Troglodyte

I'm up and filled with thoughts. I've got a bit of coffee and the beginnings of my first cigarette of the day, too. I am unshowered and haven't brushed my hair. I don't think I stink, but in any case I have scented candles lit, BB is asleep, the fans and air conditioners are running, and Ziggy and Sammy are doing what they do somewhere else in the house.

To the trained mind, a simple description like the one above can say volumes. To an untrained mind, it can also say volumes. A picture is created for both. I have to believe that the trained mind will see more in their picture than the untrained mind. I have to believe this because this is my experience.

For example:

When I was in college, the Head of the Theatre Department had his Masters in Playwriting, yet no Playwriting course was offered. I nagged him for what seems like two years until he offered one.

He looked at me one day and told me that if I could guarantee that ten people would take it that he'd teach it. I told him that more students than that had expressed interest. The first day of class there were five students in class, and he said that he knew it would be like that. I felt bad. At the same time, I was happy, though. I wanted to be taught Playwriting by the Head of the Theatre Department.

Our first assignment was to write a personal story without dialogue to be read in class by the next class. At our next class, the students read their stories. There was a funny one, a transformational one, a heartbreaking one and then there was mine. Mine was shocking.

I wrote the story of my former college roommate, Lynn, who survived a rape attack. I described walking down the street to our apartment at night, being grabbed and pulled through the bushes into a secluded gravel parking lot. I described getting scraped and bruised from being dragged across the gravel and slapped around. I wrote it in the first person.

When I stopped reading my story, the class was silent until Shannon told me that she was so sorry. The guys, including Steve, our illustrious instructor, quickly chimed in emphatically. They were so emphatic with their support and sympathy that I felt compelled to calm them. I was delighted with the shocked response having gained the reaction that I sought, but I had to tell them that it had happened to my roommate and not me. I also thought that they should know the rest of the story since I hadn't told the heroic ending part.

They got so pissed as soon as I uttered the words, "It didn't happen to me ...." Their reaction was not exactly what I was expecting, yet, I knew as soon as I decided to write Lynn's story using the first person that I was fucking around with the assignment. We were to write a personal story from our own life. I did.

Lynn told me the story while we waited for the police to show up. I saw her cuts and bruises, and agreed with her that we shouldn't clean them up before the police arrived.

Lynn became one of my heroines that day because at 4'11", she thwarted the attack based on her training as a Social Work major; her ability to listen and use every ounce of knowledge that she had to accomplish her goal. Lynn reminded me of my Great-Grandma in stature and demeanor with a hippie twist. She had strawberry blond hair and wore glasses. She was tiny physically, but larger than life spiritually and emotionally because she was level-headed and insightful. She fluctuated between leading and following. She was funny and sincere. She was smart and strong. She had confidence.

It took her three hours of listening and talking to escape her attacker, but there she was in our apartment. She was safe. The attack happened one block from our apartment, so not only were our doors locked, but we made sure the neighbors had their doors locked. Lynn had told the downstairs neighbors on her way up to her home. I told the upstairs neighbors while she got something from her bedroom. She spent three hours saving herself; and then, took on the responsibility of protecting others.

At the time of the attack, Madison was the top school in two distinct areas: partying and rape. Madison also ranked in the top five colleges in almost every discipline they offered. Our sports teams sucked, and games were only an excuse to party.

All the women on campus knew just about every safety tip and self defense tactic whether they could put them in practice or not. On my part, I wore tennis shoes, varied my route and times of departure and arrival, carried keys between my fingers, and zig-zagged across streets to avoid bushes and dark spots. It was a daily recon mission. I was young, in shape, fast, and alert. I even doubled back and slipped into stores if I saw someone following me which was a weekly occurrence. We all had lives to lead and couldn't be stopped by fear, or at least the members of my household couldn't be stopped by fear.

One of my roommates was raped twice in the Student Union in a closet by the same man. She refused to report the rape no matter how much we tried to get her to report it, so when Lynn arrived home and told me to call the police; we talked about our other roommate, too. We weren't just mad. We were sympathetic, too.

Lynn and I probably talked for about twenty minutes. Her experience and those moments together are cemented in my memory. My story was personal.

After explaining all of that to my classmates and instructor, everybody calmed down. We started analyzing the writing just like we had done with each of the other stories. We were given our next assignment.

The assignment was to write a description of an interior or exterior setting that we observed. In other words, "Go sit somewhere and write about what you see and put yourself in the setting." We were to write it in the third person.

The next class, Steve sternly picked me to go first. Shannon and "the guys" were noticeably uncomfortable and scared as I began to read my description.

"It is a living room. On the north wall are two doors with a stereo system on a table against the wall between them. On top of one of the speakers is an album propped up against the wall behind; so that, the picture of Boy George can been seen through the clear plastic cover. The album has never been played...," I continued to describe all the stuff around me and ended with, "A mother sits on the sofa writing surrounded by clothes that need to be folded. She has created a comfortable nook to curl up in or stretch out from. The clothes are doing double duty. They are cushions for her as she writes. She adjusts them to suit her needs. She leans back and piles more clothes behind her shoulders. She stuffs some clothes under her legs. The clothes consist of her clothes and her children's' clothes. Whatever type of clothing is closest and available is used to support her body while she writes her Playwriting assignment on a pad of paper with a pencil."

During the analyzation, Shannon said that my surroundings were cluttered. One of the guys was confused and delighted about the Boy George album. It was Steve who did it, though. I knew he would. He did it through questions to the class and his comments after everyone else had made their comments.

The question was, "What does this tell you about the person?"

The class responded with a variety of answers that included that the mother should clean her house, but the one that stuck was Steve's final response, "Yes, it's cluttered with many things and needs to be cleaned; but the part that really interests me is the last part, 'A mother sits...'. She is sitting on a pile of clothes writing her school assignment. She isn't folding the clothes. There is no mention of her children other than to say 'A mother'. WE know that she has two young children, but to someone else who doesn't know her personally; what does this do? What kind of response does this setting illicit from the audience?"

The class responded with hypotheticals about what an audience might think upon seeing the scene. Most were pretty dismal. I listened to my fellow students who were at least ten years my junior and single with no children and sank. This is why I didn't want to write about my life. Judgement and ignorance always reared their ugly heads and made me feel terrible.

I guess besides the questions and the responses, Steve saved me that day with his defense of my lifestyle when he said, "Now WE know that she has two small children and in class with us, and your responses are true for an audience who doesn't know her as far as you have imagined, but if I was an audience member who didn't know the mother in this setting other than to have an idea of what the play might be about I'd notice that she's writing by hand and not typing at a desk, for instance. I'd notice the types of clothes on the couch and wonder where the children are. I'd be curious to see what happens next, and that is the key. Can the playwright capture the audience from the moment the lights go up? This is the question you need to ask yourselves as you write. Good job. I'm curious. OK, Shannon. Your turn."

Steve's words weren't judgmental. He delivered them in a kind, professional way through his voice and body language. He swayed the class. He put me back together during one of my most vulnerable moments and told me that I had a safe place to express myself. He did this through action and deed. I smiled that day and felt safe.

It wouldn't always be that way in Playwriting class with Steve. Steve and I went to war during the semester. We had a bit of a history of public war since the first miscommunication and muck up of that event. I also frustrated him with some of my writing assignments to the point where he lamented that not all playwrights wrote plays based on their own lives. I was so frustrated and angry at that comment, too. Here he'd gotten me to open up, and now he couldn't handle it? Ah shit. Open, in class fighting ended through a writing assignment that I approached as my final farewell to writings based on my life.

We were to write a letter from a character. I wrote a very angry letter and signed it "Troglodyte Woman" in response to his constant harping about why we were in college when any troglodyte could get a job doing stagehand work. He's go on and on sometimes, and I'd had enough. In my letter, I wrote that if I was going to be a stagehand, I'd be a trained, professional stagehand that would rise to other professions using what I had learned through my stagehand experience and education. I also wrote that I believed that education was a way out of a situation; and that, hard work was a great way to stay in shape. I admonished arrogance and shortsightedness. Everyone in the room knew that the letter was directed primarily at Steve, but the comments about arrogance hit home with some of them as they were meant to. Only the sound of my voice reading my angry words filled the room. My classmates turned to stone with only their eyes popping and their mouths hanging open. Steve listened, looked down and clenched his jaw; he was pissed. I used his own word against him, and there was no discussion afterwards.

It sucks to have your own words used against you. I know. I have children and have made my share of mistakes with them and with many others.

I've learned to keep my mouth shut (at least in public and with people I don't trust)until I can observe, ask questions, and keep my heart and mind open throughout it all. The not knowing is a bitch, so if given the opportunity to ask questions; I ask as many as the person will tolerate while listening and observing how they respond. I am curious. I became a journalist.

When I am not afforded the opportunity to find an answer for myself, I rely on others who are able to find the answers that I seek. I process what I read or hear while still keeping an open heart and mind knowing that the information is coming through a filter that I must then process. It's exhausting and enlightening all at the same time. It is hard work that can sometimes be infiltrated with fun and laughter. Until very recently, at times, this approach has been heartbreaking and dangerous. I've had another learning leap, so now things are much better than at other times in my life.

Don't get me wrong. I'm going through one of the most sucky experiences of my life as I type, but I'm older and wiser and more determined than ever to handle everything with grace, ethical fortitude, and to stick to my goal of continuing to be able to look myself in the mirror. I'm getting to know myself and accepting the answers that I find.

One thing I know is that I have put in the effort and time to train my mind in a particular discipline or two or three. My mind is untrained in say, baseball, because I have very little interest in nurturing my baseball education any farther than to recognize that many people really get into it; and that, I'm happy for them.

People who take joy in training their minds can still disagree fervently. For this reason, I am happy and proud to have chosen communication as one of the areas that I am trained in. The academic basis of my communication training is my theatre training and training in the arts in general of which writing is one.

I am still in training in all areas of life. I've been told that this is the case until we die. With this in mind, I've decided that continued education is a very good thing that I choose to enjoy. Learning is fascinating whether it is in school or on the streets or in a home. I've been very lucky to have had a wealth of training in my life from some of the best teachers I can imagine who fall into all categories of life. I have also learned while teaching others. Please understand that when I use the word, teachers, I mean every creature, thing, event, and so on.

There are so many philosophies about teaching and learning. My favorite philosophy was taught through example and is primarily non-verbal. It has been repeated several times in my life in the classroom, out in the streets, and in the home. It has also been a part of my professional life. I suppose the net-net is that everything in life provides an opportunity for learning and becoming a better person. I hang on to that one tightly and want to passionately pass it on. It's one of my top three survival skills.

I believe that if we continues to train our minds that we will get more out of our lives. I also believe that training our minds should be joined with training our hearts and bodies. The training should be taken on in a spirit of sincere and compassionate honesty fortifying us; so that, we can accept the harsh realities and gentle realizations. This is a basic belief structure, and not in the least unique or original. I just happen to have found it to be true for me and my life because of the many experiences that I have had. It is just one more thing that I know about myself like knowing that my three favorite movies are; "Mary Poppins", "Home for the Holidays", and "The Insider." I also know that my three favorite words are; love, insipid, and troglodyte.