Expelled from School

 
I loved grammar class. I wasn't as huge of a fan of literature class. It was the dissecting and diagramming that did it. It was math.

I've always viewed math and grammar as essentially the same thing. You are balancing equations. You are looking for patterns. You see connections.

That is what I do: I lay bare connections. It gets me in trouble sometimes. Like the time I worked for Minneapolis Unified School District on their out-of-school youth empowerment program.
I was 20 and still naïve about how systems worked. I produced an anti-violence skit with high school youth that was performed at an elementary school. At lunch, the adults were screaming at the elementary students and calling them "stupid" and monkeys".

The high school youth were pissed. I calmed them down, and then we went to ask the adults, politely, to stop screaming and calling the students names. It went against what we had just been trying to teach. How could they not see the connections between violent speech and disruptive youth?

It ended with me being expelled permanently from that campus and the loss of my job. I still make the same mistakes. I just cannot not connect the dots and question authority.

Teachers from India

 
A lot of my teachers in elementary school were nuns from India; Calcutta I believe. They were the same order as Mother Theresa. I found it off that they were in the USA teaching privileged, 99% white, suburban kids. They told me they did it for their families. They converted because it provided opportunity and food. I didn't understand this at age nine.

Their hair was long, thick, blue-black, and covered by a habit. They took a vow to never cut it or show it to anyone. It was God's hair.

All of the students were fascinated by this. We'd flip and tug on their habits trying to expose their hair. I'd visit them at the convent hoping to catch them without it on. Someone even trued to sneak into their bathroom figuring he'd see it for sure. (They found him before he even got to their bathroom.)

I understand their choice to leave India (and their families) and the vow they took better now. I did something similar when I moved to San Francisco. I left behind all that was me. I cut familial ties. In doing so, I found my self. Once found, accepting vows, be it my marriage or the bonds of friendship, are empowering. You are committing to being your self.