The Battle of Waterloo

I decided to read the complete and unabridged Les Misérables, partly because I've found that most classics are classics for a reason, and partly because I felt like doing some masochistic reading. After finishing Lovecraft I wanted another good slow-read.

I went into this project well-prepared. I knew that only 1 in 3 chapters would contain actual plot, and that there was absolutely no way to tell whether a given one was a plot-chapter without reading the entire thing.

In particular, I was warned ahead of time that I would learn more details than I ever wanted to know about the sewers of Paris. Also that there was a giant chunk of the book devoted to the Battle of Waterloo for some reason.

While historically very important, Waterloo occurred 40 years before the plot of the book. There are 19 chapters about the battle, and only a tiny little nugget of plot at the very end of the very last chapter. I knew this before I started reading  Les Misérables. I knew that at some point I was going to have to abandon the plot and read a random book about the Battle of Waterloo. I often read several books at the same time, I was ok with this. I knew I needed to not be emotionally involved in the plot because at some point it would go on hiatus for a good long time.

And then I was reading intently along as Fantine died and Valjean escaped from jail and was on his way to rescue Cosette, when suddenly it snuck up on me.

Art Class: Expectations vs Reality

I think most adults don't really remember what it's like to be a kid. I've been teaching summer art classes for years, and I can remember what it was like to have to follow the directions and do what everyone else was doing when I really would have preferred to do my own thing. I usually tell the kids in my classes that they aren't required to do the same project as everyone else as long as they aren't being disruptive, but a couple of years ago I got to start a class I had been imagining since childhood.

It would have been the art class of my dreams as a kid, we had paper, pencils, crayons, markers, colored pencils, several different types of paint, sequins, bells, plastic jewels, seashells, pipe cleaners, curling ribbon, scrap fabric, cardboard boxes, small bits of scrap wood, hot glue guns, popsicle sticks, craft foam, pompoms, googly eyes, yarn, and almost anything else you can find in a craft store. I had boxes and boxes filled with leftover stuff from my old classes, and the other teachers would bring me their scraps and unused bits of their craft kits. The first day I expected the kids to either be completely lost or utterly out of control.

Instead I was pleasantly surprised.

I even let the kids use the hot glue guns themselves, on the theory that they would learn to be more careful if they burned themselves. Kids who made a big fuss about getting burned were banned from using the glue guns, and I had classroom aids supervise and glue stuff for the kids that needed help. This was remarkably successful. Shockingly, the parents loved the whole thing, from the total lack of structure to the slightly-dangerous glue guns. Sometimes they would just stand around in the doorway and watch the kids create, or lament that they didn't have an entire room at home to devote to creativity.

Embracing My Innate Hipsterism.

From early childhood I have always had the desire to be different. I can't remember anyone ever telling me it was vital to be unique, but I always felt it very strongly even when I deeply desired to fit in and have friends.

In seventh grade, when teasing was horrific and most kids were desperate to avoid being singled out as different, I was shopping in thrift store for vintage clothes. That was when Pirate? and I met, and while she was largely oblivious to her weirdness, I reveled in mine.

We got teased and bullied more than any other kids at the school, but I never even considered trying to fit in and not be weird. I liked who I was, and being different was more important than not having rocks thrown at me during lunch. Being an individual was so important that I stopped enjoying things like Anime and skull t-shirts nearly as much when they became popular and mainstream. It never really occurred to me that this had a name until Pirate? was surfing the internet and looked up the definition of "hipster".

Though hipsterism is difficult to define, it comes close to describing my relentless desire to be unlike everyone else. "Hipster" essentially describes a counter-culture of people who deliberately shun mainstream culture and revel in their nerdy, uncool, handmade, apatheist, thrift store lifestyles.

http://wondermark.com/262/

Not that I have any hipster friends though, because that would make me like all the other hipsters.

Gender.

This afternoon I was walking through a parking lot when I saw an interesting person.

At first I wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman, and then I realized it didn't matter at all. Knowing wouldn't change the way I treated them, and it's even possible they don't identify as a specific gender, and that's ok too.