Once we sold the condo, my husband could quit his job and blog full-time.
Once we did a short-sale on the condo, I could quit the one job I didn’t like and only work the three jobs I did like.
Once I got a second book contract, I could quit all the jobs and write full-time. One more book contract and I’d be set.
Once we walked away from the condo, I’d be able to have a desk. We’d rent a new place—rent, not buy; I’ll slit my wrists before I’ll buy again—with lots of space, and I’d have somewhere to work that’s all my own. I could hang up my own stuff! Art and postcards and Post-it notes with ideas and plans. Plans! I could actually plan out a book instead of piecing together all the little bits I write on the L, or stuck in traffic on Lakeshore Drive, or in the coffee shop, or while my kid is napping. While my kid is napping, I’ll go sit at my desk. I’ll be able to think. No to-do lists, no distractions, just me. Just…shhhhhhh.
Once my kid went down for a nap, I’d read all the books I was supposed to be reading.
Once my kid went down for a nap, I’d write the book I said I was writing.
Once my kid stopped napping, I’d be fucked.
Once my kid started school, I’d have time. I’d have so much fucking time. Time to sleep. To travel. To think more fully about my teaching, instead of during the five minutes before and after class. To order those special seeds for the vertical window garden we backed on Kickstarter. To read more books. To buy new pants. To go to yoga more often. To get my work done during the day so I could be more fully present with my son: going for walks, building Legos, discussing the part in Honey I Shrunk the Kids where the ant dies, discussing the part in Symphony City where the girl gets lost, discussing everything.
Once my back healed, I could go to yoga.
Once I lost weight, I could start yoga.
Once I could fit into those cute Lululemon pants, I could start yoga.
Once we got my meds right, maybe I’d lose weight. Maybe I’d be able to sleep. When my doctor first told me my THS levels, she said, “I can’t believe you didn’t know something was wrong! Aren’t you exhausted?”
I told her I have four jobs.
I told her I have a five-year-old kid.
I told her I was trying to write.
I told her something about “America in This Day and Age,” but I’m not sure what I meant.
I told her that I was lucky.
Once we got our credit back—
Fuck it.
Once I had more followers on Twitter—
Fuck it.
Once ___________ was dead, I’ll be able to write about _______________.
Once I found those shoes that were re-pinned a gazillion times on Pinterest, but the link didn’t take you to a place where you could actually buy them, everything would be okay.
Once we paid off the IRS, everything would be okay.
Once I have a day off, everything will be okay. I’ll take my little boy to the beach. We’ll lie in the sand and stare at the sky. He’ll ask me a thousand questions, many of which I won’t be able to answer. He’ll say, “But you’re the mommy! Mommies are supposed to know everything!” and I’ll say that all I can do is the best I can, and he’ll pat my shoulder and say, “It’s okay, Mommy.” He’ll say, “You’re still the best mommy.” He’ll say, “We can always Google it.”
Once I finish a draft of this essay, I’ll know what I’m trying to say. “I don’t know what I think until I see what I say”—E.M. Forster wrote that. Or maybe it was Flannery O’Connor? I don’t know—I’ll Google it. Then I’ll check Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. I’ll see if anything new is on Colossal or Brainpicker, maybe read the day’s essay at The Rumpus. Inevitably, I’ll get up to make tea. Once I make tea, I’ll be able to finish this essay. I’ll know what I’m trying to say.
My oven is schkeevy. I should clean it.
Shit. Some of the schkeeve got on the floor. I should clean it.
The kitchen floor is connected to the floor in the rest of the house; I should clean it—I can finish this essay tomorrow. It’ll still be here tomorrow, right?
I’ll still be here tomorrow.
NICE
PICTURE IT: 1998, I’m 23 years old and sitting on the front couch at Tuman’s, which back then was called The Alcohol Abuse Center. Anybody remember the Alcohol Abuse Center? Right?! The most miserable, disgraceful, health-code violating, awesome fucking dive bar in Chicago? Seriously. Fireside Bowl, Liar’s Club, The Mutiny on Western where I once saw a guy pee in the corner pocket of the pool table—all five-star fine dining compared to Tuman’s in the ’90s. Tuman’s in the ’90s had Old Style on tap for two bucks. Tuman’s in the ’90s had a jukebox with Fugazi, Motorhead, and John fucking Philip fucking Sousa. Tuman’s in the ‘90s had a motto: “We service and install all hangovers,” and believe you me, they did the job. I lost whole chunks of my early twenties to this place, with a notable exception being that one awful night on the front couch, when Jackson Jackman1 told me I was just. too. nice.
Jackson fucking Jackman. At the time, he played guitar for a band called The Lasertags.2 Have you heard of The Lasertags? No? Shocking. They described themselves as Jane’s Addiction meets Captain Beefheart meets Godspeed You! Black Emperor, which to me sounded like a lot of fucking noise. But it didn’t matter because Jackson Jackman had a strip of hair that fell over his eyes; he wore very tight, ironic T-shirts from the kid’s section at Salvation Army; and when he played guitar, he’d open his mouth, like he was singing the chords. Also, he had the phrase “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” tattooed across his chest,3 which—since I loved Vonnegut—was so totally a sign. Who cared that he didn’t have a job. Who cared that my friend Dia regularly saw him passed out in Swank Frank at the corner of Milwaukee and Damen. Who cared that he went on “tour” with The Lasertags, would call from the “road” to say how much he missed me; and one night, after an especially emotional phone call from “Philly,” I went to Tuman’s to have a late drink and there he was. Sitting at the bar. With a girl.
Everything, most definitely, was not beautiful.
Everything, most definitely, hurt.
He took me to the couch and explained that he was going to tell me, really he was, but you know how sometimes, when you have to do something, you keep putting it off? Like getting an oil change, for example?
I said, “Am I the oil change in this scenario?”
And he said, “Oh, Megan. You’re just. too—” and yes, of course, I knew what was coming; not because I’d heard it before, but because I’d said it. I’d told my first boyfriend, Brad, that he was too nice for me, because I was scared to say I didn’t love him back. I told my friend Kelly that she deserved someone nicer, because I was too confused to say I knew that I was straight. I told Andy, the guy I didn’t know how to get rid of, that he was just too nice, because I didn’t have the wisdom or the language or the balls to say, “I don’t have any idea what I am looking for in a boyfriend or a lover or a partner, but I do know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are not it.”
None of that has anything to do with nice.
Now, granted, I’m no expert in linguistics, but somewhere along the line, nice got a pretty bad rap. We use it when the truth is too messy, too complicated. We use it as a replacement for needy. Weak. Boring. Unattractive. Prudish—prudish for chrissakes, like that makes any sense! Personally, I think having a partner fulfill all your crazy, wild, innermost sexual fantasies is pretty goddamn nice! But the point, the point is this: how has this single, simple, lovely word come to represent anything besides its actual dictionary definition of being a decent fucking human being?
The “fucking” part isn’t really in the dictionary.
The decent part is.
So is kindness. Honesty. Compassion. Generosity.
All things this world could use a little more of, don’t you think?
Picture it: 2012, I’m 37
years old, standing in the lobby of Pump It Up, which if you haven’t had the pleasure, is a ginormous indoor arena of inflatable bouncy castles where your children turn into foaming, rabid animals. I’m hand-in-hand with my four-year-old son, who’s already twitching with excitement and sugar and helium balloons. We’re here for his school friend’s birthday party, one of twenty birthday parties happening that moment simultaneously, which means there are—no joke—hundreds of batshit crazy children everywhere, and all of them are jumping. My imagination, usually my greatest asset as a writer, is now, as a parent, my greatest liability because I can see, almost cinematically, all their little skulls cracking together—the massive ER bills, the missing person reports, parenting bloggers writhing in judgment—and in the midst of it all, my little boy tugs on my hand.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” he says. “You can let go. I promise I’ll be nice.”
Here’s what he means when he says nice: I’ll say please and thank you. I won’t cut in line. No biting, no kicking, no hitting. I’ll let the littler kids go up the ladder first, and if they need help, I’ll help. When you ask me something, I’ll listen.
I’ll listen.
Let’s imagine what might happen if—right now, in this very second of reading these words—we reclaim the idea of nice and what it has the potential to achieve. Maybe buy the person sitting next to you a drink; they might really need it. The next time you go through a toll, pay the fare of the person behind you. Chicago, if you get back to your car before the parking ticket runs out of time, give the sticker to the person waiting for your spot. Might make their day, and we could all use our day made, right? Listen. Let the person you’re talking to finish their sentence. Don’t use the time they’re talking to figure out what you’re going to say next. If someone is being a jackass, step up. You overhear something a little racist, a little sexist, a little homophobic, call that shit out. It’s on you. It’s on us. Be nice. Back something interesting on Kickstarter later; that’s someone’s idea, someone’s dream, someone’s pulsing heart. College teachers: Don’t call your students kids. They’re not kids. Also: don’t start sentences with Kids today, because then I’ll have to vomit all over you, and that wouldn’t be very nice of me, now would it? Before you hit send on that email—you know the one I’m talking about; the one where you’re a little passive-aggressive and maybe even used the caps lock key—take a lap or two around the house. It’ll give you a second to think things through, calm down a little bit, and even log some steps on your Fitbit! Win-win! Also winning: sleep. Sleep on it. Sleep on everything, always. Before you make the shitty anonymous comment on the Internet, consider the fact that there’s a real person on the other end, reading your words and feeling that punch to the chest. Can we use a phrase other than, “I didn’t like it,” or “It sucked,” to talk about movies or TV shows or music or books or art? Somebody made that. In fact, can we put a moratorium on the word suck entirely unless in reference to lollipops, Dyson, or super-hot sex? Be honest in your assessment, be authentic in your language, but be nice. be fucking nice. If all this sounds too hard, too impossible, then may I respectfully suggest you put down this book and go take a vacation. I give you permission. Go online and buy a ticket to somewhere: a quiet beach, a noisy jazz fest, even the hotel down the street for a night if you need some sleep. Sleep is a major ingredient for niceness. If someone cuts you off in traffic, let it go, it doesn’t matter in the grand, glowing scheme of you and me and all of us breathing a little easier. Above all else, when you get home tonight, write these words on a Post-it note:
BE KIND, FOR EVERYONE IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE.4
Stick that Post-it to your bathroom mirror and read it every morning, before you leave the house:
BE KIND.
BE KIND.
BE KIND.
Footnotes:
1. Not his real name, duh.
2. Not their real name, duh.
3. This part is real, but I’m not worried about giving him away because I’d wager tons of people have this same tattoo.
4. This has been attributed to Plato, Philo of Alexandria, and John Watson aka Ian MacLaren. My thanks to all those guys.
THIS IS SCARY AND HERE I GO
A COUPLE of lifetimes ago, I got a teaching gig at a very fancy university. This place had history. It had hauntingly beautiful gothic architecture, a state-of-the-art library that went back centuries, and this strange and wonderful thing called a quad where students sat in the grass reading Aristotle aloud to each other and discussing how their actions defined their true selves. It was in that quad, on my way to my very first class, that the panic kicked in: What am I doing here? How did I get here? Am I a total fraud?
I got out my cell phone and called my friend Jeff. When he picked up, I said, “I think I’m a fraud.”
The reception was shitty.
“You’re a what?” he said.
“A fraud,” I said.
“A frog?”
“A FRAUD.”
“YOU’RE A FROG?”
“FRAUD. F-R-A-U-D.”
Some students were looking at me, yelling into my phone in their lovely, lovely quad. We were all so young. We had so much to learn from each other. I took a big breath and thought of what I’d gone through to be there. I thought, it’s either This is scary; I’m going home, or This is scary; here I go. I thought I might choke on all my beautiful, terrifying gratitude.
“Actually, I did say frog,” I told Jeff. “I’m a frog.”
“YOU’RE A WHAT?”
“I’m a motherfucking frog.”
There’s so much second-guessing, so much doubt. When I recognize the feeling, I try to stand very still, and breathe, and think of what I’ve gone through to get here. How profoundly grateful I am. How this is scary and here I go.
I am a motherfucking frog.
AN ESSAY ABOUT ESSAYS
In the introductory paragraph to this essay about essays, I will tell you that you don’t need an introductory paragraph, at least not of the 1) topic sentence 2) structural methodology 3) thesis statement variety that we were all taught in high school. What you do need is That Thing; maybe a question, a fear, or a fury. It makes your blood boil. It’s all you can talk about when you sit down with your friends over a glass of wine or two or five, or maybe you can’t talk about it with anyone, just your own heart, alone with the impossible architecture of words. As Cheryl Strayed wrote in her introduction to The Best American Essays 2013, “Behind every good essay is an author with a savage desire to know more about what is already known.” I want to talk about essays. I don’t have a topic sentence or a thesis statement, just a savage desire to know.
•
In the first body paragraph paragraph of this essay about essays, I will talk about how the writing of essays is currently taught: five paragraphs—introductory paragraph, three paragraphs of support, conclusion. Sound familiar? I’d wager we all learned this particular form, and yes, I think it’s vital to know how to organize our thoughts and back up an argument, however, the assumption that there’s only one way to do so is increasingly problematic, especially in light of this country’s current testing culture. We’re not teaching writing as a course of exploration and discovery, a way to follow your own passion and curiosity and then share that passion and curiosity with others; we’re teaching writing as a way to get a grade. Every year, thousands of high school students across the United States and other countries sit for the three hours and forty-five minutes required to take the SAT. Twenty-five of those minutes are spent writing an essay that’s graded on a scale of 1-6 by two independent readers who, according to the Collegeboard website, score in a holistic manner, taking into account such aspects as complexity of thought, substantiality of development, and facility with language, which is really fascinating because these independent readers are expected to grade a minimum of twenty essays per hour, and they get a bonus if they hit thirty. Let’s bring on the math, shall we? Thi
rty essays in an hour means two minutes per essay. Two minutes in which to judge one’s complexity of thought, substantiality of development, and facility with language; a judgment which may very well determine whether or not somebody can even go to college, let alone which college, or the potential financial aid they might receive. The stakes in this case couldn’t be higher, and to meet them, we’re taught to the test, both by classroom teachers and testing teachers—’cause FYI: specialized teachers who train kids in how to ace tests are a Thing. When I was in high school (and this was Michigan public school in 1993—long ago, yes, but we’re not talking Laura Ingalls Wilder-one-room-schoolhouse-shit), I had a teacher who stood in front of the classroom banging a ruler on the table, and the thirty of us, in unison, would recite vocabulary words—irony: a statement or event in which the opposite is said or the unexpected happens—multiplied times 300 other words we’d be tested on. And yes, fine, to this day I can still recite the definition of irony, but it wasn’t until years later, when I walked in on my boyfriend getting down with my roommate, that I understood what irony actually meant. Recitation is not learning, and tens of thousands of teenagers pulling five speed-written and panic-driven paragraphs out of their asses that will be read in two minutes by someone who can make or break their entire fucking future is no way to teach something as awesome and thoughtful and badass as the essay! I love essays! I love writing them and reading them and learning from them and teaching from them, and Dear American Education System! Please stop fucking with the essay! Please stop teaching us to fear it, to speed through it, to bullshit through it. And while I’m yelling, let me be really loud and clear on this next part: I’m talking to the system, not its teachers. In an article at Slate titled “We Are Teaching High School Students to Write Terribly,” Les Perelman, the retired director of MIT’s Writing Across the Curriculum program, tells us that “high school teachers have to make a choice between teaching writing methods that are rewarded by SAT Essay Readers—thereby sending worse writers out into the world—or training pupils to write well generally, at the risk of parent complaints.” He goes on to say that “teachers are under a huge amount of pressure to teach to the test and to get their kids high scores… they don’t get a promotion, or get a lower raise. So it actually costs them to be principled. You’re putting in negative incentives to be good teachers.” I teach writing at the college level. At the beginning of every semester, I write the word essay on the board in big letters and ask my students to share their perceptions. The word Boring comes up often. So does Excruciating and Waste of time. Sometimes they only have sounds: uhg. gah. ggrrr. But the one that really got me, that made me want to light shit on fire and also maybe weep, was a couple of months ago when the new semester started, a student of mine said, “Essays are terrifying.” “Terrifying,” I said. “Why terrifying?” “Because you have to be totally, completely certain about everything,” she said. “I’m eighteen years old—I’m not certain about anything.” I tried to explain, as I always do, that an essay does not have to be definitive. It can be a place where we examine an idea, where we follow our curiosity as a way to discovery. As E.M. Forster wrote, “I don’t know what I think ‘til I see what I say.” “That’s crazy,” said my student. “Nobody can pull that off in only five paragraphs.”
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