my favorite kids!

-
I find people who go on about the innocent wonder of children really annoying as a rule (weren’t they ever kids? Or didn’t they at least see Me and You and Everyone We Know?). But, I’ve got to admit, today I found the innocent wonder of children pretty fucking healing.

The organization I work for sponsored a writing workshop at a school five minutes from my apartment, and maybe five minutes more ghetto. I parked across the street from the big, tan, fenced-in building, next to a row of trash cans and a broken TV with gang-style graffiti scrawled on it. But when I got close, I realized that the graffiti said, “Ariel is my favorite niece!”

I decided the day was looking up.

At the workshop, Luis wrote a funny piece about farting to make flies go away. Oscar let me help him put together a puzzle of Dalmatians in a bathtub. Shantevya and Sophia shot their hands up in the air and made that breathless pick-me-pick-me face that disappears from kids’ catalogue of expressions around age 13. Breana showed me her sticker collection, and I felt really honored to be the kind of person someone wants to show her sticker collection to.

After being afraid of my community, and then feeling shitty for being afraid, it was nice to feel like a part of it. The really, really good part.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what would finn do?

-
Image
Among the celebrities lending their voices to the movement for Black lives, John Boyega has stood out. Not just because he’s put his body on the front lines at protests and because he’s shut down Twitter trolls with delightful wit, but because—in our house—he is Finn. You know: the ex-Stormtrooper stolen from his family and raised as FN-2187. When he refuses to kill for the First Order, he defects and eventually joins the Resistance. It’s not the subtlest metaphor, and I’m not the first to say “Yes, this guy! The guy who took off his blood-smeared Stormtrooper helmet and refused to be a cop for the last gasp of the Empire!” But at this moment in history, I am especially grateful for how much Dash, at age 5.5, adores him. Before schools closed in March, I had never seen a Star Wars movie all the way through, although AK, Dash’s other mom, flew her toy Millennium Falcon around her childhood living room and, as a forty-something adult, has been known to read Star Wars fan ficti
Read more

soleil for a day

-
Image
1. cirque love Since starting gymnastics at age five—or at least since reading Geek Love in college—I’ve wanted to run away and join the circus. Actually, the problem was that I wanted to join the circus but I didn’t want to run away. How fortunate, then, that AK found out about Cirque School , where you can lea rn the trapeze arts without ever leaving L.A. She gave me a class for my birthday, which I finally redeemed last night (after reading up on it, I decided it sounded kind of hardcore, and that I needed to build up some flexibility and upper body strength before going—I’m not sure that happened, but a month passed, I was a little closer to reuniting with my left splits and I was itching to take the class). The classes are held at Absolution L.A. , a small West Hollywood studio walled with honey-colored wood and stocked with pilates machines, trapezes, a climbing wall, red vinyl chairs and other items of expensive-looking fu rn iture. It reminded me, I told AK later,
Read more

offensive tattoos

-
Image
1. relaxing with sex workers AK is taking this class where she’s required to put herself in culturally uncomfortable/unfamiliar situations and write about them. I clearly don’t totally understand it, because every time I suggest something (“Ooh! I know! Take that improv class you’ve been talking about!”), she tells me, No, it’s not like that. But somehow we ended up at a Korean spa at ten p.m. last night because one of the “spheres” she can investigate is race/ethnicity. All I knew about Korean spas was that they’re really naked, and Margaret Cho got kicked out of one for having too many tattoos. Sure enough, there was a sign at the front desk that said: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone with offensive tattoos or infectious skin conditions.  The pride parade committee was not offended. All signs were pointing to this not being a great place to run around without nipples. I mean, I don’t think my tits look infectious, but the thing about having a nonconforming
Read more