A New Chapter

I am in celebratory mode (briefly).  I just completed the first level coursework in a program between the Virginia Department of Education to gain my first-year provisional teaching license.  I am, simply, an unemployed high-school English teacher.

Next up?   Find a job.  I am hopeful for an opportunity, but I realize that I will need to add an English as a Second Language (ESL) endorsement to my resume before I get a job.  That's fine.  I expected as much.

I've been teaching through my field placement and stayed on as a volunteer in a Fairfax County, VA high school.  It has been enlightening.  I learned early that I have some natural abilities in the classroom.  Strangely enough, my years in theater helped me out a bit as well.  Stage fright can happen in front of a group of students, too.  Lucky for me, no problems there.

What have I accomplished?  Hard to say.  I've managed to build a rapport with a bunch of teenagers.  This is no small feat, considering the age and cultural differences that exist. 

I can see how the country's educational policies have served our youth.  I cannot say that they have been well-served  Our kids cannot think critically.  Granted, those processes are likely still in the early stages of development at the ages of 14-18, but I see it in communication.  Kids also hate reading.  HATE. IT.  This is a disappointing and devastating revelation.  As a kid who grew up hiding in books and spending summers at the library, I have a hard time understanding the hatred of books.

Vocabularies are shallow, general knowledge is non-existent.  Kids will only read under threat of testing.  Teachers are encouraged to use "alternate texts".   Anything to get the point across other than the printed word.  Reading is in such danger, that becoming a "literacy specialist" is a highly-sought endorsement.  I'll probably do this.  Every teacher is a reading teacher.  This has become a necessity because reading is dying.  It's a dying skill that is becoming less mandatory no time soon.

How rapid is the death of reading?  Accelerating quickly.  There was an article on line a couple of days ago eschewing the necessity of the apostrophe.  Thanks to texting and laziness, people believe that the apostrophe is unnecessary.  I will never believe this.  I believe those who wish to discard it are simply too lazy (or stupid) to get a grasp on its usage.  It is THE SIMPLEST of punctuation marks outside of the period, question mark and exclamation point.  This leads me to my larger distress -- the demotion of intelligence by general society.  Being intelligent now makes you an elitist.  Celebrating intelligence?  You're a show-off, know-it-all.  Big deal.  It's more important to be attractive - who cares if you're smart?  

Never read the comment section after an online article.  You will be the dumber for it, believe me.  It is in these little gemstone pockets of opinion that you can gauge the basic knowledge of those who respond.  I could teach a grammar do's and don'ts course by just using the comment section of an online article.  More concerning than the bad mechanics (!) is the level of anger.  This country is full of poorly-read, ANGRY people.  There is no more agree to disagree.  Differences of opinion lead directly to personal attacks that contain absolutely no exchange of manners or respect.  I really don't know to what I should attribute this anger?  Lack of intelligence?  Lack of self-respect?  How do you teach decency?

I can teach reading.  I can teach grammar.  I can teach literature.  Can I teach decency?  I can try to demonstrate it.  I can encourage debate, but can I teach people how to not be angry?

This post is all over the place, isn't it?  Oh well, if you don't like it, you can go to hell.  

Just kidding.

(Blue and) White Noise

Now that the fury has dulled to a low white noise, I’d like to get this on the record.

1)      I almost feel like the expected “acceptable alumni response” has to be something akin to a religious ceremony.  By that I mean:

Leader: “The children were hurt and we don’t get it.”

Congregation (all): “And you should suffer for the sins of your leaders.”

Leader: “It was too much about football.”

Congregation (all): “PSU should just lay down and die.”

Leader: “We didn’t know, and didn’t think to ask.  We did our best, and donated to RAINN, despite always donating to THON.  We demanded true, total accountability from out Board and our President.”

Congregation (all): “You admit you were complicit in keeping a secret.”

Leader: “We are more than just football.”

Congregation (all): “You still don’t get it.”

2)      To be fair, in real life most people have been extremely respectful to me.  I have a fair-sized PSU banner in my office, and while I am not an uber-fan I certainly haven’t packed stuff away in embarrassment.  The only guy who approached annoying was more inquisitive than malicious, and I can live with that.  The nearly universal response has been supportive of PSU.

3)      I maintain my earlier position, that those complaining the loudest about the PSU scandal not being about the kids are as complicit in the cover-up as those in it.  IF they truly cared this much about the children, we’d be having, demanding!,  IN THE NEWS the tough conversations about why pedophiles can hide easily in society and working towards the answer that severely curtails molestation.  Instead, by wasting their energy pointing fingers and proselytizing, we get to hear for decades about pedophiles that are caught after they molested dozens of children.  Guess what, folks?  We have to have grown-up conversations about sex in our society that involve those under the age of 18; to do any less is to continue to repress those that need to learn the critical lessons about sex, and continue to make it unsafe for kids to speak out without shame.

4)      The NCAA is not only wrong, but hypocritical, foolish, and laughably off-base.  That PSU deserved to be punished is something I as an alum can agree with, but they are not the appropriate body to do something.  The events here arguably hurt the students before the NCAA was involved by tainting their futures, and certainly didn’t give them any competitive advantage.  The very WAACy (win at all costs) system that exists does so because the NCAA exists.  If the hypothesis is true, that PSU’s coaching staff and senior management allowed kids to be raped to not hurt the program, then we should ask why they felt the program would be hurt.   It would be illogical to think that if no repercussions came from reporting, that this would have persisted- so why hide?  NCAA has set up a system that has such a low tolerance for error that they can mandate who can receive money, in an era where universities are using sports as both a direct and indirect revenue stream.  They have evidence- when a local vendor gives kids a free pair of shoes, they are fined, players are suspended, and the program is openly humiliated.  That level of punishment-not-fitting-the-crime causes a near black market style attitude.  When you can joke and say “sure, everybody cheats-“ what exactly are they cheating?  It’s perceived they are cheating a system that is so out of touch with its charter that you’re better to hide than to voluntarily comply.  Or can you point to how all the other programs in the country have used the PSU scandal as a wakeup call, and gone public about how they rely too much on football and not enough on academics?  And I mean all, because it was an attack on the “football culture.”  The football culture will continue apace, with or without PSU.

5)      I personally don’t care about who is going to get hurt.   Of course the fans will, but again as an alum I think it’s time for a margin call on our karma bets.  You PSU fans know who you are.  You sniggered under your breath every time a program got the attention of NCAA.  You had the hubris and arrogance to puff up your chest, to say “it won’t happen to us” when something far, far worse lingered the whole time.  We allowed our honor to be perverted into pride.  We allowed our pride to be desecrated into arrogance.  And we’re allowing our loyalty to be converted to zealotry.  No, we didn’t know anything.  Yes, we would like to think we’d have done something differently had we known.  Ironically, the person who would have us really look at this aspect would have been Joe- he would have compared it to the rule of a Roman emperor, and asked you for an essay on the arrogance of absolute rule, translating the latin.  And the ultimate lesson would be that he would ask us to let him go.  Forget the media, they’ve proven themselves to be willful idiots and ESPN quislings.  If you really believe Joe was right, then let him go.  Time will prove him and it right.

6)      Penn State will not die unless they so heavily penalize the university that they will go bankrupt.  Watch the cosmic dance, though.  It happens so regularly.  First, the shock (check).  Then, the scorn (check).  Then the gossip-turned-RIMO (righteous indignation moral outrage, check).  Then the loss of sponsors (starting).  Then, the actual facts of what happened.  Then, the muted corrections by those that profited from the RIMO and mob mentality.  Then, silence. 

7)      A lesson to be learned here is important- the one that was not followed.  We said “Success with Honor.”  It’s one of the cornerstones of the house we worshiped in- and don’t fool yourself, PSU football (and many, many others) are religious organizations.  We had a dogma, a legacy, a prophet, a rite, holy days of obligation, and many, many avatars.  But regardless of what’s happened- the temple has been destroyed, in a sense- the corner stone is still good.  We are left to follow it.  We are left to enforce it on our culture.  Our honor has been besmirched, but the idea had no man- it was each of us.  We stand together and demand honor.  Our training and skill will bring us success- which by the way of the hundreds of thousands of alumni, only a very small portion actually played football, and it’s not even relevant to the end result.  Your professors give you honor.  Your friends and roommates,  organizations and clubs, greek and independent, all those that shared the experience give you honor.  And now we have something to aim for our success- and that’s passing on a wise lifestyle to others.

MY take on the SANDUSKY scandal which also happens to involve Penn State.

Imagine my surprise to find that my darling brother found the time to post on this beyond-adjective debacle that has unfortunately invaded and colored my world since November 2011.

I agree with him 100%.  I too, an alumna of the University.

I have been watching the proceedings very, very closely since the beginning.  I am hurt, embarrassed, heartbroken, angry.  I am devoted to my beloved Alma Mater.

I cannot watch the news any more.  Not that I could before this, nor could I digest it, because we aren't being given news.  We receive a sideshow meant to divert our attentions; opinions, so we don't have to think.  We are allowing others to think for us.

Sandusky is a monster.  He has received his justice.  But the ax still grinds. Joe Paterno, a dead man whose name is still so big to garner headlines and gather hits on a webpage is being maligned.  This I cannot bear.  Joe despised the media openly.  The media are enjoying their 'last laugh'.  The Governor of PA and the Board of Trustees are doing all that they can to draw the attention away from their missteps and misdeeds by maligning a very good man.  He was an imperfect man, and he would have been the first to say so.

So, the Freeh report is done, the leaks are leaked.  A woman by the name of Vicky Triponey (former VP of Student Affairs at PSU) is now being lauded as a 'whistleblower'.  My guess is that Freeh interviewed her and she took exception that Joe preferred to handle issues with his players himself.  (What coach doesn't?) A little background on Ms. Triponey - she has a history of unhappy students and alumni behind her. 

Surprise, surprise.  She has an ax to grind.  Against Joe Paterno.

Forgive my link.  It appears to be a pro-PSU site.  I use it, because the only people I can trust to continue to call for the truth, come what may, are my fellow alum.  We want the culpable to be removed, like a cancer cut out from the body.  If it comes out that JoePa covered up anything, we want to know.  And if it's true we will be heartbroken and disappointed more than words.

Mark my words, this will be a centerpiece of the not-yet-released-so-supposedly-still-very-private Freeh report.  The leaks involve this very topic.

None of the focus is where it should be.  The administration at Penn State made a huge error (understatement) and continues to knee-jerk and spin and spend millions to put a fancier spin on the hemorrhaging wound.

I still can't think rationally, or logically express myself on the matter because the bleeding is too close to home.  I am not that Penn State.  Penn State IS NOT that Penn State. We are THON, Lift-for-Life, real student-athletes, the largest dues-paying Alumni Association in the world. We are people who donate our money, time and blood (literally) to try and make the world better however we can.  We are people who want justice, want our dignity back, want the lies to end, want the torches and pitchforks to go away.

But for all those who continue to scream loudly on the matter, I ask that you review the facts instead of digesting what you are spoon-fed by the media.  KNOW what you are screaming about.  Us alum?  We don't really know what you're screaming about, because we're waiting for the facts to come in.  We'll be waiting beyond the Freeh report...with his corporate ties to the PSU Board of Trustees, I guarantee the findings are not balanced or uncompromised.  We may never get the facts.

As for me, I'm going to try to get on with my life.  I've been silently judged by people I know and don't know because I made a decision 20 years ago to go to Penn State.  I wouldn't wish this horror on my worst enemy (maybe I would - neutral evil, Dan).

My take on PSU and the Scandal

OK, I think I've got the jist of this. This is a dark topic, so,  no ray of sunlight here.

First, full disclosure: I'm an alumnus of Penn State.  I've been to close to 100 games, travelled all over the country.  I also spent the grand majority of four years at University Park doing many things completely unrelated to football- beyond sharing a university affiliation.  That said...

I'm not defending the university.  The university will and must suffer for the events that transpired.  I'm a hypocrite and a coward... but then so are you.

The first issue here is always- and always should be- the alleged victims.  No university charter in the U.S., and I'll project in the world, allows for the sexual assault of children by former employees, or for that matter current employees.  When something was known, it should have been treated with seriousness.  From the accounts that we have in the public domain, several public institutions including the university failed to take appropriate action.  This is bad enough, but then when confronted with information the lead representatives of the university went silent, fired some people, then went silent again, before they started begging.  In today's day and age, that's just suicidal.  They may have been private citizens, but they work for a public institution that receives a (small) portion of operating revenue from the state.  They failed to represent themselves to the taxpayers, and those taxpayers have a right to demand accountability.

But was the first priority the victims?  For all parties, the answer is no.  ALL parties.

The State's Attorney did not put the children first.  The State's Attorney had this grand jury testimony for 10 months and could have easily gone public then.  She could have made the grand jury a spectacle, and honestly there is no media outlet that wouldn't have seized on this story the moment it broke.  Instead, the facts remain that they waited until a pivotal football moment had passed and then, on a Saturday when the football team wasn't playing, they broke the story.  It is difficult to conjure a reason for that precise set of events beyond posturing, aligning the cameras just right so that they look serious about crime.  "Pay attention to me, I'm an attention whore that needs to shine for my next political office."  If it was so serious, why not slap the warrant on Sandusky the day the indictment was received?  No, we waited, because closure for the children comes second to a goddamn photo-op.

The media did not put the children first.  Arguably, the media are second only to Sandusky in being creepy and disgusting.  Saying that they failed to do their job is an understatement, because they willfully neglected to do their jobs and have potentially committed libel and slander en masse.  The media reported the basic news, added inappropriate and biased adjectives intended to enflame the readership, then proceeded- and continue to even today- take a sanctimonius high horse about how it's all about the football team, and not about the students.  Stuart Scott's now (in)famous for the "Don't you get it?" line for the post-Paterno firing riot.  Well, considering the media is in fact the media, they had every ounce of power to make the story about the victims.  They still do.  And they do not- they abdicate the position because they can't.  The victims have to remain anonymous by law.  Even still, the media could have run story after story about child abuse, brought prominent sociologists to explain the phenomenon of child abuse and why it's so hard to find.  The media didn't do that.  No, they willfully and purposefully focused on the alleged criminal and the system for which he was previously employed, then tut-tutted about the affiliation and made members of the university guilty by association, potentially committing libel and slander.  To Mr. Scott- yeah, I get it.  Completely.  You want to be Keith Olbermann, but you don't have the chops and you're old news.  Come back and tell me how you and your leaders in sports entertainment handle the Syracuse affair when that's all clear- haven't heard about that in a while.

The non-affiliated public did not put the victims first.  No, actually, many of them that were vocal parroted the spoon fed drivel of the media, then sat at home and barked about how big a badass they are on the internet and how they would have kicked Sandusky's ass, and about how "everyone knew."  Since you obese mouthbreathing morons know everything, you certainly know that the reason many high-profile sex offenders have so many victims is because they are masters at keeping their offenses secret.  Obviously you know that, because the number of people picked off the street for child molestation is really, really low.  On top of that, a very high proportion of child sex abuse victims are related to the abuser.  You just choose to ignore all these facts, and the fact that you may very well have had a sex abuse victim in your family, because you totally would do something about that.  No, you chose the path of least resistance to express your anger- and where did it go?  At the alleged criminal!  Where were your donations to child abuse charities?  What did you do to help the victims?  Speak on their behalf?  Please!  If you actually got off your ass and went to the university to protest, you didn't even protest for the kids- you protested against the coach, the assistant, the football team, and the university.  I was there, I read the signs.  But the real icing to this was "how everyone knew."  If this were politics you'd be fitted with a tinfoil hat and given a free corkboard to tack all the articles to outline your conspiracy.  And if everyone did know?  They need to go down, which I've not disagreed with from the beginning.  But spare me the armchair social conscious drivel.  Your faux chest pounding likely supports a culture that allows child sex abuse to flourish.

The affiliated public did not put the victims first.  No, it's very clear that the affiliated public can't seem to let go.  It's all about Joe.  They had to be shocked into giving to the charities- after the firings, the riot, and the news- and even then (and to this day) it's about how it was wrong to fire Joe.  Even if I agree that it was wrong it won't bring him back, nor will it change the fact that there were children vicitmized and that there's a giant festering maw of filth where your university leadership claims to be because the leadership chose to protect themselves.  The default position was to rally around the team and the Great Experiment, and treat the victims as if it were another THON this year.  At least the affiliated public stepped up, tried to make things right- but the victim's weren't first and still aren't.

Joe didn't put the victims first.  His mind was always about the university and the team.  I have to wonder why no one has taken the plausable angle that Joe didn't take action because the charge, the statements were so incredible that they defied belief.  What would you do if a high school student said to you "I don't know, but I think I just saw your best friend molesting a neighbor's kid.  Just saying..." That's pretty much how the grand jury testimony read.  Don't kid yourself that you would have stood up and gorilla raged and beaten the crap out of Sandusky, or called the police, or anything like that.  You would have had the same shock and disbelief he did, and then you would have defaulted to your most programmed behavior.  But to ask an 80+ year old man to drop everything and rage against a lifelong friend on behalf of kids he may only have met in passing?  Kiss my ass.  You wouldn't do it now, why would he?

The team didn't put the victims first.  But of all the people here, they had the hardest choice of all.  Do they stand up for a moral justice and quit a team, lose a scholarship, and leave the program and ultimately the university because someone that they may have met once or twice molested children before they arrived at the university?  Or do they stay, endure the endless stream of media feces, finish the job they committed to like goddamn men, and then assess their options?  I know for damn sure none of the spineless cowards that talk trash, whether in the media or regurgitating the media, would have taken the principled stand.  Talk about the kids?  After the way the media treated the students and the university, do you blame them for keeping their mouths shut?  I will not venerate the team, but I will respect them. 

The university most definitely didn't put the children first, or second, or third.  No, what became evident after bowing to public opinion was that they used the opportunity to bolster their own careers.  One Board of Trustee member was made Athletic Director, another acting University President.  They took action without consulting the faculty senate, and may have broken equal opportunity and labor laws by placing themselves in positions of power.  Then they threw anyone affiliated with the scandal under the bus.  Politically, it was the right thing to do- but none of the people involved save two were accused of crimes.  The university then comes out with the Board's puppet and goes to tell alumni that "it's ok, we're serious about helping kids, we're gonna do all this stuff with the university for kids."  Reality check?  No one believes you, and your credibility is shot until your role is this scandal is investigated and vetted in the public circle.  Might have believed this was about the kids... if you hadn't laywered up and gone silent before acting like a corporation.

And the Judicial System didn't put the children first.  They didn't because they can't.  They received enough evidence to  convince a grand jury to go to trial.  But in our hyperventilating, we seem to have forgotten some key elements about law and court.  For instance, the evidence in a grand jury trial is not challenged by defense.  It may be incomplete, out of context, or outright wrong... or worse, it may have been obtained illegally or denied a citizen his constitutional rights.  But the grand jury wouldn't ever know that.  The grand jury hearing is conducted by at State's Attorney in order to get maximum bang for the buck- so it's scripted to sound as bad as possible.  But somewhere in this system, an accused person still has the right to due process.  They still have the right to a trial by a jury of their peers, and they still have the right to challenge the evidence.  And I still believe in that heavily flawed system, and it would not be outside of the realm of possibility that the police or the AG made a basic blunder so big that Sandusky would walk.   "If the glove don't fit..."

It is so easy to watch the gullible in our society be pulled around by the nose, told by the media with the barking dog AG that "he is bad" and how anyone that was remotely affiliated with them "doesn't get it," and there's a great nodding of heads around the country.  You really, really want to help the victims?  Destigmatize sex.  Seriously, foster open discussions about sex, make it so that you understand that sex is not just for the young and beautiful.  All humans have the potential for a sex drive, and if that is abused, insulted, and repressed, it can manifest in ways that are damaging to society.  Allow kids to hear open, honest discussions about why people want to have sex- not to be pornographic, but to understand that it's one aspect of humanity.  Stop writing laws that parse sexuality into age groups and approach statutory rape with common sense.  Accept the fact that sexuality turns on biologically at puberty, not at 18 like a light switch.  Most importantly, shine a giant light into every corner of the world where a sexual predator of children would prey.

Make sure the victims are taken care of, then rip out the culture of secrecy at the university.  You don't need to kill the football team to do it, either.  Just start with those responsible... those at the top.  But spare me the 'holier than thou' routine, because you're likely a hypocrite and a coward... just like the rest of us.

Hello everyone,

I will be here on my own for a while.  My fellow blogger is up to his ridiculously happy-exhausted eyeballs in fatherhood and kind of has very little spare time these days.   He is movin' on up in the world and has a sooooper cute kid.  Since I'm his aunt, I know this for sure and can say it without prejudice or bias.

His life has take a turn for the better; mine for the worse.  I have kind of lost my job because of a physical impediment and a corporate loophole.  I will be having a very tricky surgery in less than a month and have to worry about getting another job ASAP. 

I wanted to take the Praxis and apply for grad school by November 1, but it's looking like March 1.  This will change my career completely.  I want to become a teacher.  In school, the thought of it frightened me like nothing else.  I have since tutored and taught and thought that now, in this world where teachers are becoming a dwindling resource, maybe it's something I should look into.  I am looking into English as a Second Language, which in VA is the #4 needed teacher on the list.  It is also a subject that people take because they want to, they need to, which avoids the whole "what's the point" argument.

The downside to all of this is that it will take about 2 years to complete a master's degree, which I will need.  Everything takes so much time.  I'm not a fan of losing my own time.  Apparently, it's the only way there is.

Rebellion Is For Everyone

I read a series of books about what it would be like if Revelations actually happened as written.  If you cut out all the preachy crap, it was a pretty vivid description of the end times.  It'd make a good 85 minute flick.

After reading the previous post, I'll add my take on the subject.  See, rebellion is something that I and my sister have been around alot by the choices we've made.  You can't be involved in the arts and NOT see this stuff.  Like I said, I have geeky friends who grow up and like stuff like tattoos and odd piercings and shaved/dyed hair.  Whatever.  It was for them.

It's not me.  For a number of key reasons, it is not now nor never will be me.  But that's me and only me.  If you want it, go nuts.  It's your money.

I chose to rebel in plain sight.  I like dressing to fit in, blend in. What's going on in my head is far more rebellious an existence than any outward showing.  I sometimes speak my unfiltered mind, take people to places I've only imagined.  That place is the razor's edge of creativity and insanity.

The view's okay, but the drinks suck.

Maybe it's because I did something that many people didn't approve of at such an early age, or maybe it's because it's more mainstream.  Maybe no one really cares.  But I'm so used to the doing something that disappoints feeling that I now own the action- I embrace it.  No one ever 'approved' of anything I did except school and work.  It's not that they didn't -actually- approve, they just never communicated that sentiment.  I know I didn't invest myself in hobbies and activities where the end result was someone else's approval.  When in music, I was just happy if I made it through the pieces and I hadn't screwed up.

Only my parents ever said "wow, nice report card."  College drove that home- I was only a number, found on a dot matrix printed sheet after every test.  No one swooped in to help, no one at school or anywhere other than family cared if I passed or failed.  No one other than family cared if I got my Ph.D, or was unemployed, or had to work 70 hours a week...

Youth may be about rebellion, but it is inelegant.  Crude.  Arguing for the sake of argument, and not for a real intelligent reason.  The reasons for rebellion are rarely considered, but that's the point.  The reason people didn't get tattoos are numerous, but do those still apply?  We expect the 20, 30 year old to sky dive.  We shun the 40 and 50 year old, because they're supposed to be serious and have families.  We celebrate the 60, 70 year old- "oh, they're so "alive!"  But what's the difference?  You can take rebellious actions at any age.

Ever notice that we're only really truly concerned when people rebel for others, as opposed to for themselves?

But whatever.  Point is that rebellion is very much a normal part of life.  I would offer that you start to die- really die- when you have stopped rebelling in any capacity.  And if you never rebelled, I would offer that you never truly lived.

But please don't call it body art.  That's so inane and vapid a description that you should swallow a bullet.  Most people that get such are incapable of their own creativity or expression and they pay to advertise someone else's.  I know my sister has more creative power in her pinky than just about anyone- but the sullen goth, emo, metalhead, cam/scenewhore, fanboi/grrl, or other trendy wastes of DNA just don't, and they realize their entire existence will be summed up by some bored dude in a rural tattoo parlor.  Sad.

Rebellion Is For Grownups

Today was revelation day. That's revelation with the lowercase 'r' because otherwise we'd be dealing with biblical-type stuff - if you believe that.

I've done some very odd things in the last year and some. I wouldn't assign these actions to the mid-life crisis category although I can see they fit in that category as well. Shortly after my 40th birthday, I got a tattoo - during my first trip to Vegas. (that's 2 - tattoo and Vegas).

Yesterday, after giving it years of thought under the "Oh my god, I would NEVER do that category", I merely got up during lunch and drove myself to the tattoo and piercing parlor and had my left nostril pierced with a tiny stud and my navel pierced with a not-so-tiny stud. I really haven't told anyone. I guess the cat's out of the bag now. (that's 2 more.)

Non sequitur - neither one hurt more than having blood drawn. To me. I realize now that I am extremely pain tolerant. I will address that another day.

I spent the majority of my life looking at the people who did those things as reckless, dangerous, scary, rebellious...all of the things I had heard from my parents and authority figures all my life. The society I grew up in preached things like that were scandalous. Nice girls didn't do any of those things. And so, that was my perception as well. Deep down inside I found the forbidden intriguing but I pushed it quickly out of my head, knowing that I would be judged by people. Judged negatively. My parents would be horrified, disapproving. I was worried what people who didn't even know me would think of me. Deeply worried.

I know that my parents (my mother) will probably roll their eyes over the piercings and STILL I get nervous.

I grew up living in fear of disappointing my parents; disappointing authority figures, disappointing everyone really. It's one of my biggest faults. Cliche but true; if you spend all your time trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And you certainly end up not pleasing yourself.

Tattoos and piercings are more common now thanks to celebrities and athletes who have numbed the shock value by making them mainstream. I think professional athletes are practically required to have multiples of each. Also, a generation of young, more brazen and cavalier people have made it commonplace. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone I know in their 20's and teens who doesn't have one or the other.

Youth is all about rebellion. The most rebellious I was as a teen and in my 20's was arguing with my parents. I never even considered what I thought about anything. I accepted my parents' point of view as gospel and went on my merry way. I stayed that way until my early 30's.

Yeah, I get it, I'm a real late bloomer. But I have a tattoo and am considering another. I have multiple piercings in my ears - de rigueur for girls who were in their teens during the '80's. And now the tiny stud in my left nostril and the somewhat larger cubic zirconia stud in my navel join them. Maybe someday I'll regret it. Right now, I love it.

The lifelong church lady voices in the back of my head still cluck their tongues and try to make me feel guilty. But I wanted it and I did it.

Tattoos and piercings are not a big deal anymore to anyone. That isn't the point. It doesn't make me cool or edgy, because everyone does it. Yeah, strippers have tattoos and piercings; but I also know lawyers and doctors that do, too.

As painful as it is to admit, by the time someone my age gets around to doing something daring, it stopped being daring years before.

The triumph to me was that it was my decision and if you don't like it; I don't care.

Only took me 41 years to say that and really mean it.