrid as it is, I find it fascinating that so few people know that this went on. I mean, everyone's heard of the Holocaust, but hardly anyone realizes that something identical went on in America for decades.

My story is about a teenager named Ted Graham who volunteers at a hospital in Indiana, hoping to become a doctor some day. He befriends a young African American woman who is in the hospital for an illness (I'm thinking pneumonia). Ted accidently discovers compulsory sterilization and realizes that they are about to perform it on his new friend. I'm thinking he'll try to save her, though not sure how far he'll go (fight the system, or just take her and run?) Oh yes, and they also fall in love. I'm setting it in 1908, a year after eugenics became legal in the state of Indiana. This one will require quite a bit of research, but I'm excited about it.

* In case you didn't catch it, I named my main character after two big supporters of eugenics: Theodore Roosevelt, and Alexander Graham Bell. Hoping to do something similar for the girl. I love ironic names.