I Meet the Beatles
Some of this appeared in 2006, in case you think you might be losing your mind. Then again, maybe you are. I’m no diagnostician.
===
Mamacita says: Most of you are too young to remember when the Beatles first appeared on the charts in the U.S. I was in grade school, but I remember. My parents watched Ed Sullivan, and I remember them wondering who these Beatles were, and why Ed Sullivan would have them on his erreally big shew.
This might have been the first time I knew of something before my parents did. The kids on the playground had been talking about the Beatles and I was intrigued. The birthday party I went to featured Beatles songs, individually played on 45’s. (Look it up, young ones.) The birthday girl got a lot of Beatles paraphernalia. (No, not THAT kind.) And when their pictures began to appear all over the place, and my parents began their “long hair, terrible clothes, etc” shpiels, they became even more intriguing. I started
saving my money – my big quarter-a-week. Every time I got a dime, I put it in the Dime Kitty – free to all children courtesy your local bank – and the kitty grew more and more complete, and when it was full, I took it to Kresge’s and bought. . . . . a record album. You know, the BIG one.
I bought “Meet The Beatles.” It was the first record I ever bought with my own money.
I brought it home, took it out, placed it on my little red metal record player, the one Santa brought me when I was about five; you know, the one that folded up into an easy-to-carry-from-room-to-room little suitcase, sat back, and listened. It was the first time anything besides “The Andy Panda Polka” and the like had ever been experienced by that little red 
record player.
By the time Ed Sullivan introduced The Beatles, I knew all the songs on that album by heart. When the band started to play, I sang right along. My parents honestly did not know what to think about that. I remember how they looked at each other, and at me. Maybe they, too, sensed that they were losing part of me to. . . something.
When I look back at how the Beatles appeared back then, it’s funny to think that old people considered them long-haired and sloppy. Their hair was tidy, and they wore SUITS, for pete’s sake.
When the camera panned on John, the caption below read “Sorry, girls, he’s married.” The audience full of teens shrieked and screamed throughout the entire set.
As I watched the Beatles perform, and listened to that album, thoughts were popping up in me that had never popped up before.
I wanted to wear a bra*. I wanted to learn to play the guitar. I wanted different hair, and different clothes. My bike looked childish. I lost interest in comic books. Bazooka bubble gum lost its charm. My cigar box almost full of Bazooka Joe comics gathered dust. I put my skate key in a drawer.
All I wanted to do was listen to that album, sing along in my head, and wait for the next unfamiliar thought to start.
It was the end of an era for me, and the beginning of another.
*not a stretchy plain white beginner one, either.
The Monsters Are Real. They Are Good For Us. They Can Be Overcome.
Mamacita says: Once upon a time there was a girl who loved to write. She spent the first few years of elementary school standing silently beside the teachers’ desks, mutely holding out sheet after sheet of paper on which she had expressed what was in her head and heart and asked only that these grown-ups-who-knew-everything might pore over her pourings, look at her, and smile. That was all the girl asked for – a smile. Maybe a nod. Words would have been almost too much to bear, be they positive or otherwise, but when that random word did appear, the girl turned into a lighthouse.
In middle school, this same girl still wrote, but seldom let anyone see because middle school was largely populated with monsters whose power was “taunting” everyone who was “different,” and the girl knew, and had known for a long time, that if she was anything at all, she was certainly “different.”
If the other students’ power was “taunting,” the girl’s power was that she didn’t really care what they thought. Outwardly, the girl looked pretty much like everyone else who walked those halls, but on the inside, the girl knew exactly what she was, and this made her smile inwardly a lot. A whole lot.
In high school, the girl met her match with a teacher who taught writing but laid down rules that thwarted every impulse, idea, inspiration, technique, and expression the girl had. Oh, she tried in that class; she tried harder than anyone else in the class, but all she got in return were her ideas slashed to pieces and bleeding red even into the margins. That she knew more about basic grammar than this teacher only seemed to make him dislike her more.
The thing was, the girl saw through this teacher and knew he was wrong, and pompous, and power-hungry, and ignorant, but her power was not caring about what other students said or did, not how to deal with an adult who was wrong, and she was literally cornered and cowering whenever she entered that classroom she had so looked forward to until she learned, on Day One, that the teacher knew everything about rules that didn’t actually exist and nothing about writing.
The girl shut herself down for self preservation purposes and devoted herself to shelling out straightforward essays about the teacher’s topics, using the small words he preferred and very little figurative language. Contrary to what you might think about the very practical and useful ability to write short, factual essays containing small words, this boxing in of the girl came pretty close to killing something wonderful that was trying to flourish inside her.
In college, on Day One of sophomore writing, which she took her freshman year because somebody saw something in her, a professor told her to, and I quote, “…screw everything you’ve ever been told about writing and just let it flow out of you.” Something heavy and cumbersome fell off the girl, something so heavy the girl thought it should have clunked loudly when it landed. When she walked out of the room that first day, she left whatever it was behind and never looked back at it.
She aced that writing course. She aced the next one, too. She aced them all. She became an stickler for common sense rules of grammar and an absolute spelling nazi, because she knew these things made sure she was saying what she meant to be saying.
And she to this day despises the high school teacher who tried to shut her in a box, and she adores the college professor who set her free.
And she still does. Both of those things.
And she still writes every day, mutely holding out her head and heart to the blogging public, hoping someone will pore over her pourings and tell her she matters.
The inferior teacher and the superior teacher are both her main examples, even today. One, to remind her constantly of what she must never do or be, and the other to remind her of what she herself hopes to do and be. She used to have nightmares about the bad teacher, but she thinks now that he was actually good for her. Real-life monsters CAN be overcome. That’s a lesson we must all learn.
The college professor was Indiana University’s Dr. Edward Jenkinson. He is the girl’s writing and general language mentor and idol. The high school teacher she won’t identify. Why? Because she is a classy chick.
How is she doing, teachers?
Goody Two Shoes I’m Definitely Not
Mamacita says: I am basically a kind person. I would lie down in the road if I thought that would help some people. I work overtime to help students. I still do my children’s laundry, and I feed them whenever they visit. I would do the same for you. If ever they (or their friends) (or you) need a helping hand, I’ve got one at the end of each arm. I have worked really hard all my life. The thing is, I think everyone should work hard. All their lives. I think everyone should look out for everyone else. I think everyone should use their own hands to support themselves and help others. I have little patience with lazy people, or people who choose not to work. If you need me, all you have to do is ask. I’ll bring you food. I’ll do your laundry. I’ll shingle your roof. (Yes, I can do that!) But if you’re just lying around waiting to be waited on, or feel in any way, shape, or form that the world owes you a living, I will tell you exactly what I think of you.
That being said.
Look, I’m no Goody Two Shoes. I can be really snarky. Nobody can out-horrify me in Cards Against Humanity. I have little patience with adults who consistently make poor decisions, but I also think some people get far more sympathy than they deserve.
Here’s the thing. I am feeling a little bit guilty because I can’t seem to conjure up much sympathy for all these celebrity addicts who seem to be dropping like flies – by their own hands..
When I have students who can’t go fifteen minutes without dashing out to the parking lot for a smoke, and when I have coworkers who NEED a break every half hour or even sooner because they NEED a break. . . well, I can’t help but wonder where the “fair” factor is. Those who work through other people’s frequent breaks are the good students and good workers and the people I would trust with important things. Those who allow their desire for a ______(insert drug of choice here) to interfere with their responsibilities make me kind of, well, disgusted.
Hoarders. Methies. Smokers. Drunks. Hormonal wonders. Life is full of so many choices; why do so many people take the gutter route? And please don’t lecture me about poverty and illness. So many people pick themselves up and
rise up out of the ashes of other people’s messes and make a success of their own lives; why can’t more people? So they might have to walk eight miles uphill to get an education – do it! So they’re madly in love and their hormones are nuts and that guy with the good job at Taco Bell is getting more and more insistent that “if you really love me. . . .” hey. To do it or not to do it is a choice, too.
Honestly, people with no self control puzzle me. I just don’t get it. Horndogs, gluttons, people who feel they have a right to stink up a building because they WANT to, people who are better drivers after a couple of beers. . . What the hell, people?
“I can’t help it” is the feeblest excuse in the world. Yes, you CAN help it. You can choose not to. It’s your CHOICE. Nobody is forcing you. Whether you do it or not is entirely up to YOU.
If you are so weak that even knowing what might happen if you continue to choose the nutjob path, you still choose it, you are committing suicide and I think you know it.
“But I can’t help it.” “I can’t control myself.”
Why not. Others can.
“I don’t think I can give up the huge pile of my own human shit on the bathroom floor or the 4,000 almost-empty bottles of shampoo in the 
shed. As long as there’s a quarter inch of liquid in each bottle, it would be wasteful to discard them. Besides, I NEED them.”
No, you don’t. There is something horribly wrong with you.
You are committing slow suicide with your extremely wrong choices. This or that. And you choose that. And you are simultaneously choosing your personal preferences over everything and everyone else in your life. You are harming the innocent because you are completely absorbed in yourself.
People make these awful inhuman choices all the time. Boyfriends over children. Alcohol over relationships. Nicotine over cleanliness. Big pile of bloody underpants in the kitchen sink over normalcy. Girlfriend over family. Meth over decency.
All because these choices make a person feel, personally, better for a little while.
The worst and most disgusting choices of all? Any of these things over life, and the others who love and need you even though you’ve put them absolutely last and yourself absolutely first.
Me me me me me.
For shame.
I fully understand how addiction can grip someone and be really hard to pry off. I also believe that if a person really wanted to be free of said addiction, that person would move heaven and earth to rid him/herself of it, which does not include cooking it in the front yard, buying 50 pounds of it and storing it under the bed, walking out the door and getting in a lover’s car, stepping in poop to get to the sink, dropping your drawers for every cute Taco Bell guy (but he’s got a steady job and he loves me!). Sometimes when I hear about the awful things people with no self control do to themselves and to those who trusted and loved them, I fear for the human race.
Feel sorry for these people, yes. Of course. They’re sick.
But if they continue to do nothing whatsoever except demand sympathy, exceptions, and breaks because of their negative choices, then they’ve gone way past deserving sympathy or breaks or exceptions of any kind.
If they’re not actively working really hard to rid themselves of the demons that have been invited to possess them, then the time will come when the locks must be changed and the abandoned loved ones must move on to someone else, preferably someone who cares more for a spouse and a child than someone who chooses himself/herself every time.
In the old days, such people were locked in a room and required to dry out, cold turkey. Perhaps, in the old days, the right things were done.
It hurts? I’m sweating? Oh the AGONY?
Ask these people’s friends, families, and employers if they’ve ever hurt, sweated, or been in agony over this guy’s choices.
That’s what I thought.
Bring it on.
Remember, I’m sorry for these people. But I’m a lot sorrier for their abandoned, used, lied-to not-very-loved ones.
Grow up. Make good choices. FORCE yourself to do the right thing. (the fact that some people must be forced to do the right thing is pretty sad, too.)
I know that those of you who believe addiction is 100% beyond any one person’s control will consider me a monster with no heart.
I’ve dealt with victims of other people’s addictions for over thirty years. Maybe if you’d seen what I see regularly, you’d have less sympathy for the addict and more sympathy for his/her innocent victims.
