I was walking through the stacks listening to Simon & Garfunkel the other day when I thought about my AP English teacher from high school.  My first thought was that she made me believe my life would never be complete until I drove across the country listening to Simon & Garfunkel.

The second was something she wrote in my yearbook senior year: “You really are as good of a writer as I’ve always said.”  That sounds like kind of a strange comment, but the back story is that this teacher was, like, the teacher.  She had this air about her that made it almost cool to be in her class; I think that we all thought she really knew what she was talking about.

I had been waiting for years, and continued to wait all the way up to grad school, for a teacher to tell me I really wasn’t that great of a writer.  But, when she handed back my first paper junior year, she told me it was one of the best she’d ever read.  Then for the the next two years, she continued to hand back every paper with an A on it.

I developed this “yeah, whatever” attitude to the grades. I started to doubt she was even reading my papers.  But, that comment in my yearbook meant a lot to me. Less for the praise and more because she’d been perceptive enough to pick up on how I felt. I was surprised to be understood.

Later in college, I had an English class with a girl who had also been in those classes with the teacher, and I realized that while she had given me what I needed–mostly encouragement–maybe it hadn’t been the same for everyone else.  This was a smart girl and she was struggling with basic writing.  She didn’t feel prepared for college.

I don’t think enough about my future life as a teacher, because the road to a professorship is so long.  Thinking about it now, though, I hope to meet students wherever they are–to be the teacher to both that girl and to me.

This poor little post has been kicking around my drafts folder since early January. Maybe I’ll just go walking through the stacks listening to Simon & Garfunkel again for added authenticity.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people talking about the good ol’ days.  From the rosy picture of everyone being respectful to the talk about how awesome Care Bears are, I’m just a hater all around. I’m not against saying that one era might be better than another, but I think it’s ridiculous to believe it’s only been downhill since [fill in the blank].

So, maybe it’s just as ridiculous of me to think the way I grew up has been lost somehow.   Whatever kids are doing with their time these days,  I grew up playing outside and I’m really happy I did.

Lately, I’m only outside to walk from my apartment to my car from my car to class from class to work from work to home.  So I’m all about romanticizing those hours and days and summers spent outside just trying to keep from dying of boredom.  It seemed as much a threat as quick sand.

I remember especially when my elementary school built a new playground.  I lived within walking distance, so when I didn’t come home that day, because I’d spent the afternoon playing on the new playground, my sister came looking for me, sure I was kidnapped by a danger stranger.  I lived for those orange rings next to the regular old monkey bars.  I still have the callouses to remind me.

And then after what seemed like decades, but was no more than a couple years, we got tired of the new playground and thought we were cooler for going back to the old decrepit one.  Somehow my friend Elyse and I managed to convince a gang of girls to let us lead them into a series of dares.  The reward was being named part of the Rooster Club.  We called it the Rooster Club because you were a chicken if you wouldn’t drop straight from the top of the fire pole to the gravel below, but if you were brave enough then you were a rooster.  We even had membership cards created by me.  When we got tired of that, we started timing each other to see how fast we could climb the giant tires half buried in the ground.  The trick was that you had to do it with no hands.  Then it was back to the orange rings, then tether ball, basketball, four square, freeze tag.  Whatever we did, that was all we did until we were sick of it.  There was no tires on Mondays, monkey bars on Tuesdays.  It was tether ball for September and October, basketball for Winter, and then back to freeze tag in the Spring because we’d forgotten how fun that was.

That was just my life at school.  The neighborhood held a whole separate set of friends and activities.  We roller bladed, made up plays, rode skate boards down steep driveways, played Red Rover until the time I split my knee open, had lemonade stands that made no money because we lived in a cul de sac, played capture the flag when we had enough people, built forts, rode bikes.

In fifth grade, we moved and I picked up with a new group of neighborhood kids.  I kept up with them until high school.  I’d outgrown a lot of the activities, but I had no better way to fill all that wide open time.  One of our last big projects was to start a neighborhood newspaper.  It did not meet a lot of success in its initial run, but we heard from its fans years after printing ceased.

I miss spending all day with friends, playing games, being creative, spending time outside.  Most of all, I miss the free time.  I guess I can see why people romanticize the past.  It makes for a nice contrast.

Not my first day, though.

Campus has changed.  It’s been pretty calm all Summer, but now it’s back to buzzing.  It was quiet when I got to the library yesterday morning and crazy nuts by the afternoon.  The main floor was so thick with tour groups, I didn’t want to leave the safety of my cubicle.

It’s weird looking at all the students and trying to figure them out.  The MBA students didn’t even crack a smile when one of the librarians giving them a tour joked about books.  Not that I think business students can be summed up so simply.  I’m just saying that the two religion students behind the desk thought it was funny.

I try to pick out the freshman, but it’s not as easy as you’d think.  Mom and dad standing at their sides makes it easier. I want to believe they’re all terrified, because that’s how I felt on my first day of college.  Not happy nervous, but dreadful-nervous.  I’m excited for them still, because college is amazing.  I didn’t realize that until I was nearly finished.

For at least the first few years after I got my license, a huge waive of relief passed over me every time I thought about how I never had to learn to drive again.  I don’t know why it was such a big stress in my life.  Driver’s ed with the serial-killer looking instructor, practicing my parallel parking, too many hours spent waiting at the DMV.  I can look back on it fondly now, but at the time I was just so happy to be done with it.

I feel that way now when I see all the freshman.  God am I relieved I don’t have to do that again.  But, man am I sorry I don’t get to do that again!  Sometimes I think that hindsight would make every experience so much easier and more fun, but life without crushing uncertainty really isn’t life.  Really am glad I’m done with driver’s ed, though.

I have a lot of insecurities. Most of them are not unique. But, there’s one that I’ve never heard expressed by another person, and that leads me to believe I’m alone in this.

I always worry that people think I’m too serious. That I have no sense of humor. That I’m no fun.

This insecurity is actually pretty reasonable, because people do get this impression of me.

I first became aware of this in middle school. I was pulling things out of my locker, engaging in some small talk with a classmate. Somehow the conversation led to this girl telling me in a frustrated tone, “You’re too serious, Ashley.” This wouldn’t have been so bad, except the girl telling me I was too serious was the same girl who cried when she didn’t get first clarinet in band and actually became resentful of the girl who did–a girl who was amazingly talented and beyond nice. What I’m saying is that being told I was too serious by this girl was like being told by Steve Urkel that you’re too dorky.

I also get a lot of people explaining their jokes to me or apologizing for them, because they deliver a dry joke, I respond with even drier humor, and then they somehow think that I’m responding seriously because I didn’t get the joke. This never ends well.

Bottom line, you don’t want people to think you’re no fun, and you don’t want to be misunderstood.

I’ve gone through several phases with this. I used to be defensive. I thought, I’m not too serious. They just don’t know me. Then I went the opposite direction and became defensive about people thinking there was something wrong with being serious. I was like, maybe if more people took themselves seriously, then we’d all be much further along.

Now, I mostly think, who cares? Yeah, I am serious. I like to talk about things seriously. It doesn’t mean I think I’m the center of the universe. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of humor. Not everyone will get to know me well enough to understand all this, but oh well.

Still, sometimes the insecurity surfaces. I’m trying to impress someone, and I’m worrying that they’re getting the wrong impression of me. Or, someone says something that gives me the idea that they think I don’t understand. Or, a stranger tells me to smile, and I realize that my expression must make me look completely unhappy.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the posts I had lined up to publish on my blog, and I was hit with the sudden insecurity that you could very easily get the impression from my blog that I’m completely miserable. Actually, I’ve had this thought before.

In our culture, we often assume that the ones laughing and joking are happy, and the serious ones are miserable. I’m pretty sure that any comedian would tell you this isn’t true. Ah, the tears of a clown.

I’m just saying, I’m not as emo as I may appear. And, it’s easy to clown on blogging, because to write about your life is to take yourself somewhat seriously. But, really, would you rather be the one taking yourself seriously or the one who spends your time making fun of people who take themselves seriously?

Lisa and I have had a number of insightful conversations over the last week, including one in which we concluded that Jesus definitely does cruise around heaven in a cloud car with the Care Bears when he’s not on his Segway.  Here’s another about the things we didn’t do in high school.

Ashley: Sometimes I come across my fake ID and laugh at all the trouble we got into in high school.

Lisa: We were such crazy teenagers! All those late nights that I don’t remember because I was soooo drunk. Right.

A: I know. I feel like I missed half of high school, since I was so wasted. I could have gone to Harvard if I wasn’t such a partier.

L: I probably would have gotten a full-ride scholarship plus stipend to Harvard if I hadn’t partied so much. Craziness!

A: I’d be teaching classes at Harvard right now if I hadn’t been drunk and high all throughout high school.

L: Definitely. They probably would have renamed the school Ashley University.

A: Professor Ashley at Ashley University probably wouldn’t have time to write these messages.

In case you’re confused about this conversation, because you perhaps actually did things when you were high school–things that were maybe against the rules, things you wouldn’t want your parents to know about–know that Lisa and I did not.  I can’t think of a single rule we broke.

When it comes to high school regrets, I swing back and forth between wishing I’d loosened up more and had more fun and wishing I’d buckled down more and dedicated myself completely to studying.  But, as it was and as it usually is, real life fell between the extremes.

I can hardly think of a more obvious song to pick than “Clocks,” but more than being one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever heard, it is also the song that helped me through the most miserable time of my life. It was my freshman year of college, and I was lost and lonely and I didn’t know what to do. I was working too many hours at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, because I was completely freaked out about the thought of putting myself in debt. I was dieting, trying to change myself into someone else. I was pushing my best friend away, because how dare she try to change and grow. In my retail hell, they played the same CD of music over and over. This CD included “Clocks,” and every time it came on, I would walk through the stacks of towels, and repeat to myself, “home, where I wanted to go,” because there was nothing more in the world I wanted than to just go home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDFmuOtKrBc

Funny thing happened. When I was home this summer in Washington, we drove across the state for my cousin’s wedding. We stopped for lunch at the Burger King in Cle Elum. Five of us were crammed into a table meant for four, and we hear someone say, “Hey Donna!” My mom was talking to us, but because her name is Donna, she and all the rest of us turned toward the guy who had yelled, even though we didn’t know him at all or anyone else in Cle Elum, Washington.

I said: That’s what it’s like to be an Ashley

My brother laughed, and my mom resumed talking.

Really, that is what it’s like to be an Ashley born in 1983. You’re bound to be surrounded constantly by other Ashleys. I was never the only Ashley. On my soccer team, I was the lesser of the two Ashleys. Ashley M. was more popular than me and a much better soccer player. In school, I was sometimes one of three Ashleys in classes.

But, the older I get, the more the other Ashleys seem to drop away. I am now the only Ashley at my school (I think because the average age of students here is 30 something). It’s crazy. When people say Ashley, they mean me. That takes some getting used to. In high school, I never bothered to turn my head when someone yelled, “Hey Ashley!”

Continued from yesterday.

4. Becoming friends with Lisa. I met Lisa in middle school. She sat next to me in band in sixth grade, and I thought she was weird because she was really quiet, and swabbed out her clarinet every single day, which no one else did. Always the rule follower. She now claims that she thought I was weird too, but she only started saying that after I said what I thought of her. I’ve had several really important friendships, but I would call my friendship with Lisa a turning point, because it really did seem to happen in an instant. On the first day of high school, we went from distant acquaintances to best friends. It had something to do with the fact that she was one of the only people I recognized that first day, but we also had a lot in common, and later we shared an obsession with *NSYNC (more on that another time). That first year of high school, we had almost every class together, and for the following three, we did have every class together. We also sat next to each other at every band event and hung out outside of school. We’re very similar people, and we spent the first couple years discovering all the strange things we had in common. Spending so much time together made us even more similar. Someone asked us once if we were sisters; Lisa is three inches taller than me and blond, but I guess we spoke the same and shared so many mannerisms that we could look related. Lisa is an incredible friend to me, and though we’ve never really been dependent on each other like some friends are, I can’t imagine my life without her or our friendship. The only negative thing I can say is that I think the comfort we took in our friendship and our shared timidity led us to be far too apathetic in high school. We both succeeded in school, and in that way, I think we kept each other in check and on track, but we didn’t push each other to step outside our comfort zones. Thankfully, the time we spent apart as undergrads gave us each the opportunity to test our limits more, and we’re better for it. Now we support each other as we pursue our separate interests

5. Moving home after freshman year. I only applied to two colleges. They were practically the same school, except one was here in the city where I grew up, and the other was in Southern California. Lisa and I decided to go to California. I knew almost immediately that I’d made the wrong decision, except now I call it a necessary learning experience and not a mistake. I was a disaster. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I wasn’t ready to be away from home, and I wasn’t prepared to live in an environment where I was constantly surrounded by my peers. I was freaked out about money, and so I worked too many hours instead of spending time with my classmates. I was pretty miserable, and I’m proud of myself now for admitting my mistake and making the change necessary to make myself happier. I moved home and finished out my degree at the other school I had applied to. This point comes with good and bad like the others. I think I missed out on a lot of experiences by not staying away at college. Of course, those regrets have been softened now that my life has taken a happy direction it wouldn’t have taken if I hadn’t switched schools

6. Discovering theology. When you go to a private religious school, even one as crazy liberal as my undergrad, you have to take religion classes. I had already taken one my freshman year, and it hadn’t moved me, though I was far more religious at that time. So, I didn’t look forward to taking one more in order to earn my English degree. I originally registered for a class on the documents of the major eastern religions; I’d picked it because it fit well into my work schedule. But, I quickly learned that that class would not fill the necessary requirement, so I had to scramble to find another. The only one available was Introduction to Theology, which, because it was an intensive class, met every night for three hours. If I’d had any other options, I would have taken them. The class was taught by an adjunct professor who’d earned his PhD at the school I now attend. Not only did the class throw me into a complete theological crisis from which I’m still recovering, but it was some of the most fun I’d ever had in a classroom. I really didn’t talk much in the class, but our final paper was to reflect on the questions we’d been raising, and I got my draft back with some of the most encouraging comments I’ve ever received from a teacher. The class lasted only the month of January, and afterwards I began the second semester of my junior year, but I couldn’t get theology off of my brain. It was so interesting to me, and so deeply personal. On what felt like a whim, I added Religion as a second major. I took another class from that professor the next summer, and he gave me even more encouragement, and told me what I needed to do if I really wanted to pursue theology. On another whim, I applied to graduate school; I applied only to the school I wanted to attend, because there was nothing else I wanted to do. English has been my interest forever, but discovering theology usurped it instantly, and on a series of whims, I’m on a career path I never imagined.

It’s strange how when you choose to do one thing, you also choose not to do a million other things. I look back on these moments in my life with relief and regret. They all brought me wonderful things, but made so many other what-might-have-beens impossible. I can’t know how my life would be different if I’d made other choices or if other choices had been made for me, because one decision led to another, which led to another, which led to another to form a complicated web that cannot now be deconstructed. And, if I hadn’t experienced the things I have, then I wouldn’t be the same person.

I wrote this post while I was at home in Washington a couple weeks ago. It’s extremely long, so I divided it into two parts, and I’ll post the second part tomorrow.

I didn’t plan the novel with any specific themes in mind. Certainly some have emerged as implicit to the story, but they were far from intentional. There’s just one that I’ve pulled out and made more explicit. It’s something I never thought about consciously myself. It feels to me as if the character wrote it, and then brought it to my attention. It’s about defining moments. The character thinks about defining moments as revealing of who a person really is, and especially of a person’s strength. That doesn’t work for me. I think we always are who we really are, whether we’re eating dinner or facing unimaginable tragedy. But, the whole discussion has made me think of defining moments or turning points. We’re always changing, and always making decisions, but there are some moments you can look back to and think that, more than the other mundane moments of life, they shaped your future in a dramatic way. Whether for good or bad or something in between, these moments changed your life irreparably.

Here are some of the major turning points in my life:

1. My parents’ divorce. It happened when I was five, and, without a doubt, has been the biggest factor in shaping my life. It is so a part of everything I know that I can’t look on it just as an unfortunate incident. Surely, it was tragic and has had long-lasting, detrimental effects on my family, but it’s such an ingrained part of my life that I cannot picture myself without it. It’s part of my life, it’s part of my family, and it’s part of me. Without it, I would have gotten much further in life being naïve. I wouldn’t have known pain and sadness until I was much older. I would have grown up in the same house as my dad. I wouldn’t have to serve as the bridge in my family. I would probably be more confident and less unsure. I wouldn’t have even a taste of what it means to be poor. I would just be realizing now that my parents aren’t perfect. I wouldn’t know my step-dad, step-sister, step-brother, or two of my favorite people in this world, my nieces. I can’t even picture my family unbroken, and I certainly can’t imagine myself as part of it. I don’t know that I would be this introspective, deep-feeling girl without that pain, and though I would probably give it all up to find out, that’s never been an option.

2. My mom’s remarriage. Only about 5 years passed between my parents’ divorce and my mom’s remarriage, but that’s really hard for me to accept, because, in my mind, that time was much longer. I guess the years pass slowly when you’re a kid. It happened that my dad’s second marriage ended about the same time that my mom married my step-dad, and the combination of the two allowed for a lot of healing in my family. Of course, I gained three new family members, and that was huge as well. We moved to a much bigger house, which I have always compared to when Kristy from the Baby-sitter’s Club moved into her step-dad Watson’s mansion after her mom remarried. Of course, my mom did not marry a millionaire from Stoneybrook, and we never lived in a mansion, but it was a step up in lifestyle. Several things came together at this specific time to make my life seem more stable, and I think it helped me to form some of the confidence I still carry with me. Another big thing was that my mom was no longer alone. She and I were just talking the other day about how things might have transpired if that weren’t the case. As the youngest, I don’t know that I could have ever left home if it meant leaving my mom alone. She’s a strong woman, but I still don’t know that I could have done it. My sister’s response was that of course I would have, because (as she implied) I’m selfish. Thanks sis!

3. Taking school seriously. Throughout elementary school, I was a very off and on student. I’d usually start out well, but I never had the discipline or the interest to remain consistent. My friends were all smart and the best of students, but I did not think of myself as smart, and when I did succeed I felt like I was just playing at being a good student—just pretending. I started middle school as the student I’d been in elementary school. After a series of friend shake-ups, I ended up in kind of a desperate situation. For a while I was in with the cool kids, and then one of them, a girl who I’d become pretty close to, ditched me. She later apologized, but, I guess because I’d been spoiled with the best and most loyal of friends in elementary school, I couldn’t forgive her. Suddenly, I didn’t really have any friends, so in class, I clung to this group of, well, dorks. They weren’t really my friends; they were more like competition. I rose to the occasion. I started studying, started caring about how I did, and that first taste of real success was enough to grasp me. This was a turning point, because school has come to define me and completely taken over the direction of my life, but, honestly, I think it very well could have gone another way. If I hadn’t had that shake up with my friends, if I had forgiven that girl, I may never have developed an interest in school. It was like a fork in the road, though I didn’t think of it as such at the time. I would have lost out on things with either choice, and I did lose out by choosing school over friends, but who would I be now without my passion for school?

Sometimes I want to go back to Trigonometry. I took it first when I was a sophomore in high school. In my school district that meant I was one year ahead in math. Sophomores usually took Geometry. Geometry I loved. Anyway, I want to go back to Trigonometry not because I loved it or was good at it, but because I hated it and I sucked at it. Up until Trigonometry, I found that if I put effort into something and did my best, I’d succeed. I think of Trigonometry now as a wall I ran smack into. For me, it shattered that illusion that I could do anything if I just put my mind to it. It’s more symbolic than anything. I mean, I did pass Trigonometry and even went on to pass Pre-Calculus, but I never understood either. I guess I think learning Trigonometry now would erase a failure from my history and give me back that comforting idea that I have the power to succeed at anything. I know it’s ridiculous. I have no need for Trigonometry and no reason to force myself to do something I won’t enjoy, though it does make me laugh to picture myself in a class with fifteen and sixteen year olds. And, I’ve learned the same lesson many times over now. I’m terrible at a lot of things! I know there’s no shame in sticking to the things I’m good at and enjoy, but Trigonometry stands as an embarrassment in my past—it’s the one dragging my high school GPA down, and we all know how important that is.