National Anxiety

I went to bed Sunday night after the entire Presidential debate. That's fairly late for me since I usually get up at 5 a.m. But as I lay my head on my pillow, I felt a buzzing  in my chest, in my stomach. I couldn't settle the agitation. I turned on Pandora nature sounds, setting it to go off within half an hour, but I was still awake when it went off. What was going on with me? Why was I so unsettled?
My daughter called me for the third day in a row. She wanted to talk while she was driving. She felt on the edge of an anxiety attack. She couldn't understand why they were happening; she hadn't experienced them for awhile.
Then she stopped. "I think it was the tape that came out on Friday," she said, making a connection with her anxiousness and the bragging of a powerful man that he can force himself on women any time he wants.
That kick started the nausea that she feels, the racing of her heart, that feeling of metal in her mouth.
I don't think she and I are alone in this kick-in-the-gut feeling.
Women have known men like this all our lives. Sometimes we're strong enough to fight back, sometimes we wonder did we do something to lead them on, and sometimes we swallow the uncomfortableness and never tell anyone.
When I was a girl, 11 or so,  I went with my cousin to visit her grandparents on her father's side. They were a lovely old couple. I sat on the porch swing with the grandfather while my cousin went with her grandmother to the garden. The man's arm resting on the back swing reached over and snapped my bra strap.
Thwack. I felt the elastic and heard the twang.
I was shocked. I sat still, wondering what I should do. I let a minute go by before I slid off the swing, saying I was going to find my cousin. He laughed.
I never told anyone that happened. I felt ashamed that a nice old man would have done that to me. He obviously didn't see me as a little girl but as a sexual object, even at that age. I never went with my cousin to her grandparents' house again.
Of course, it's different when it was boys my age who would pull my bra strap. The power makes a huge disparity in how women feel -- like we have no way out. We only have to grit our teeth and take it.
So as we both dealt with uncomfortable sensations this week, I suggested to my daughter that she might  tamp down the anxiety if she stopped listening to political news and if she went to the early polling place to vote.
"Once you vote, maybe you'll feel some sense of resolution, knowing you've done what you can to prevent him from winning," I said.
She hasn't gone to vote yet and she called today after retching over the toilet at work. I don't think she'll be able to make it to early voting during the week since the polls are open 8-6 and she works 9-5. So she'll have to wait until Oct. 29 when the polls stay open on the weekends.
I hope both of us can turn our attention away from the ugliness that has invaded our society, until we can put it to rest on November 8.

Deep Discussions

My class this morning started out with a disturbing topic and ended with an equally disturbing topic. I felt like a real downer.
Although I teach college English, I try to bring up topics in the news to see if any college students are paying attention. This one, they were aware of because it connects to football. Coach Joe Paterno from the neighboring Big Ten college, Penn State, was fired last night.
My 8 a.m. class was divided. Some thought he should have been fired, others thought he had done what he needed to legally. Students at Penn State are definitely thinking he should have gotten a pass.
Here's the thing, an assistant coach from the past has been indicted for sexual abuse on boys. Even though he retired in 1999, he continued to use Penn State facilities for a program to help underage boys. A student assistant report to Paterno that he had seen this assistant coach sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in the showers. Paterno reported this incident to his boss then apparently never thought about it again.
I don't know many people who could shrug that off.
I asked my class, "How many of you would do more if you saw a child being sexually assaulted?" They all raised their hands, yet they're giving Coach Paterno a pass for not taking more action.
"Which is more important," I asked, "football or child sexual abuse?"
When framed that way, who would say football?
Coach Paterno left who knows how many boys at risk? How many boys were sexually assaulted because Paterno did not follow up, did not read the riot act to the (alleged) sick pedophile, did not check up on the boy who was lured to the Penn State showers?
That discussion made us all feel a little queasy, but determined to do the right thing. Then we moved on.
Toward the end of class, we began to discuss an essay related to the Columbine shootings. This essay, a speech given in 1999 shortly after the shootings, blames the shooters' actions on living in a soulless suburbs. We watched some videos, sinking deeper into the hopelessness of that day when students hid under desks while two boys slaughtered them with sawed off shotguns and an automatic weapon. Fifteen people died in that school in a suburb of Colorado. No one in my class agreed with the speech that these two boys massacred people because they were raised in a suburb where everything looked alike. The speech blamed the suburb because it is a soulless place without a past or a future.
And I agree that, even though school shootings seem more likely in an affluent suburb or an isolated town, the place is not to blame. Maybe the thing to blame again is the lifestyle that leads us to suburbia.
People who are trying to survive day to day, making sure their family has food and shelter, don't have time to worry about being angry and planning assaults on their fellow classmates or teachers or bosses.
Living a more comfortable lifestyle is a blessing, but new affluent disorders crop up.
The class kind of sat in stunned silence when we got to the end.
"Go out and do something good today," I said.
They laughed and departed.