“Up a steep and very narrow stairway”

A thought occurred recently. (And before you ask, no, it didn’t hurt. Geez.) A quick recap for anyone in the audience who has just joined in:

1. I did a LOT of dancing (specifically ballet) when I was younger.
2. I have recently returned to it as a form of exercise which I find to be much more enriching and enjoyable than going to a nasty, smelly gym.

For a few summers during college I worked with a large community/small regional (depending upon which set of paperwork you were doing) theatre in a town about forty minutes away from my hometown. The first year with them I did shows, and the following two summers I was the dance/choreography intern for their musical theatre summer program for kiddos, and the all-purpose intern for their...what I suppose we can call ‘devised theatre’ program. The morning kids did playwriting and show creation, the afternoon kids were the triple threats.(A theatrical ‘triple threat’, if you’re not already aware, is someone who can sing, dance, and act. It sounds much more, well, threatening than it is.) What I’m getting at here is that I did a lot of teaching of the 8-16 set (6-16 for the morning kiddos). I had never really thought I’d be much of a teacher since I have the patience of a gnat, but it turns out that I’m actually reasonably decent at it--and by ‘reasonably decent’ I mean that they learned what I needed them to learn and seemed to have a fairly enjoyable time doing it. What’s more, I enjoyed it.

Back to the thought.

If we put all of this together in an approximation of a cohesive idea, this is how it goes: Elizabeth used to dance + Elizabeth used to teach dance + Elizabeth is back to dancing = Elizabeth could, therefore, sign herself up to do substitute teaching at the dance studio. Pretty straightforward, right? That’s what I thought.

Obviously it’s not quite that straightforward--the thing about teaching dance is that when you’re out of practice (like I am right now), your brain isn’t great at coming up with combinations on the fly and that means that you have to do a decent amount of prep work if you want to teach an actual class and not just vaguely direct what will rather expeditiously devolve into a circus. So there’s lesson planning to be done, yes. There’s also the need to put together a decent playlist, because unless you’re absolutely spoiled and have a real live accompanist, dance class is always BYOMusic.

Okay. Not insurmountable, just some perfectly reasonable homework. Which I am doing. At my own pace. Don’t rush me!

Now here’s the deeper portion of this whole thing--this didn’t come (directly) from a place of “Oh. Here is a thing I know how to do and could maybe make a few extra bucks on the side if I did it on the regular.” That enters into it, of course, but there was more to it than that. You see, I have done a thing that becomes increasingly difficult as you get older: I have made A Friend! (Never mind that I’m old enough to be her mother.) (Also never mind that she’s technically also my tap teacher after the abrupt and unexpected departure of the last one we had.) (The point is that she’s hilarious and ridiculous and willing to put up with my shenanigans so we do stupid shit like go on adventures to the fancy health food store, where I hug jackfruits and bemoan the distinct lack of guavas and she gets excited about raw mixed nuts and any vegetable with a purple varietal.)

WELCOME TO MY LIFE, PEOPLE, I AM STRANGE.

That wasn’t the point. This was the point: Purple Varietal and I were discussing the current situation with the ballet program at the dance studio and of course, in my infinite wisdom, I had several thousand suggestions for how to improve upon it, and then P.V. comes out with, “You should sub!”

And I thought, “Yes. Yes, I should.”

There was a sentimental clincher on this one, though. You see, back in the day ::adjusts dentures, glasses, and ear trumpet:: when I put in those summers with the theatre kiddos there was one young lady who, bless her heart, was...unabashedly herself. I was watching from the outside, so I could see her struggle to be true to herself and her interests while at the same time trying to fit in with the other kiddos who politely tolerated her but clearly thought she was sixteen kinds of weird--props to them, though, they were never mean about it. (At least, that I noticed. Kids can kind of be assholes when no one is watching, though, so they might have been really stealthy jerks. Who knows?) Anyway, this particular girl wasn’t ever one who I thought would take too much of anything I taught ‘with her’, so to speak. It wasn’t that she didn’t pay attention or wasn’t any good at it, she was fine in both of those respects, I just never thought that my teaching would stick with her in any particularly meaningful way.

I was wrong with a capital ‘R’.

One afternoon in my first year of teaching with the program, we had a little downtime for some reason, so I cobbled together a sort of Fosse-esque routine and taught it just to keep the kiddiewinks occupied until the next thing came along. I’m pretty sure we only did it that one afternoon and that was the end of it. The next year, at some random time, and for some random reason, that sweet, singular little girl danced my throwaway combination full out for the other kids. I didn’t even remember teaching it until that moment.

I might have cried. Shut up.

It was this weird moment of “Holy cats, these kids actually remember the things I teach them. They are getting something out of this--something out of me.”

The weight of the responsibility of that revelation could have felled me like a ton of bricks right there on the floor of the community college dining hall/rehearsal space.

It could have, but it didn’t.

It felt fucking amazing.

And that is why, my good people, I am very seriously entertaining this whole “get back into teaching” thing. Sometimes when you don’t think you really do much that matters and then a memory like that surfaces you remember that once upon a time some sweet little goober remembered something you taught her not because she had to, but just...because...and that’s probably one of the biggest ego-boosters in existence. And also, apparently I might be, like, good at that whole teaching thing or something?

My pets are weird.

I have pet rats.

If you’ve been following along at home, you know this. Until recently I had three little girls: Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. A couple of weeks ago I added two more to my mischief. (For the record, a group of rats is called a mischief. Really.) The two new girls are about six weeks old now. They came from two litters that were born at my favored rescue, the mothers of which came in as surrenders from feeder colonies--the ‘human element’ decided to stop feeding their reptiles live rats and switch over to frozen. One is a gray and white Masked, and the other, well, we can’t quite tell yet if she’s a fawn Berkshire or a fawn Argente (it’s determined by the color of the undercoat) but as she grows it will become clear. Sticking with my Powerpuff Girls theme, I named the gray girl Maggie, after Miss Keane the kindergarten teacher, whose name was a tip of the hat to artist Margaret Keane, the lady in the ‘70s who painted all those pictures of the terrifyingly huge-eyed children. The fawn girl is Sara, as in Miss Sara Bellum, the clever red-headed assistant (whose face is never shown) of the mayor of Townsville. They are tiny and adorable and I love them.

As with any other variety of pet, when introducing new additions you have to do so gradually so that the animals can get used to each other. They have to establish a pecking order and come to terms with sharing their space. Even though rats are social animals and need to live in groups, they won’t necessarily take kindly to interlopers right off the bat. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing supervised visits, trying to get the big girls to play nice with the babies, and that is how I have discovered that my furbabies are (even) weird(er than I was originally aware.)

Rats play-fight. This is normal. They can get really rough with each other. They make a lot of noise and throw a lot of bedding about and if they get too excited they’ll stop fighting with their original playmate and turn on whoever happens to be the next nearest. They get all puffy--it looks like they’ve been playing ‘stick your tail in the electrical outlet’. Normally this goes on for a bit and then everyone finds a quiet corner and has a bath. Grooming is a self-soothing tactic. My little doofuses take this whole thing one step further, of course, because why stick to what’s normal when you can be strange? On multiple occasions I have watched the big girls sit over the openings to the little box I put in the cage for the babies and wait for them to stick their noses out, at which point the big girls bat at them. Like cats. My rats are secretly cats in disguise.

Another thing the big girls like to do when the babies are in their little hidey-house is to shove all the bedding up against the openings, effectively burying the babies alive. I can’t rationalize this one. It’s not like I’m only paying attention to the babies and thereby making the big girls jealous--this doesn’t work on two levels. One, I take the big girls out more than the babies at the moment on purpose to make sure that they don’t feel neglected, and two, I’m pretty sure that this kind of a jealous reaction is a weensy bit too advanced a thought process for a rodent. I’m not saying they’re stupid, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that “these babies are going to require more of Mom’s attention, thereby diverting said attention away from me, ergo I should KILL THEM BY BURYING THEM ALIVE” might be a little advanced. So why the heck do they do it?! The world may never know.

This last one is equal parts cute and funny. When the big girls are feeling particularly snuggly, they will sit on the babies. And the babies don’t mind. The babies are used to being sat on. They got sat on by their moms and their siblings for the majority of their lives before they came to live with me. They still sit on each other. For the big girls this must be a two-fold kind of a thing. It’s likely that their maternal instinct is telling them that babies are for sitting on, but it also affords them a bit of peace from the babies tearing around the cage making noise and being generally bothersome. I mean, if you sit on something, it’s a lot less likely to be able to play hopscotch. Just sayin’.

Also, a tiny baby ratty snoot sticking out from underneath a great hulking mass of napping grownup rat is kind of the cutest.

I really don’t care about your windsurfing.

In my line of work I see a whole lot of resumés. In the grand scheme of things, recruiting is my least favorite part of my job. I have found myself more than once telling people that there are two sides to human resources; the Human, and the Resource. I am definitely the Resource. I will happily play with personnel information ‘til the cows come home. The Human portion of HR is the person who loves to recruit and solve people problems and play morale-booster, and I am just not that person. It’s all a little sales-y, and I’m a terrible salesperson. I can’t talk up company culture or entice someone towards an opportunity to save my life.

“Do you want a job?”

“Yes, please.”

“Can you do these things?”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

“Okay, but what abo—”

“Ssshhh, no questions.”

Unfortunately, when you’re the only one in your department you have to do All The Things, so even though it’s incredibly low on the list of things I want to do with my work time, I get to wade through piles of resumés and try to match people with job openings. I’ve noticed trends over the years, but there are a couple that I find particularly irritating, and guess what? I’m going to share them with you, you lucky things!

The first one, oh boy. I don’t know where this started, I don’t know when this started, but I do know this: it needs to stop.

Please. Please. For the love of all things holy, PLEASE stop listing your hobbies and extracurriculars on your resumé.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that this phenomenon began somewhere around the feel-good-startup-mentality-techie-company-with-all-the-bells-and-whistles boom. “You need to stand out from the other applicants!” “Everyone is applying for these jobs, you need to make yourself more human!” I can just hear the college career center counselors touting this as an excellent tool to raise oneself above the hoi polloi in the eyes of a hiring manager.

“Well, these 87,623 applicants are all extremely qualified for this position, but Joey here plays water polo in his spare time and that just resonates with me,” said no hiring manager ever.

I’m sure there are some jobs where including a ‘hobbies and interests’ section on your resumé would be reasonably appropriate. I suppose if you were applying to be an accountant at a natural history museum and you said something about you lifelong love of dinosaurs that might give you a boost because you’re expressing an interest in the foundation of the business, even though you’re applying to work behind-the-scenes. Honestly, though, that sort of information would be more appropriately placed in a cover letter.

Then again, I never read cover letters, so…

Another thing I have been seeing a lot of recently is the ‘first person narrative’ resumé. This is a section at the beginning of a resumé where the candidate will wax poetic about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it better than the next guy. This can sometimes go on for an entire page, thus pushing the part of the resumé that I actually care about--ye olde boring bulleted list underneath a company name and dates of employment--further down the document. This makes me work harder to see what I need to see. If you want to impress a recruiter, don’t make them work any harder than they have to. A resumé is not a treasure hunt. And don’t be sneaky and slip the ‘hobbies and interests’ section into the Great American Novel you’ve penned on page one. If I want to read your autobiography, I’ll buy it when you publish it.

These two trends leave a candidate looking either like they have far too much time on their hands or are completely desperate, and I can’t quite work out which is the case. I’ll tell you one thing, though; neither of those things is a good look on a job seeker.

I’m going to leave you with an excerpt of an actual resumé I received which, while only falling under the ‘first person narrative’ portion of Things In Resumés That Make Me Want To Scream, is an absolute gem of an example of DO NOT DO THIS ON YOUR RESUMÉ:

[APPLICANT NAME]

Versatile Media Pro – Writer – Video Producer – Content Creator – Media Strategist

IMPACT PLAYER But you can just call me [NICKNAME] … And, yes, you should hire me.

Why?

For starters: No BS here. I’m an accomplished writer, video producer, content creator and media strategist with extensive experience in advertising, marketing, journalism, broadcasting, education and more … But more importantly, in an era where so many need their hands held and expect to be catered to with office perks like ping pong tables, free snacks, team-building events and allowed every excuse under the sun as to why their ideas didn’t work, I just get to work and get results.

Whether it’s improving existing collateral or concepting and executing on something fresh, individually, or as part of a team, my record speaks for itself.

Congrats, bro. You’re a total dick. I guess I should thank you for signposting it for us.

Paint it up in stripes and see what happens

The other week I bought donuts for the office. I do this periodically because 1) I like donuts, and 2) if I’m going to risk the indignity of a bit of a tubby tummy, I’m sure as hell going to take everyone else down with me.

Sharing is caring!

No, I really do like donuts, and every so often I like to do nice things for other people, and those two things work remarkably well together. So, donuts for the masses it was. I made a stop at my usual donut place on the way in, and, much to my continued delight, the middle bit of their neon sign was still out.



Childish, I know, but it makes me giggle. Their secondary clientele must be fascinating!

In the daylight it says “Chick’s Donuts”, but that’s not nearly as interesting. In any case, in addition to any sidelines they may or may not be running, they make excellent donuts, and I procured two dozen of their finest assorted and hauled ass to work. Normally, this would be the end of things. The big pink box would go on the table in the break room, people would help themselves, there would be much rejoicing in the kingdom.

Thing is, the box was different this time. Instead of your normal Pepto-Bismol pink, the box was white with pink stripes. I didn’t really think too much about it at first, beyond the obvious “Oh, look, the boxes are different,” but once the box was on display to my co-workers, it became apparent very quickly that the stripes were causing a different reaction the the normal pink box. Everyone was curious. “Where did it come from?” “What’s inside?” It was as if the same donuts I’ve been bringing for ages were suddenly made infinitely more interesting by an unexpected upgrade to a fancy box.

They say we eat with our eyes first, and to a point that makes sense. If it looks appetizing, we’re more likely to want to eat it. If it looks like sludge, not so much. The thing that takes this one step further is the presentation beyond the plate--or perhaps prior to it. A pastry in a clear plastic wrapper is fine, but add a cutesy label and suddenly not only do more people want it, you can charge extra for it and everyone will pay the increase gladly because “It’s just so cute!” Now, there are any number of reasons for my donut shop to have changed boxes. Perhaps they changed suppliers. Perhaps they were going for a new look. Perhaps there is a current global shortage of pink cardboard (though if there is, I’d like to know why the media isn’t covering it--pastry boxes are essential to human survival!). Whatever the reason for the change, it has given them a subtle edge on the competition. Fancy boxes equal fancy product, or at least that’s what the human animal has been conditioned to think. Square and black is manly. Slap some pink on it and round out the edges for the ladies. (Obviously those are sweeping generalizations.) It’s remarkable just how much thought goes into making things look nice so that people will buy them. It’s an art form.

And it works.

When it doesn’t, someone goes back to the drawing board until it does, or the product is abandoned. If you stop to think about things you use every day, things you buy regularly, it’s astounding the level of consideration that companies put into this sort of thing. Let’s take toilet paper as an example. Everyone needs it. Everyone is going to buy it regardless. The only reason it needs any additional decoration on the package beyond a label telling you what’s inside is for purposes of profit.

“Hey, they’ve put knitting grannies in their commercial to tout the softness of their TP. What should we do to one-up that?”

“How about a puppy?”

Somewhere in another office building a few weeks later:

“Hey, now we’ve got knitting grannies and a puppy to compete with! Whatever shall we do?”

“I’ve got it! Cartoon bears!”

::everyone stares at Steve::

“Steve, this is why we don’t invite you places.”

Of course, Steve’s idea wasn’t too far off the mark, because now not only is that particular brand represented by cartoon bears, it’s whole families of them singing songs about the quality of their toilet paper.

Which doesn’t even make sense, because the last time I checked, bears don’t even use toilet paper.

In any case, a tarted-up package is always a good bet if you want to shift a product, and when you buy donuts for the office and they come in a slightly-more-fancy-than-usual box, there aren’t nearly as many donuts left over as there might normally be.

Stuff

I had occasion to be in my shed this past weekend. (Well, I say ‘shed’, it’s really a 5x6 closet in a building in our parking lot with a whole bunch of other 5x6 closets belonging to other unit owners, but I find it easier to refer to it as a shed.) So I was in the shed looking for my old ballet workbook from when I was in high school.

I’m just going to draw attention here to that last bit, “from when I was in high school”.

The first thing to say is that yes, my ballet teacher did create a workbook for us, which we used in addition to Gail Grant, and we had written tests on the material. The second thing, the “from when I was in high school” thing, is really what I’m getting at, here. This workbook is something I have kept. It has moved houses with me several times. There were ample opportunities to get rid of it, and yet, it remains. It is of no practical use to me anymore.

WHY IS THIS THING STILL IN MY SHED?!



It’s not even in the house. That’s how important it is. It lives in the shed. THE SHED. If I need it so badly that it lives in the shed until I remember it exists and dig it out as a novelty to show my current ballet teacher, does it really still need to be physically in my life at all?

I am a big fan of the periodic Get-Rid-Of-Shit-Palooza. I have one of these at least once a year. I don’t like to hoard things for which I have no use. And yet, here we are. There is a box in my shed (just the one) full of books and paper items that I don’t care enough about to have in the house, yet I can’t seem to part with them. My high school yearbooks, a few college textbooks I thought ‘might come in handy someday’, old kiddie classwork, some photos that my mom never got into albums...it’s all just sitting there in a box taking up space.

I suppose it could be worse. Far worse. For the most part, my shed holds shed-type things; the Christmas box, my luggage, a bicycle (which I am actively trying to get rid of), foldable lawn chairs and an ice chest, a camp stove, leftover paint. But even for someone who detests clutter, I do still seem to hang on to things I probably don’t need. Puppets I’ve made but don’t want to display in the house. A PVC-pipe-and-old-sheet shadow screen, an overhead projector, and a box containing the 40-foot scroll of acetate scenery and about a hundred tiny shadow puppets from when my mother and I did a few performances of Jean de Brunhoff’s Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant, as set to music by Francis Poulenc. The likelihood of us dusting off that show at this point is slim to none, but still, once you’ve made 78 infinitesimal jointed poster board elephants you do not want to do it again. Ever.

Sentimentality is definitely a problem, but so is the normal human behavior of acquiring stuff. We do it without thinking, really. Clothes, books, random kitchen utensils; it all adds up. As someone who has in recent memory assisted with the cleanout of the homes of two sets of grandparents, I can tell you one thing: if you don’t keep your stuff-collecting in check when you’re alive, everyone will hate you when you die.

Of course, I have a current clap back, which is that clearly saving that ballet workbook all these years was worthwhile because now I get to share it with other ballet people for the purposes of discussion...and probably laughs. Some of the things my mother (who is even more allergic to clutter than I am) kept from my younger years are actually pretty cute. Apparently I won second place in a poster competition in kindergarten, the prompt for which was “Fill in the blank: Every dog deserves ________.” My answer was that every dog deserves a name. That’s pretty philosophical for a five-year-old.



Still, I’m becoming increasingly aware of things in my possession which really don’t need to be. It’s probably time for another clear-out. Goodbye, random holiday stuff I never use. Goodbye, strange kitchen utensils that serve only one purpose, and not even a very good one at that. Goodbye, ancient paperwork from accounts that don’t even exist anymore because we’re waaay past the IRS “Keep It Or Else” date.

NOT goodbye, old video tapes of my dance shows. Someday I’ll get you converted to DVD. NOT goodbye, photos from the Gilroy High School Chamber Singers 2004 Germany/Czech Republic Tour, even though none of them are that great. NOT goodbye, sixty-gajillion elephant shadow puppets.

But if any of you utter the name ‘Marie Kondo’ at me, I will CUT YOU.