At the end of February, I decided to do something that was a greater sacrifice for Lent than I normally do: I gave up being on Twitter. I didn't delete my account (though I did ditch the app on my phone), and I had a couple of visits there (sometimes a link from a news article took me to Twitter; I watched a Dave Matthews livestream from his home and tweeted how much I liked it; my website automatically shares a link whenever I publish a new essay), but for the most part, I did exactly what I said.
Here's the thing: I'm not Catholic. I have a few acquaintances, mostly from my quidditch days, who are Catholic. That isn't to say that I've a lot of claim to the tradition. Like much of my understanding of Mormonism and the culture of the Church, I recognize that Protestant--and, sometimes, even Puritan--influences have dictated what my religious experience encapsulates. My choice to participate in Lent had more to do with a desire for a kind of religious solidarity within my own tradition: The safest sort of religious experimentation that a person could do. The impetus is actually years old: I was talking to Dan Harmon, one of my quidditch buddies, who was came to my school to talk to my creative writing students about screenwriting (which he had studied in college). I took him out for lunch once the school day was over, and he readily agreed to eating pizza, which he'd given up for Lent. In subsequent conversations, it turned out that Dan wasn't Catholic, he just liked participating in these sorts of religious traditions. (I don't know what his current stance is on any of this, as I've lost contact with almost every vestige of my quidditch life.) That inspired me to try the same thing, using my Mormonic upbringing to conceptualize it in a way that made sense to me. To that end, I decided that, if I was going to do something for Lent, I would need to give up something that I would genuinely miss. For Dan, he gave up pizza; for me, I gave up Twitter. See, I have a hate/tolerate relationship with Facebook, but Twitter is a different animal. In Twitter, I feel as though I'm getting glimpses of other parts of the world. Yes, there's the center of a Venn diagram there: I follow certain people because of mutual interest. Authors, book agents, fellow teachers, dinosaur lovers, and comic book geeks inhabit my Twitter feed. (I also, quite begrudgingly, follow all of my representative legislators, though none really uses the platform for much of substance.) I also have made it a point to include LGBTQ+ and people of color in my timeline to give me an additional dose of "I didn't know that". In other words, Twitter helps broaden my view of life and living, with a lot of interesting things going on. And, boy, there are a lot of things going on right now. COVID-19's ravaging of the world is worth talking about, and the solidarity and commiseration that happens on social media is definitely one of the best parts about this crisis happening when it has. We've all had a good laugh at a post that was shared by a friend, neighbor, or whoever that perfectly recreates our own feelings. It's times like this when social media is at its best. Giving up Twitter, then, was a really hard decision. I made it before the crisis escalated to the point that our country's leadership could no longer deny it, and I think that was a good thing. It meant that I had already made the decision, so I didn't have to try to rationalize whether or not to commit. I'd done so; only thing left was to keep the course. At first, it was pretty difficult. I'm quite used to Twitter and would jump on during loading screens of video games, when I had a random thought to share, or just because I was bored with the conversation happening around me. Its ubiquity brought me comfort and I definitely dealt with a type of withdrawal. What helped--and what, I think, is the point of Lent--was that, during those first few days off the platform, every time I considered what I wanted to do and had to reject the "Go on Twitter" impulse, I had to think why I was missing it. End result? Participating in Lent meant that I thought about Jesus a lot more than usual. I'm convinced this is the intent of Lent, as it was a more authentic sacrifice than almost anything else at that moment in my life. I could have given up wearing a man-bun for Lent, but that wouldn't have mattered at all because I don't normally wear--or even much care for--the man-bun look. And though Twitter can have great value, its largest contribution in my life was to burn time trying to learn something new amid the constant stream of thoughts and words, 280 characters at a time, scrolling across my screen. Losing that but replacing it with the thought of "Hey, this reminds me of Jesus and His sacrifice that's coming up" made a difference in my life. The downside of this, however, is two-fold: One, I learned that I still need/want to scroll through social media. Two, that itch wasn't lost as much as transferred…to Facebook. I'm not a fan of Facebook. At all. Yes, there are some positive things about the website, and it could even be a good tool for improving the world. And, of course, the vast majority of people who read this essay will have become aware of its existence via Facebook. (I get the irony, folks.) Anyway, Facebook (as an entity; not individuals utilizing it) is not really improving the world, and it likely never will, but hey, at least there was potential at some point. As it stands, I don't like the platform for a number of reasons. Some are petty and nitpicky (I hate the fact that it doesn't automatically post the most recent posts--the fact that you can switch things around, only to have it change depending on the device you're using only makes it worse), while others are larger (Facebook is better at ads, especially the way it culls posted information to sell more stuff that I don't really need…and, yes, Twitter does this, too; they're just not as good at it). But there's one thing about Facebook that really grinds my gears: I know (almost) all of these people. That may sound counter-intuitive, as that's the entire point of Facebook. But Facebook is like dancing in a car at a red light: You think that you're pretty much doing your dance by yourself, only to realize that everyone you went to high school with is sitting in the car next to you, watching you with mixtures of embarrassment and interest. If a person on Twitter dislikes my hottake on something, I can block them and move on with my life. Detritus is as detritus does. But on Facebook, many of the responses to posts come from "friends" that I've accumulated over the years. Blocking or unfriending them comes with strings; there's a diplomacy, a politics involved with no longer being a part of someone's Facebook life that isn't as apparent in Twitter. If I don't like following a celebrity or an author because she says something stupid, then there's no real loss there. Facebook, however, changes the dynamic. If someone I know says something stupid, then it's in my face, again and again (because of that idiotic "Top Stories" default). Under normal circumstances, I can roll my eyes and choose not to engage with Facebook at all. I get my itch to scroll scratched elsewhere. But this year's timing between Lent and the COVID-19 crisis has meant that I couldn't scroll through Twitter whilst waiting for my video games to load. Instead, I was on Facebook a lot more, which meant that I was exposed to bad ideas more frequently. (And why is it that the worst ideas of your friends are the ones that show up the most often?) When it finally got too much and my distaste for the platform reached its zenith was when a friend from my mission posted memes and comments criticizing, downplaying, or entirely dismissing the quarantine. Now, I am no defender of America's response to the pandemic: We had a lot of warning that was ignored from the top down, and we still have a false-hope narrative that disregards science and history to try to mollify people. Until a vaccine that is tested, proven safe and effective, and ubiquitous, my family--with our half-hearted son--will be endangered by any premature "return to normal". Choosing to let our son out of the house is actually a life-and-death decision that we will have to formulate going forward. America has lost over 20,000 people at the time I'm writing this, and it's probably higher due to underreporting of numbers. Our lives permanently changed when 9/11 saw a tenth that number die--COVID-19 is going to radically alter America and the world. So when friends--not internet strangers or possible troll/bot accounts, but people I've broken bread with, been in their homes, took classes with in high school or college--spread idiocy like, well, a virus, it gets beyond tiresome. It gets dangerous. And it isn't just that someone else might read their meme and think, Hey, the quarantine is stupid! Sure, that might happen, but the danger comes from the further spreading of disinformation that is too easily shared. For example, I heard someone talking about a handful of different COVID-19 related stories: Almost all of them were either false or unproven. It's as if people are unaware that Snopes exists. Being exposed to that is damaging to my mental health, because the message I hear from falsely optimistic people, or those who don't actually maintain appropriate distances, or who go to the airport to welcome home missionaries in direct defiance of Church and state requests is a simple one: The life of your family is irrelevant. Living with an at-risk member of the populace means that I can't, in good conscience, head to the store with a mask on and think all will be fine and dandy. Living with an at-risk member of the populace means that I could be a vector of disease. As I told my students, half-hearted people don't get to survive pandemics. The only way to save my son's life--again--is to lockdown my home and take every precaution that I can. And as much as I recognize the heartache and sadness that comes from not celebrating Easter as a large, rowdy extended family dinner, it also means that we don't have to miss going to the funeral of someone we could have otherwise protected. So, yeah. I'm not a fan of Facebook. That's where I see the most frequent eye-rolls and yeah-rights of the whole pandemic issue. Is Twitter a better place than its competitor? I honestly have no idea. I haven't been on Twitter in multiple fortnights. I will say this, though: The only way I get through this potentially months-long tragedy-in-waiting is through the help of my friends. And Facebook gives me a view of many of them that tells me that may be a false hope. I hate seeing that. I hate feeling and thinking that. Yet I can't shake the sentiment. I learned that, while giving up Twitter for Jesus was good for my soul, Facebook certainly wasn't. The hard thing is, there's still something that I desire from social media. I want…something that social media provides. If I can find a way to scratch that itch a different way, I'd probably be less stressed and worried. Maybe I should start an Instagram account… Since it's the last day of the year, and I've been really behind on my essays, I thought I'd do a bit of a grab bag of things that are on my mind but I don't want to dedicate an entire essay to. So here's my end-of-year take on a handful of different subjects. Milton and a Book A couple years ago, I requested a Norton Edition of Paradise Lost. It's a thing that a teacher can do, in order to sample a text to see if the teacher is interested in setting up that copy for the class. In my case, I wasn't planning on buying a copy of Paradise Lost, since we use public domain copies, selected and annotated by me. As such, I didn't need to sample the book, but, hey, free copy of Paradise Lost? My mommy didn't raise no dummy. I scooped that up and happily read my little heart out. I got an email from Norton this month asking for me to fill out a survey on the book. Now, I try to do surveys when I have the time, as I try to contribute to other people's work, but I knew it wouldn't be a "Did you like it? Yes/No/Other" kind of survey. I put it off, waiting for when I had a bit more time, which happened to be today. It was a lengthy survey that focused on the extras that they'd included in their edition of Paradise Lost. While I didn't read all of those extras, I was able to throw my two cents into the discussion, offering alternative texts (e.g., I said that I thought Eikonoklastes might be a better addition than Reason of Church Government and if that sentence doesn't make sense to you, then you're a lot more normal than I am) and throwing out some of my favorite Miltonic scholars (shut up I have favorite Miltonic scholars). At the end of the survey, they offered me one book from a short list of their back catalogue. To my surprise and delight, one of my favorite Shakespearean scholars (shut up I have favorite Shakespearean scholars) had a book about Adam and Eve. I had spotted this book before whilst at Barnes and Noble earlier this week, and I was this close (holds thumb and finger close together) to buying it. In the end, I walked away, which I'm really glad I did. Now I get a second free book from Norton! Huzzah! Chuck E. Cheese's My nephew turned eight this week, so we went up to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate. For those of you who aren't familiar with the place, it's kind of like Pizza Planet from the first Toy Story movie, in that it's a bright, noisy arcade with a fire marshal's nightmare of kids packed into a seizure-inducing, light flashing, bowling-alley sized petri dish of vectors of disease and surprisingly edible pizza. Because it was my nephew's birthday party--and the birthday party of approximately the sum population of the state of Wyoming--we had a table filled with boisterous kids, spilled root beer, and a large, animatronic rat (mouse? What is Chuck E. Cheese?) with a Santa hat dangling off one ear. Occasionally, the robot rodent would shudder into wakefulness, blink its dead, baleful eyes at the assembled crowd, and tremble as it rotated on its bolted-down legs. Loud music blared over the speakers, and large TVs played puppets singing Christmas carols (even though Christmas was earlier this week) and, the true gift of the magi, a music video of N*Sync singing "Happy Holidays" in front of a green screen, a young Justin Timberlake rocking the frosted curl tips of his hair the way that only a teenager from the late '90s could. My youngest, Demetrius, was given a plastic card with 150 credits on it with which to play any of the arcade games. Though there were some--and the more capitalistic, conniving children orbited around these--which dispensed tickets (used to trade in for plastic trinkets so bereft of any value that being given them would seem insulting), Demetrius was more interested in the Transformers: Human Alliance on-rails-shooter. That sucker cost six credits a go, and since Demetrius is four, I had to swipe twice and join in, blowing away Decepticons and watching Optimus Prime scold those ne'er-do-wells. Since we were double-timing the arcade, Demetrius ran out of credits before his older brothers, but in a fit of niceness, my middle son, Theseus (I guess), donated some of his credits so that little D could do some of the other games.
By the end of our time with the table, we were running a bit behind schedule. The birthday boy had to open all of his presents in a twenty-minute window, which is pretty rushed when one has over a dozen presents to unwrap. The passive aggressive announcements from the employees over the intercom--"If you're at one of our party tables, you will need to finish up in five minutes"--was a nice touch to the frantic gift-stripping activity. Rip, rip, rip. "Wow! LEGO! Thanks!" Toss. Rip, rip, rip. "Wow! LEGO! Thanks!" And so on. Despite the migraine-levels of stress and noise, the entire party was really enjoyable. I liked seeing my boys have fun with the arcade games, figure out the economics of a party place like that, and walk away with some flimsy plastic that they have already misplaced. It was a good day. Santa and Son My oldest, Puck (I guess), is now ten and a half. It was obvious this Christmas season that his grip on believing in Santa had slipped--but, as Ralphie points out in A Christmas Story, "Let's face it, most of us are scoffers. But moments before zero hour, it did not pay to take chances." I'm not saying that Puck was hedging his bets, but…better safe than sorry. Now, I should point out that this is a delicate subject in our household. My wife is all about the Santa myth, having them write their letters in the palsied handwriting of early elementary age, pointing out Santa in displays, and generally doing a fair job of the whole myth. For me, I don't talk about him. I don't ask what Santa brought anyone for Christmas, I don't put any emphasis on it. I find it disingenuous at the best and while I understand why some people like it and buy into it, it's just not for me. This is a flashpoint for controversy between me and my wife, so we'll leave it at that. In the case of Puck, he kind of Encyclopedia Browned the whole thing: In a copy of Jurassic Park and Philosophy (shut up I love both of those topics), he read a part about learning the truth about Santa. He'd had conversations with his friend, who no longer believed. Then he overheard my wife talking to her mother, who asked Gayle how much the Kindle Fires cost (the "Santa present"). That was enough for Puck to figure it out. He confessed that he was sad to learn the truth, but my wife pulled him out of the funk by letting him know that it was now his job to help his brothers enjoy this aspect of Christmas. I like the idea of him learning about service and helping others, and the idea that he can practice doing anonymous acts of service is great. But, at the same time, it's a definitive moment in late-childhood. Finding out the "truth" of Santa Claus is something that happens to most kids in this area. That there really isn't a benevolent, bearded old man living far above us whose sole purpose is to dispense gifts to those who've behaved correctly can be a hard thing to wrap your head around, I suppose. I guess learning the trick behind the magic is always hard. A New Year Despite the fact that most years are hard, I feel more worn down by 2017 than I was even by 2016--which is saying something. The current administration has done a pretty poor job of doing anything positive, and I've been nothing but disgusted by my own representatives and their unending capitulations in order to secure power. My job hasn't changed, but, as I mentioned before (I think? Somewhere…), I'm not getting as much excitement out of the same things. I'm not saying I want to quit, or that I want to change a lot, but the work isn't fulfilling me as much as it used to, which is worrisome. Not only that, but this year has seen, for the first time since our early marriage, a genuine financial strain. We normally live frugally--the combined incomes of two teachers is enough to keep us firmly middle-class--but we splurged this year, what with a handful of expensive vacations and some unexpected expenses (like the garage door spontaneously breaking a month or two ago). All of these different stressors have taken their toll: I'm one tired fellow. Yet I always have some optimism for the new year. Yeah, I know it's arbitrary. The calendar isn't perfect, and changing over from a 7 to an 8 doesn't really make a huge difference in a practical way. But there's that nagging hope that this time, I can make the corrections I need to so that my life really improves. In 2018, I'll be on my medication to help reduce my depression. In 2018, I'll be making a greater push toward submitting my work. In 2018, I want to finish three novels. In 2018, there will be spring, there will be summer. The winter's bitterness will fade. Here's hoping that 2018 will see the changes that we truly need. Primary Observations
In a Utah ward for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there can be anywhere between three hundred and three hundred thousand kids under the age of twelve. While that number may be off (on the low side, I daresay), the age groupings isn't: Once a kid hits eighteen months, they're allowed into the nursery, which is essentially a two-hour daycare so that the frazzled parents can try to feel spiritual for a bit whilst at the ward building. At age three, the kid is pushed up into the Primary auxiliary. The women in charge of the Primary have one hour with the kids during which time they have a spiritual lesson, sing Primary songs, and say "Shh! Let's be reverent!" on an endless loop. The Primary is broken into two groups, again based on age. The younger sort, aged three to seven is called the Junior Primary. They meet with the Primary Presidency for the first hour and get the special lesson. Afterwards, they go to their individual classes (again based on age), with each class having between three and maybe eight or nine kids. During that third hour, the Senior Primary comes in and gets the lesson that the Primary Presidency had given to the Junior Primary the hour before. Of course, every ward and stake is different. Some don't have enough kids to constitute a real Primary. For instance, when Gayle and I were first married, we attended a newly-wed ward that met close to BYU campus. That ward had a handful of infants, but almost all were in arms. There were a dozen or so nursery aged kids, and one kid who was in Primary. My grandmother's ward, if I had to hazard a guess, doesn't have enough young people in the geriatric neighborhood to have too many Primary-aged kids. Also, the timing and order of the classes, though fairly standardized throughout the Church, might be different depending. Nevertheless, my experience as a substitute in the Primary is always an entertaining--and noisy--one. In our particular ward, we have a couple hundred kids of Primary age (that isn't an exaggeration). All three of my boys are in there, with two in Junior and one in Senior. Because there are so many kids, they're always looking for adults to come in and sit with the miniature energy factories. Though there are official teachers assigned to each class, Primary teachers in my neck of the woods tend to find reasons to be out of town on Sundays--and don't ask for substitutes before they leave. This gives the volunteer experience in the Primary room an ad hoc feeling to it. To their credit, the sisters in the Primary Presidency always manage to pull things together. It really is an underappreciated art: They have to try to keep the attention spans of the most distractible age on a topic that tends not to be particularly riveting--spiritual stuff. I mean, the most common expression in a Mormon ward is one of polite exhaustion as the listener valiantly tries to battle back the exhaustion of raising nuclear power plants that have a vaguely familial look to them. After all, most Mormon families in my ward are…um, robust. (I personally think that a great many members take the commandment from God in the Garden of Eden as a personal requirement to single-handedly multiply and replenish the Earth.) That means that most dads, who have spent a long week pulling in money for their traditional, nuclear family, have finally lost the momentum of work and their bodies instantly shut down to try to get themselves charged up for another lengthy week. The moms who stay at home have had approximately ten words with another adult over the course of the past six days, most of which were to the cashier at the nearby Ridley's when they said, "Yeah, I found everything I was looking for. Thank you." The weariness that only a mother of four can survive gets amplified by the fact that spirituality makes most of us sleepy. So, you can imagine how much effort these Primary teachers and the presidency puts into these lessons. Like all teaching of young children, it becomes less about controlling the energy as it does directing it. This past week, I was one of the substitute teachers for the Junior Primary. I sat with the seven-year-olds. The two girls in the class found every comment, song, or moment in the entire lesson eminently conversable, and giggles provided their punctuation marks. "I know this song (giggle)" said one. "So do I (giggle)" said the other. "I don't know the words (giggle giggle)" said the first, belying what she'd said previously. "ASLEEP! ASLEEP!" shrieked the second as the song, "Away In A Manger" moseyed into its, apparently, raucous chorus. (Really, though, if you haven't heard a bunch of six-year-olds screeching the words "Asleep, asleep!" ten times in a row, at the top of their lungs, you really haven't experienced the Spirit of Christmas.) Then she dissolved into more giggles. In front of me, one of the younger girls had pigtails for her hairstyle, except that only the left one remained. The other had fallen out somehow, and the little girl didn't know (or notice) the discrepancy. On that same row, a boy had on a tie. There are many ways of wearing a necktie, but none of them--so far as could be considered official, at least--involves wearing the loop of the tie on the outside of the lapel. Clip-on ties hardly solve the problem, as those tend to lam out of one side or the other at the slightest provocation. Duck-tails aren't unusual as the boys find ways to wrestle with most anything that comes to hand--other boys, their ties, or the chairs they're sitting on. I can't be certain anymore, but I want to say that I've seen children sweating as they scurry off to their final hour of worship. Who knew spirituality could be soporific for adults and catnip for children? Reverence as a tool to ensure compliance is wielded without sparing. "Who wants to pick the next song?" asks the chorister. A veritable forest of baby-fat-rounded hands shoot into the air, their fingers exploding open like fireworks. "Okay, you have to be reverent for me to pick you!" Those still interested in picking the song instantly fold their arms, then turn to their neighbor to declare their reverence--usually in a loud voice. "Shh!" says the chorister, a patient--but strained--smile on her face. "Shh! We have to keep our mouths closed to be reverent!" The more literal-minded kids begin to hum. Somehow, through the cacophony of a dozen private conversations, the giggle of those same girls, and the clatter of an insensate chair somehow becoming victor over the boys, the lesson is taught. Kids are instructed on the way that Jesus loves us, how He wants us to do the right thing, and how we can all return to live with Him if we but follow the teachings of the prophets. Hats off (not only because we're in church) to the many ladies throughout the wards of the world who wage this holy war against the natural child in order to try to teach the things of God. And when you wonderful sisters falter because the ratio of children to adults is too high for your fingers to hold, remember "they that be with us are more than they that be with them." (2 Kings 6:16) |
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