Everybody lies - sometimes for the thrill of it, sometimes for the sake of others, but most of the time just to save our own asses. When caught in the high-beams of my patented Do You Think I Am Blind As Well As Stupid What Is WRONG With You stare, my students crank their creativity up to eleven and lie like sleeping dogs (if only I would let them!).

"Miss, I wasn't texting! I was just checking the time!"

"Miss, I wrote my paper, I just left it at home by the computer!"

"Miss, that iPod isn't mine, I'm just holding it for a friend!"

"Miss, I have to go to the bathroom SO BAD, I can't wait fifteen minutes until the bell!"

"Miss, I have to leave early, my coach told me to. No, I don't have a pass..."

The things they come up with would stagger the mind. Unfortunately for them, despite their best efforts at sincerity and their endless range and expression, they're really not very good at lying. Perhaps it's because I've said it all myself that I can sniff out the lie before it even reaches my desk - or perhaps it's because they're painfully obvious.

Nobody's perfect, especially not at sixteen. My kids don't even have a passing familiarity with perfection. The constant lying irritates me, but I understand why they do it. Nothing stings more than when you're asserting your tiny sixteen-year-old sense of independence and you get dinged for dishonesty in front of everyone. So I cut them a break, some of the time.

"Well, you've checked it, now put the phone away. Next time I see it, it's mine."

"All right, go ahead and go to the bathroom. Next time, go before class or you'll really be hurting."

"Email me your paper the second you get home and I'll accept it - next time, be more careful about your work!"

I know that my students see me as something of a paradox - I look like them, but I'm the authority figure. A part of them wants to respect me, a part of them wants to rebel. I'm one of the "cool teachers," but I won't put up with bullshit and will call them on theirs without hesitation. With some teachers, any red-handedness is played off with a scowl and an under-the-breath, "bitch," but with me my students feel the sweet, sweet burn of shame when I catch them out. That says something to me about who they are and what they think of me. Because of that, I don't mind letting a kid slide every now and again. After all, everybody lies. And we all go away with it, too, at least once... or so we thought.

Haven't done one of these in awhile, though I always love to see them on my flist.

Share a secret in the comments. Anonymous commenting is on and IP logging is off, so write what you feel.

It's almost winter... winter feels like the most secretive time of the year to me.

The sun is fading over the trees, setting brilliant golden stars in the snow. There are no voices here. The familiar, overdressed shapes of the other skiers are gone. Here, I am perfectly alone, poised at the mountain's edge, somehow both anticipating and dreading the journey down. I revel in this moment, the precision and purity of it. Nature is swept clean before me, and she and I are silent sisters immersed in beauty.

It seems to me that I have always had a longing to be alone. Not all the time, of course, but there is a certain social asceticism to my nature. Since I was a kid I've found myself sneaking away, exploring empty places, luxuriating in their silence and creating stories for them. On camping trips when my family told stories around the campfire, I wandered through the camp in search of abandoned playgrounds and secret inlets on the lake. When we visited the ocean, I took long, rambling walks along the beach, seeking the quietest stretches of sand.

The mountains, though, have always been my favorite. Ski trips would inevitably result in a splitting of the group; my mother and sister would call an early day and head down to the lodge for hot chocolate, and my father and I would ski until the lifts closed. Often he indulged my solitary urges and allowed me to ski my own trails. At the end of the day, I would be the only person left on the slopes.

These are the days I remember, the days that are caught in my heart. My skis squeak in the snow as I stand at the edge of the run, my face turned up into the setting sun. In this last, hanging moment, my soul stands still with awe. Then there is a drop, a rush, and the swish of my skis echoing from the trees. Songs burst into my mind and I sing them to no one but myself, tracing my lonely way down the mountain.

I am so overwhelmed right now. It's the last week of the six weeks at work, so I have mountains of papers to grade and parents to call, and on top of all that, it's term paper time in both of my graduate classes. I have novels to read, textbooks to read, epic papers to write, forum discussions to post in, wikis to edit, and pointless worksheets to do. I also want to continue working on my novel idea (no, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo - I'd probably off myself if I had another deadline to chase).

Blar.

With these things in mind, flist, I come in search of music recs! There are a few things I could go for right now:

• Upbeat, peppy music to cheer my heart and get me motivated to do stuff. The kind of music that makes you want to get up and move.
  
• Badass, hard rockin' music to accompany my badass, hard rockin' novel. Think of zombie killing sprees, Spartans walking toward battle, and explosive Viper battles in space.
  
• Backgroundy music for working on papers and grading. I generally prefer instrumentals for this kind of thing; if there are lyrics I find myself focusing on them instead of what I'm doing.
  

Can anyone help me out? Much love and many kisses if so!

They lie with their faces. Walking down the hallways of my old church, I can pick the genuine smiles from the false ones. I haven't been away that long - do they really think I don't know this game? But then, I've always cut to the heart of things.

---

"If you cut your hair, you might as well just shave your head," one woman spits, her gray-streaked curls piled precariously atop her head. "You'll look like a man anyway."

There are nods of agreement, and the persistent sounds of others attempting to break in and share their thoughts. Gleaming gems, all of them, I'm sure. I look around the room, taking stock of the hair situation. Yep, just as I thought - a dazzling display of three-tier bouffants, torpedo buns, and shaggy split ends. Mine is the only hair in the room that has seen the recent kiss of a pair of scissors.

I am eighteen, and this is my private hell - the College and Career class at my parents' Pentecostal church. Of course, it wasn't just my parents' then, or so it seemed. A brief two weeks earlier, I had cut my hair for the first time. It wasn't much; just enough to know that I'd done it. And it was obvious. I didn't know anything about hair styling, after all, having had uncut tresses since birth. My hair was razor-straight across the bottom, and I had been around long enough to know that everyone had noticed it. Pentecostals don't miss these things.

Their eyes slide away from mine like they've been greased. They're all talking to me, but none of them are looking at my face. Well, this passive-aggressive holy-rolling isn't really my style. If they want to call me a sinner, they ought to grow a pair and call me a sinner out in the open. None of this hypothetical bullshit.

My skin feels like it's buzzing, but I don't dare shake. I stand to my feet. They drop the pretense and gaze at me; I can practically see their ears pricking up. Oh, this'll be good, they think. Church people love fresh drama, though it's usually restricted to rumors and backbiting. Like I said, that's not my style.

"I don't appreciate it," I say, willing the tickle of tears from my throat, "when you talk about this as though you don't see me sitting right here."

It's all Bambi eyes and innocent moues now. "What do you mean, Sister Allison?"

"Look around. I'm the only person in this room that has cut her hair."

They look at each other, keeping up the Disney act. Why, I never! Her hair is cut! How did that ever escape our notice! "We didn't even notice," they say, parental smugness plastered across their features. I'm not buying it.

"Even if you didn't," I give them a look that says, and I know that you did, "I don't see why it's anyone's business what someone does with her hair. Is that really so important to you? I'd like to think that going to church has more meaning than this."

Here come the protests. I don't have time for them. "How about you worry about yourselves and your own hair." God knows some of them need to. "I'll worry about mine." I'm turning on my heel then, and walking toward the door - I'm going to make it, despite the roaring of blood in my ears. By the time the tears start falling, I'm curled up in the fire escape and nobody can see me.

---

In retrospect, there are cleverer things that I could have said. In my imagination, I go out with more of a bang - leave them scrambling to pick up their fallen jaws after I leave the room. As it was, I'm sure they just turned around and talked about how they ought to pray for poor, wayward Sister Allison. But that's all right. I said my piece, and sometimes that's all you can ask for.

When I visit, they all smile, but I remember. On the surface they're as pious as popes, with their frazzled ringlets and tacky hair decorations, but I remember. I did learn some lessons at the Pentecostal church, but I realize now just how few of them had to do with God. Maybe I'm a sinner now, halfway to Hell already. But at least when I smile, I mean it. At least when I smile, it's true.

I've led a charmed life. When people whip out their dicks and circle-jerk about how tough they've had it, I go ahead and step aside. Sure, I spent 18 years of my life under the heavy hand of strict Christian fundamentalism, but beyond that I was the golden girl. I wasn't pretty but I sure was smart, and even when I wasn't things seemed to work out in my favor with a little luck and last-minute magic. By the time I reached college and my looks began to improve, I was walking on sunshine. I graduated with near-perfect grades (excepting a freshman-year flirtation with architecture) and without debt, and quickly got started on a Master's degree.

Then I became a teacher. Shit.

I am 23 years old, I teach English to juniors at low-income, at-risk high school, and it is hard as hell. This is what I'll tell my kids about when they complain, years down the road. I'll reminisce about race fights, sexual harassment, girls struggling with teen pregnancy and parenthood, and the heartbreaking stories that my students were brave enough to share with me - stories of friends gunned down in drive-bys, imprisoned or absentee parents, and the agony of losing a child to relatives or foster care. I'll tell stories about the drug dogs that searched the classrooms weekly, and the number of my students who spent time in jail or an alternative education center for fighting or drugs or bringing weapons to school.

People are often shocked when they learn of the things that go on at the school where I teach. I won't lie - sometimes I get a little pleasure out of their dismay. It's tough stuff, and it drains me. It's nice to get some recognition for the job that I do, especially when so many people consider teaching an easy way to get a three-month vacation. But maybe I focus on the negative too much. Yeah, my kids can be difficult to handle, and they sure as hell can do some ridiculous things. But they're also some of the savviest, funniest, and most inspirational people I've ever met. I don't know that I could make through some of the things that they've suffered and been anywhere near as together as they are. They may not make as quickly or smoothly as their more privileged peers, but most of them are going to make it, one way or another.

So I complain, I whine, I bitch. I'm drowning in a snowdrift, looking up at a hill, the pinnacle of which is years away, and my feet are already numb. But baby, I'm going to make it, and so are as many of my kids as I can drag with me.

I'm not very good with small-scale tragedy.

That seems like a cold way to put it, but cold is appropriate in this case. Whenever I hear of the pain and suffering of one person, I don't know how to react. When it comes to the fate of dozens, hundreds, cities, countries, my heart will wrench like a dirty dishtowel and I can cry for hours (with or without the tooth-gnashing and rending of garments). On the personal scale, I just don't know what to do with myself.

What should I say? I'm sorry? Who cares? And yet that's always what I say, because I can't bear not saying anything at all. I'm sorry, let me give you a hug. Are you okay? Of course you're not, I'm sorry, how stupid. What can I do in the face of suffering when the face of suffering is so close? It's easy to weep for millions, especially if they're distant millions. "I'm sorry" isn't any emptier than that distant crying, but with the crying you can assure yourself that there wasn't really anything you could do in the first place.

I've never been a particularly welcome shoulder to cry on. I try, but any time someone tells me about the horrible thing that has happened to them, I find myself withdrawing behind a wall. My brain kicks it into drive - what should I do? Suddenly their suffering is about me, about my discomfort at being bad at comforting. So instead I just listen and try to understand, even if I never do. People don't go away from me feeling any better, unless they're the sort that just wants to be heard. To them, my platitudes sound empty, hollow, devoid of meaning. And they are, even if I don't want them to be.

My name is Allison and let's get real - this may or may not be the 915711713th of these introductions you have read. Respecting this, I will attempt to make this as interesting as I possibly can, and I hope you understand that if I fail, at least my heart was in the right place. Mom always said that's what mattered, after all (though admittedly Mom and I conflict on any number of Key Life Points so it's possible I'm just throwing her a bone with this one).

I am twenty-three years old, a high school English teacher, and impressively liberal despite being raised as a particularly vehement and particularly conservative breed of fundamentalist Christian. Those are the barest of bones when it comes to my life, but I thought I'd start out with the basics and expound from there, adding in all of the organs, muscle, and (let's face it) fatty tissue as we go along.

People say I'm young for what I do, and as far as I can tell they're right. Though I'd never describe myself as a go-getter, somehow I do manage to get things done and fast. Some people interpret this as high achievement, and I don't generally disabuse them of the notion even if I do think they're completely off the rails crazy for saying so. Mostly I think it's because I hate lingering over things; I'd rather just get it done and move along, preferably to doing a whole lot of nothing. I flew through undergrad at the University of Arkansas, and when I waded out into the murky waters of our present economic climate with naught but a BA in English to keep me afloat, I decided to go to graduate school to become a teacher. It was self-preservation, really, not some kind of noble calling. Somehow I made it through and was hired this year at a low-income school in a suburb of Dallas.

Teaching is insane. I feel like I'm insane just for doing it, especially at such a young age. I may be twenty-three, but I look about seventeen - something that both teachers and students delight in telling me. My students, by the way, are bugnuts crazy. All sixteen-year-olds are, in their own way, but somehow I'd forgotten that in the seven years I've spent apart from actually being sixteen. Mostly I just try to make it through the day without roundhouse kicking a child in the face. Mostly I succeed. Mostly I even like the kids, but that is generally when they're out of my vision and hearing.

I think we've covered my first two bones, so let's hit the third. I was born and raised Pentecostal, a fundamentalist Christian faith that involves dancing in the aisles, no pants for the ladies, tongue-talkin', and a fair amount of prophesy and exorcism for added flavor. My parents trained up this child in the way they thought she should go since birth, and I didn't even realize there was something distinctly rotten in the state of Denmark until I reached the age of sixteen. Suddenly the light came on and I began to see all of the religiosity as a kind of well-meaning brainwashing. My parents just think I got sick of wearing frumpy denim skirts, having ratty-ass hair down my back, and being unable to cover up my adolescent proliferation of acne with makeup, but it was much more than that. I started really paying attention to what people were saying, and how they used the Bible to justify all kinds of ridiculousness. All the isms reared their ugly heads and I found myself unimpressed with Pentecostalogic.

So I started asking questions. Let me tell you, people, fundamentalist Christians don't like questions. They follow the circular logic that "the Bible is true because it says in the Bible that the Bible is true," and they don't really peer any further than those pages, or even into them most of the time. When I asked people to justify the things they said, they'd always refer me back to the Bible. Sadly, I needed a little more than that.

I made my formal break with Pentecost when I was in college. A few relatives tried to plan some religious interventions for me, and I have no doubt that many a tear was shed over my heathen ways, but I haven't backed down yet and I don't plan to. As much as I respect the fact that the Pentecostal church inspires quite a bit of joy and even a feeling of redemption in people, I don't and can't agree with their policies or beliefs.

Nowadays I'm a free agent religiously. I'm figuring things out in my own time, but there's plenty about my past that makes me hesitant to explore organized religion. My main focus is on being a decent person (remember, I'm really trying not to kick those kids in the face) and living my life in a way that makes me happy. I do an okay job. I'm in the middle of the best relationship of my life, I've got a steady paycheck and a place of my own, and I get to cut loose and live debaucherously every once in awhile. It'll do, pig. It'll do.

In hopes that emulating awesome (mostly in the form of my friends list) will engender awesome, I have decided to participate in LJ Idol this year. I'm writing so much more lately, and anything that will keep me along that track is worth doing. Everyone should sign up!

Here's the spot!

I seem hell-bent on ignoring my study guide, so let's do a Secrets Post.

You know the deal. Share your secrets in the comments to this post - no need to worry, IP logging is off and anonymous commenting is enabled. Let it all out!

Well, four people commented positively, and that's more than enough for me! :)

wipsupport wipsupport wipsupport

For all your Works in Progress needs!! If you're working on a writing project, want to start one, or just want to see what others are up to and lend your feedback, please join!! :) This'll be a nice, cozy space to share your writing or your writing woes with some supportive friends. I'd like to develop some strategy sessions or maybe some writing (maybe even team-writing!) activities as well!

JOIN JOIN JOIN JOIN JOIN. Or something. ILU.

Decided not to go on that date tonight. I still have standing plans with the guy, but I just couldn't be bothered to go out. What is this strange new world?

Having my grandparents in the house has made me really withdrawn. I love them, of course, but they're hard to relate to now that I'm not a kid - and they have so many little grandchildren now that they don't really know how to relate to me, either. I'm their oldest grandchild, and something of a mystery to them in general, I think. So I've spent most of the holiday either at work or holed up in my room. Fun!

I did go shopping with Mom and Amy today, which was fun. Mom feels much the same way I do about the grandparents. They're Dad's parents, and I think she's a bit thrown off by them. We like our space, Mom and I. So we just... went and blew some cash, I guess. I bought some student teaching shoes, Twilight Watch, some air fragrance stuff, and Delia's t-shirts. Oh, yeah, and the guy at Barnes & Noble convinced me to buy a children's book for charity. Not that I needed a lot of convincing.

Here's the thing with me. I pretty much can't resist a charity if someone presents it really earnestly. I mean, how can I say, "Oh, no thanks, I don't think the kids at the children's hospital need any more books." I can't. I just can't. And that Barnes & Noble guy knew it. So I donated some Dr. Seuss, because I would have felt like a giant asshole if I hadn't.

I also signed up for a Barnes & Noble membership, which means I'll probably never use it. Awesome.

In other news, I am having way too much fun with my iPhone. I've downloaded a few of the free apps, which rule. Especially the LIGHTSABER APP! I mean, yeah, it has no purpose other than to make lightsaber swooshy noises whenever I wave the phone around, but it is awesome. You can even play background music while you do it! I love it so much.

I think my sister is wildly jealous of my iPhone, though. Every time I play with it, she gets super pissy. Like today, when we were at lunch, I decided to check my bank account so I knew how much I could spend while we were out shopping. She became irrationally angry at me over it. Then if I happen to be sitting with her in the living room and play with an app, she gets upset - even though she's always texting. It is so sad. She is not used to me having a more awesome phone than hers.

All right, I've never done a friending meme before, but I was inspired by ljsecret, of all things. There was a secret in the latest batch that said something about just needing a friend. And really, I think we've all felt that way. Because my friends list is a decent size and full of some really awesome people, I thought I might try to do my own friending meme here. For people who need a friend. Of course, you don't HAVE to need a friend. You might just want a friend! It's all good, as far as I'm concerned. Friends are friends!

So here we go.


★❝NEED♥A♥FRIEND MEME❞★


♥Fill out the little form below.
♥Post it as a comment.
♥Make some new friends!
♥PLEASE PIMP THIS! I know there are loads of cool people out there who could do with a few new friends. Let 'em know!

<b>Name:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Some interests/fandoms/ships/etc:</b> <b>5 positive things about you:</b> <b>5 negative things about you:</b> <b>What's your journal like?:</b> <b>Why should we friend you?:</b> <b>Tell us something awesome:</b>

Please do this, ya'll. I will be so full of sad if I am the only one who participates! And it needs pimping, since a lot of you already know each other. Bring in some new blood! :)

Here's a little code for pimpin':

<a style="text-decoration:none" href="http://arasan.livejournal.com/750332.html"><font size="+2" color="#00CC66">★</font><font size="+2" color="#3399FF">❝</font><font size="+2" color="#9933CC" face="georgia"><b>NEED♥A♥FRIEND MEME</b></font><font size="+2" color="#3399FF">❞</font><font size="+2" color="#00CC66">★</a></font>

I know I'm a total copying copier, as augustuscaesar just did this and she is much cooler than me, but I'm doing boring busywork and I want something interesting to read. So I'm going to make an anonymous secrets post, too! Bandwagons, ho!

This post is going to be public (which I guess means I should move my friends only post up? Don't be disturbed if it flashes through your flist again) and anonymous commenting is turned on. FOR NOW!

So, yes. Tell me a secret.