In Defense of Kim (No, Really)

Tonight I ran to the Walgreens and the line was ridiculously long, so it was almost impossible to miss this magazine cover (I snapped the photo with my phone, so forgive the poor quality.):

Please consider this my open letter to Star Magazine.

Dear Star,

I understand that celebrities are your raison d'etre.  I also understand that you need to sell magazines every week, and Kardashians sell.  I get that.  I do.

However.

When I was an undergraduate and didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I took a class in journalism.  We talked about libel and slander and how it's more difficult to prove when you're famous, because when you're a public figure, you must open yourself up to criticism simply by virtue of being famous.  We looked at all kinds of case studies and somewhere in the course of all of this study, I walked away with one thing: all a publication needs to do to defend itself is to prove an absence of malice.

We didn't intend harm by publishing this, they say, and so you can't sue us.  And so it goes.

But here's the thing:  this magazine cover is an act of pure malice.  There is intent to harm here.  You are making fun of the figure of a woman who is growing a tiny human inside of her.  That tiny human requires nutrients, and when it gets those nutrients, it will grow.  And as she grows, her mother's only job is to keep her healthy.  That sometimes means getting fatter than you ever thought you'd be.

But when a magazine cover focuses on the expectant mother's weight gain, and the mother is as image conscious as our Kim, what do you think the result will be?

She will:
a) Brush it off because she's used to this by now and knows you are all a bunch of weasels.
b) Stew over this throughout the pregnancy and react with a crash diet that makes similar headlines over her fantastic post-pregnancy shape.  And then, while her daughter is growing, raise her with unrealistic expectations of body image.
c) Internalize this hurt that you're surely causing and start dieting.  Dieting, while growing a tiny human inside of her.  Gosh, your little headline is starting to have huge ramifications, isn't it?

I'm hoping for the first one, that she's come to the conclusion that you're rodent-adjacent, and will come out of this stronger than she went in.  That's certainly true of many women I've known who've become mothers.  But Kim?  Kim isn't known for her good choices.

Especially when it comes to her clothing.  Make fun of those ugly pants she was photographed in a few weeks ago, because god knows she needs to burn them, but leave her weight alone.

Because here's the other thing: every time you create this unrealistic expectation in celebrity culture, you are creating the same expectation in the women who read your magazine.  And let's face it: they're aren't the brightest bulbs to begin with if they think there's much truth behind your lurid headlines.  These women reproduce, and you've just given them a very skewed picture of what it means to grow a tiny human inside of you.

Stop.  Just stop.  Because there's a fresh place in hell just waiting for the likes of you.

Yr. mt. obd. & hmbl. svt.,
Cecilia.

Scary

"What are you looking at?"

I nearly jumped out of my chair at that.  I'd been alone in my office late in the day and had just finished my last report when I began browsing the headlines.  And I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for a good headline.  This one read "Boy Charged With Killing Baby is 1000% Not Guilty."  I mean, would you leave that news story unread?

So of course I was reading it and Marcus, as he is wont to do, walked silently in my office and was staring at my computer screen before he announced his presence.

No, I said.  Just no.  You can't walk in my office and scare the bejeesus out of me, Marcus.  Go back out that door and knock.

"But you know I'm here," he said.  "What's the point?"

The point is it's polite.  You can't scare people.

"You was scared?"

Knock, Marcus.  Knock.  And I gave him my best teacher look.  Just because I'm not in the classroom anymore doesn't mean that they don't still know it when I mean it.

So he did, because he enjoys it just a little too much when I scold him.  Then he came back and made himself at home. "We good?" he asked.

Yes, I said.  But only kind of.  You need to knock every time.

"I really scared you?"

You were silent, and you walked up behind me when I thought I was alone.  What do you think you did?

"I didn't think I was silent.  I really scared you?  You're scary."  He laughed.

Now, when kids at my school announce that I'm scary, it doesn't mean that they think I'm a monster.  It means they think I'm scared and I'd better get over it.  The last thing I am is scary, I said.  I just don't like silent people who walk in without knocking.

"So what are you looking at?" he asked again, and I showed him the article about the kid who shot the baby who was 1000% not guilty.  "Oh, yeah, I heard about that one.  They shot the baby in front of the father."

No, I said.  I knew exactly which one he meant, because everybody was talking about it, but this one was in Georgia.  The one in Chicago was where they were changing the diaper in the car and they did a driveby to get the dad but hit the baby instead.  Georgia was the mom and the baby in a stroller.

But he was fixated on Chicago.  "So they was after the dad and not the baby?  That's not so bad."

I just looked at him.

"It's not.  They didn't mean to hit the baby.  That's different than aiming for the baby and shooting it."

And I supposed he was right.  I mean, if you discount everything about precious lives and sweet-smelling feet and toothless smiles lost, there was a difference.  A driveby is different than deliberately aiming for the baby and shooting him in the face.  It's a long time since I thought to myself that anywhere was worse than Chicago for violence, but we may have found a winner.  Georgia.  Who knew?

But Marcus was still thinking.  "Did the dad die in that one and the baby lived?  That's messed up.  They should shoot that dad.  He should have died, not the baby."

Then again, perhaps not.  I couldn't make him walk outside and knock again for that one, though.  Some things you just can't redo.

Kiss me, I'm a South Sider

The South Side Irish Parade was this past weekend, and everyone was very well-behaved.

We had to be.

There's actually two parades in Chicago in March.  One, the weekend before St. Patrick's Day, happens on Columbus Drive near the Art Institute.  Huge crowds come out for that one, and they have fancy floats.  The big politicians attend, people bring their children, and it makes beautiful pictures for the six o'clock news.

Then there's the other parade.  The one on the South Side.  The South Side parade is nothing like the North Side.  At the South Side parade, we're local.  People walk down the street with dogs.  Little people dress like leprechauns. There are floats, but they're not fancy, and they were probably used last year.  And then there's the people.

For a while there, people thought it was the South Side's answer to Mardi Gras.  You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it.  All these people in their Irish wool sweaters drinking it up and puking all over the sidewalk.  In 2009, there were 54 arrests.  To give you a frame of reference, the Bud Billiken Parade, which goes through the streets of some of the sketchiest neighborhoods in the South Side, had one arrest, two years ago, and people still talk about it.

.

I still have that hat.  I bought it for $5 on the street that day.

Don't judge.

So yeah.  South Side Irish.  Bars on the North Side used to charter buses and cart their drunks down to the South Side to join our drunks.  As the parade floats wound their way down the street, they'd shout for green beads until they got bored and then end up in one of the pubs on Western.  Then they'd end up in the street, pissing everywhere and getting into brawls.  It was a big beautiful mess, and the force pulled all the cops from all the bad neighborhoods to contain it.

I tell you, if I were a criminal, I'd do about ten jobs on the day of the South Side Irish Parade because there's no way I'd get caught.  The police are all in Beverly.

The Beverly association that put on the parade got fined so heavily and they needed so many police that they might have actually been losing money on the parade.

So they decided to cancel the parade.  And they did it.  Nobody could believe it.    My brother was getting home from somewhere with his daughters and a news truck rolled up and he told him that they could send their north siders back where they belonged.  (All the locals blamed the North Shore.)

And for two years, everybody found something else to do that weekend.  It was incredibly boring.

The Parade wasn't always this way.  When I was a kid, it was a pretty small affair.  My Granny lived in a townhouse on Artesian, and on the day of the parade, we'd go out her back yard, cross the alley, go through the parking lot of Keegan's, and end up on the street watching the parade.  Those were the days where you had no problems seeing everything, where the parade participants were limited to a few Irish dancing troupes, the Pipefitters Union, and a couple of really big families who decided to represent.  I remember a car rolling by with speakers on top blasting the South Side Irish song.

That's right.  We have a song.  Want to hear it?  (Click on the link if you want to hear the whole thing.  This is a multi-media experience.)

South Side Irish
We're the South Side Irish as our fathers were before
We come from the Windy City and we're Irish to the core
From Bridgeport to Beverly from Midway to South Shore
We're the South Side Irish-Let's sing it out once more!

So they finally brought the parade back last year because enough years had gone by that everyone forgot what it was like and everyone else remembered cutting through back yards just like I did  to watch the families parade down the street.  It could be good again.  It could be neighborhoody again.  We could do it.

And because we really wanted it to work, we were good.  They made it clear that they'd arrest you for open containers and automatically fine you $1000.  I certainly didn't have that much money lying around, and neither did anybody else.  We're South Siders, not North Siders.  Cops, firemen, teachers.  That's who we are, and when somebody tells us we've got to behave, we know how to make that happen.

And?  Only one guy got arrested last year, and nobody got arrested this year.  Take that, Bud Billiken.

I'm not sure how long this will last.  As my friend Brian said, a few years from now, people are going to forget that the parade was ever cancelled and return to their revelry.

Backyard revelry.

I never saw that boa again, come to think of it.

People still drink, because they're Irish, and Irish people drink, but they drink in their back yards and front porches.  And nobody knocks over port-a-potties or pukes all over a cop's shoes.

It's a bit tame, actually.

I'm not sure if I like it.

Chi-raq

"Something's got to happen up in here," Sarah said.  "This is too much."

I was sitting at the security guard station at the front door because we needed all of our guards outside.  Some students from the school up the street had beef with our kids, you see, and had recently taken to showing up in groups, finding an isolated kid wearing our uniform, and jumping him.  But of course this kind of thing never stops. Our kid got jumped, then their kid got jumped, then it grew.

So.  We held our kids after dismissal, had a ton of adults on the street, and then one of our kids left the building, crossed the street too fast and got hit by a car. Completely unrelated. In the ensuing mess of ambulance and police, the other school showed up and new fights ensued.  So I was sitting at the security guard desk because we needed everybody outside.

So much was going on that there was no way I could keep track.  So I did what I always do when I want information: I asked Sarah.  She will be truthful.  I may not like her truth, but she will be honest.

She had theories.  They jumped us today because they had time to get out of school and wait for us up at the Walgreens.   "What we should do," she said, "is change our schedule so we can get up out of here earlier."

Why? I said.  So we could wait for them up at the Walgreens?  Violence begets violence, and then it escalates.

It was a conversation I'd had a hundred times before.  I'll probably have it a hundred more times.  It never stops.  We live in a war zone, I said.  The murder rate in Chicago is higher than it is in Kabul.

"I know," said Sarah.  "That's why we say Chi-raq.  Get it?  Chicago and Iraq.  Chi-raq."

Clever, I thought.  And I wanted to disagree.  This thing with fights in the streets was just another day at the office for me, to be honest.  It's happened before, and it'll happen again, and we will go out of our way to keep our kids safe.  It's what we do.  And then one day it will happen again and the cycle will continue.

I can sense that you, reader, are a little surprised by my blasé attitude.  Don't mistake me.  I'm worried.   I'm plotting ways to ensure that this situation deëscalates.  I don't want any more kids to get hurt.  I've seen enough kids get hurt, talked with too many cops.

It was just so hard for me to react today.  I was still reeling over what happened to Edgar.

Usually when I write this blog, I change the names of students for privacy, but today I will not, because it is important to me to state his name.  His name was Edgar, and I can already feel this blog getting away from me, because I hate that I am writing it about this kid.  Edgar.

Edgar, not the "20-year-old man who was fatally shot on the South Side" that the Tribune reduced him to.  That makes him just another statistic, and Chiraq's statistics aren't Edgar.

He was in my English class his sophomore year, and he was one of my favorite students. I always like the kids who constantly get in trouble best.  They're so wily, and I enjoy matching wits with them.

Edgar was no exception.  He was, in fact, one of the most brilliant minds I've ever had the pleasure to have in my classroom.  Brilliant, you say?  But he failed so many classes.  Yes, brilliant.  He failed classes because he skipped school so often, not because he wasn't smart enough.  I don't care what the debate was, he usually chose to argue the opposite of what everyone else was saying.  I never knew if he believed what he was saying, but he was always passionate about it.

But that was Edgar.  One day, I overheard him talking to his buddy.  Something was going down, and they were plotting.

I've got another idea, I told them.  How about you stay away from that?

"Don't worry, Miss B," they said.  "We don't bring that stuff to school."

That's not what I'm worried about, I said.  But he just laughed when I said they needed to keep themselves safe.

"That's not always possible," he said.

I never could convince him to watch out for his future.

That was the first thing I thought of last night when I heard what happened to him.  So of course I went looking for him on facebook.  I wanted to see if he still looked like I remembered. He did.  A few years older, but he was the same.  His profile picture showed him kissing a baby girl, his daughter.  I started clicking through his other photos.

I don't know if Edgar took this picture, or if he just thought it was cool.  Either way, I can't think of a single image that represents the lives of the children of our city better.  They grow up surrounded by this, and they forget how to be kids.

His name was Edgar.  He was flawed.  He was brilliant.  He is not another statistic.  I'm so tired of my kids turning into numbers.

In the past, when things were bad for me, I'd tell myself to buck up.  I'd think of places like Israel and remind myself that I didn't live in a place where bombs went off.  There aren't bodies in the streets, I'd tell myself.

But that was before Chicago turned into Chiraq.

I watch the news and see the candidates and none of them are talking about what's important.  To me, there is only one thing that is important: improving the lives of our children.  We can do better.  We must do better. We are Chicago.  We are not Chiraq.  And his name?  His name was Edgar.

Drew-A-Paw-Looza

My sweet nephew Drew has autism. Many people don't understand what that means, and if they do, it's usually because they remember Rain Man. To truly understand what it means, you have to imagine Rain Man as a little boy, and then think about all the trouble that a little boy can get into.

But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so a video must be worth a million. I made this video about Drew, and it is a true labor of love. So much so, in fact, that I've littered this paragraph with trite phrases. Forgive me.

If you're interested in learning more about the benefit that we're throwing for Drew on Sunday, November 13th, please visit www.drewapawlooza.com for more information.

Confabulation

"You look tired," Michael said to me. He'd come into my office with his best friend Ashley because that's what they do.

I've been getting that a lot lately. Sometimes when you're a teacher you look at administrators and think about all the ways that they're messing everything up and then you become an administrator and you mess things up, all the while thinking longingly of those days when you used to get sleep.

So I told that that I looked tired because I was working hard for them.

They didn't buy it.

"You know what you should get?" said Michael. "It's that thing that Caucasian people wear."

Caucasian people?

"Ooh, yeah," said Ashley. "They put it on their face so people can't tell they're tired. Miss A uses it all the time. You should ask her. She looks good."

Um. I thought hard, trying to figure out what they were talking about. You mean concealer?

"Yeah!" said Michael. "You put it under your eyes. It covers up those dark circles."

I couldn't help myself; I started to giggle like a little girl. They looked at me blankly, unsure what the joke was.

I decided to help them out. So what you're telling me is I shouldn't get more sleep; I should wear more makeup.

Ashley nodded. "Yes." She was so pleased with me. "Because then people can't tell. That's important."

They both told me bye then and ran out of my room so they didn't miss the chicken sandwiches at lunch, which reminded me. I needed to eat lunch, too.

I keep forgetting.

Simple Gifts

My name came over the loudspeaker. Report to the main office, they said.

I'd been expecting it, ever since our Parent Coordinator told me that some kids were looking for me. They had something for me, she said. I shouldn't go too far. So I ran a quick errand but apparently it wasn't quick enough, because a teacher stopped me on the way back to the office saying that she wanted to reschedule our observation. It wasn't a good day, she said, and she knew I had high expectations. I was trying to talk her out of it because really, I'm not that scary, before the announcement gave me an out.

When I got back to the office, three of my former students were standing there, with a large picture wrapped in what looked like the paper we used to cover bulletin boards.

"We're here to give you a present," Jenny said. She was holding a dusty plant, which she immediately thrust into my hands.

"We feel you need it," said Alan. "A present, which we will present to you with great ceremony."

Alan was always one for a clever turn of phrase. This is one of the reasons, in fact, that I enjoy him so. He handed me a somewhat ragged stuffed bear. Dog. Something. It was white and fuzzy.

Jose then presented me with what was clearly the real present. I could tell because they'd gift-wrapped it with bulletin board paper. It was a poster in a tattered frame.

So of course I opened it with great ceremony and even though I knew they'd found these items all over school, I let them hang it with even more ceremony, because when someone goes to this much trouble for a joke, you really need to let them get to the punchline.

Kids. They're funny.