Sad and Surreal

Somehow, it is still May. Although I have not written for weeks, it feels like it has been a year. While I know that I have managed life, work, home, and health reasonably well, I am frustrated that I have not found time for me. I need to blog. I need to exercise. I need to practice yoga. Thankfully, summer is literally around the corner. My primary personal goal is to set clear patterns for those three things for me.

Even though I have coped with my narcolepsy well, many moments overwhelm me. One happened yesterday. I left home at 7:20 AM, and other than a brief 45 minute stop for dinner, I did not return until 10 PM. In the midst of it, I honestly worried that I would have a sleep attack. Gratefully, everything went well, and I found a second wind.

Today was a radically different situation. Even though I had Monday off, I found myself stunned this morning when I remember that today was Thursday. I honestly felt like Tuesday and Wednesday last for weeks. Yet, today was the longest day yet. Much of the morning went well, but in my afternoon class, I led a discussion during which MANY of my boys attempted to fault a female character in a novel for a rape. I was and am aghast. Although the group has certainly had moments of sheer male stupidity, this horrific scene was completely off my radar.

We are reading Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book is tremendous, and most students can't put it down. The discussion began with some wonderfully insightful comments, but a boy in the class who has often made short-sighted comments then offered that the protagonist was at fault for her rape. Assuming that his peers would immediately reject his comment, I called on two other boys. Both of them agreed with the first. The ensuing discussion entailed young women respectfully and intelligently refuting the lunacy that these boys were spewing, but the boys chose to ignore everything that the young women offered. I know that I handled the situation as well as I could, but I regret that I did not simply reject the initial comments. Unfortunately, I all too often try to be "fair." Since my own biases tend toward feminism, I refrained from shutting down this boy. Hoping that the boys would "learn" from the discussion, I proceeded to allow tremendous pain to be inflicted on the young women in the room.

When class ended the boys strolled out the door without a care in the world. Many of our young women were reeling from the boys' remarks. One broke down immediately. Two others spent 15 minutes in dialogue with my co-teachers and me. Three more wrote lengthy emails upon arriving at home. I highly doubt that the boys even pondered the class period for more than 10 seconds. Thus, in an attempt to "help" the boys, I subjected young women to tremendous pain. That is male privilege in its most sinister forms.

Thus, my co-teachers and I will adjust our schedule for tomorrow. Instead of playing our trivia and knowledge game, we will separate into gender specific groups. Hopefully, the young women can be reaffirmed by the testoterone-free period. The boys, on the other hand, should be interesting. I definitely think that those boys need to hear in no uncertain terms that rape is an evil crime and that a rape is NEVER the fault of the victim. It should be interesting.