MadMup.com

If you’ve taken any American Lit classes at all, there’s about a 98.2% chance that you’ve read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. It’s a great little twisted story and it’s full of all kinds of things that literature teachers love… I just can’t remember any of those things any more. I’m left with remembering that I liked the story and that’s okay for me. I write videogame reviews, but I honestly was never any good at picking apart literature and seeing all the stuff I was supposed to.

Anyway, I’m going to assume that you’ve read the story (and if you haven’t, follow that link up there and go read it real quick and come back – I’ll wait here), so you know the ending to it. The town has made their choice and Mrs. Hutchinson is it. Scapegoat time, dearie. Here’s the last line in the story:

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

Everybody in town had the same exact chance of being chosen as she did, but of course that meant nothing to her once she was. That, I think, is usually how it is. The phrase “it isn’t fair” is generally only uttered by a person who thinks they’re getting the raw end of a deal. You never hear someone who just got free ice cream say “It isn’t fair that no one else got this!” Sean Penn didn’t say, “It isn’t fair that Mickey Rourke didn’t get this” when he won his Oscar this year. We only tend to bust out the “it isn’t fair” when we don’t like what’s happening.

It’s been a few years, enough so I don’t remember exactly how many, but I made a concerted effort to excise the phrase “it isn’t fair” out of my vocabulary. Of course, I’m not perfect, so it still works its way in from time to time, but its frequency has been less and less. Videogames that cheat are most often the recipients of the phrase, but it has snuck into actual life here and there.

I had to make the choice for me because I felt it was damaging me. More correctly, it wasn’t helping me, and it held me back from making choices. If it wasn’t fair and God or life or whatever else was just out to get me, then there was nothing I could do about it, so I might as well get angry and sit there and fume. If I realize that life just isn’t “fair” sometimes and I need to just get on with living anyway, that helps me be more productive in my response to the “unfair” circumstances.

The thing is, I don’t really want life to be fair. I have been a jerk to people often in my life. If life was completely fair, I’d be paying for that for the rest of my time here. Every cutting remark would come back to me, every lie, every time I took the bigger piece of cake, every time I broke my parents’ hearts, every time I hurt someone I loved, every time I cut someone off in traffic — all of that, heaped back on my head. No, thank you. I’d prefer that life not be fair.

The Bible teaches me that if things were fair, I’d get a lot worse, too. But the Bible also teaches me some great things about the greatness of an unfair life:

• James 1:17 (NIV) – “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” – Anything good that happens to me comes from God, and He never changes.
• 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV) – “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – “Temptation” can be read “trial” there – God doesn’t give me more than I can handle.
• Romans 8:28 (NASB) – “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” – God knows the end from whatever beginnings I am going through, and He’s promised that it is good.

So, I try. I try to understand when I can’t. I try to not worry when I can’t understand. Even with those promises staring me right in the face, I’m not always good at it, and I am sometimes really, really bad at it. I try to remember that I deserve a lot of bad stuff, and when good stuff happens… well, it’s like William Munny said:

Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.

And I’m okay with that.

I don’t remember ever knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew there were some good dreams out there – astronaut, fireman, policeman – but I don’t remember ever wanting to be any of those. I knew pretty early on that I didn’t want to be a mechanic. My dad is one, and I never got his ability to fiddle with mechanical things, and it was far too dirty a job for my tastes. Once we got a wood stove and most of my winter Saturdays were spent gathering wood for it, I figured out I didn’t want to be a lumberjack, either (even though they’re mostly okay).

When I got to high school, specifically my Geometry class with Mrs. Jackson my Sophomore year, I decided I wanted to be a math teacher. That’s the earliest memory I have of wanting to be a particular something. Of course, once I hit Senior Math (a kind of pre-calculous, I think), that went out the window along with my ability to understand what was going on. Still, I liked the idea of being a teacher, and I really liked literature, so I went to college as an English Education Major.

I think it was my Junior year when I figured out I wouldn’t be very good at that. (Suggestion: figure that out earlier in your college career if you can help it.) I switched over to Speech as a major, because by that time I had figured out I liked performing. Turns out that was a really bad semester for me. The worst semester of my college career, as it happened. It ended up that I would have needed to retake most of those classes, which I didn’t really want to do. So I looked at what majors were left and what I had the most credits toward already. Hello there, General Studies! And, hey, English Minor. Might as well keep you, too.

My first job out of college was Director of Student Activities at the college I graduated from. I actually had the job while I was finishing up my degree, but had it afterwards, too. It was a job I always wanted when I was in my first years at college, but once I was in the job, I wasn’t a very good fit for it. I accomplished one or two major goals, but moved on after three years of it.

Next job was webmaster and sorta-tech support at the college. I liked computers, but didn’t know much about them. Turns out the secret to being tech support is to know just a little bit more than whomever you’re trying to help out. That I was able to manage. I had that job for a year (webmaster for three total – it overlapped), and then moved here.

I was looking for a job, kinda interested in computers but still not knowing much. One place I dropped off a resume was willing to teach me, so they hired me on as a computer tech. I learned all about troubleshooting computer hardware problems and, really, became a mechanic, just like my dad — only it was on something slightly cleaner than cars.

From there I moved to a school corporation and from there to my current one, still doing computers, just not the hardware side. I like my job, and I hope I’m there for a long time. So that answers the “what do I want to do?” question.

Now, what exactly do I want to be?

That question’s a bit more difficult to answer. I have general ideas, and I even have put together this idealized version of me that I think it’d be nice to be, but I’m a better thinker than I am an act-er. I can think through what it would take for me to become this well-rounded, interesting, helpful, in-shape person, but that’s usually as far as it gets. Just like the books and scripts I’ve got floating around in my head that I’ve never written out, this Plan For Me doesn’t get any farther than my head.

How does a person go from making plans to carrying them out? I don’t think I’ve ever had that ability, but I sure would like to. Is there a trick to it? Some sort of 7-step procedure? It’s not as simple as “Just do it!” so don’t get all Nike on me – there’s more to it than that. I just don’t know what it is and I’d like to.

I’m way past being ready to be what I’m going to be when I grow up.

For years I’ve worn a watch, and for several of those years, it was a calculator watch. I didn’t need to do calculations all that often, but I did like keeping 40 or so phone numbers handy. When I was younger, I was a big fan of watches that could play tunes – just a bar or two of beeps, nothing like ringtones these days.

My watches have always been digital. I can read analog watches, but it takes me a while, and I don’t like how imprecise they are. I like being able to say “2:17” when someone asks me the time, rather than “somewhere around a quarter after.” And, yes, I know that no one knows the exact time anyway – Chicago even sang a song about it.

For whatever reason, this summer I stopped wearing a watch. I have a perfectly great watch, too – it’s just like the one Will Ferrell wore in Stranger Than Fiction, only it doesn’t do things like make me late so I fall in love with someone. At least, it hadn’t. Maybe I should have worn it longer? Hmm.

Anyway, I’m not sure why I stopped. It’s made things more vague. I can look at the time on numerous devices – computers, cell phones, banks, radios – but I have less of a sense of time. I think maybe that’s okay, but I’m not sure yet.