Tall Tale

I am a tall woman. Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I am a very tall woman. Folks often stop chatting when I walk into a room. I get the head-foot-head scan. That’s when they look at how high my head is in the air, then check my feet for high heels, then check my head again to be sure it really is way up there. The scan takes only seconds, but it can be a bit longer for normal conversations to resume. For the longest time I wouldn’t cut my hair short for fear that people would think I am a cross-dresser, as if that really mattered. It’s been a long road to reconciliation with my height, but I think I’m nearly there.
Body image is a big marketing tool. We all want to look a certain way. We can predict that the desired look consists of anything other than how we already look. We apply our discontented thinking to all features possible on the human form, hair curliness or color, height, weight, features, figures, even hands and feet. To compare and covet (or strut) is a natural human process. It can also get quite out of hand.
Better yet is a delight in our differences. If this sounds like celebrating diversity and you want to run screaming, calm down. I’m talking about delighting in how I am different from you; how being tall can be fun and not just shocking. I’m talking about whatever differences you possess being your special possessions for the period of time that you wear your body.
“How did you get that tall?” People will sometimes ask me. I have a stock pile of responses, but some of my favorites include, “Well, I was born six foot and then grew two inches.” Or how about, “I drank lots and lots of water.” Now really, how on earth am I going to know how I got to be this tall? All I know is that I stood in the back row of all my school pictures, but I wasn’t that much taller than everyone else. Then, they all stopped growing and I just kept on. My late growth process may account for my uncharacteristically straight posture. I don’t feel a need to slouch just because nearly everyone else is shorter than I. What a silly notion that one is. That’s like short people thinking they need to go everywhere on tiptoe.
Tall women who are much older than I often comment on how nice it is to see that women are getting taller. I can’t help but wonder what the population will look like if I’m saying that to a taller young woman when I get older. Wow. Watch out Barbie.
The basketball question is by far the most irksome, mostly because it goaded me into trying to play basketball. In high school, the coaches looked at me with a dreamy glow until I joined the team. Shortly thereafter, I think I caught one crying. I’d never had to jump for anything in my life, so new muscles had to be developed. Long after everyone else had gone home from practice, I stayed in the gym jumping to try to touch the bottom of the backboard. Jumping was as foreign a concept to me as was using a ladder for reaching anything other than the roof. The top of the roof.
Inevitably, very short women and I end up in height conversations as well. We compare the relative shortcomings and benefits of our builds, and usually close the conversation with my promise to share some leg with the lady if God ever decides to stop messing around and distribute height more evenly. I’ve made that promise so often that I will someday be one inch tall.
A tall friend of mine told me he was going to start wearing a badge that read “6’7” No Fine” for how tall he is, if he plays basketball, and how the weather is up here. My favorite response to the rude question of how the weather is up here is to spit on the person and tell him its raining. I haven’t yet gotten up the nerve.
I hear people reporting that they get shorter as they age. At last, I have found a reason to look forward to getting old. Even then, I am what I am. You see, all my buddies will have gotten shorter as well.

Department of Frustration

It can happen anywhere, in the grocery store line, at your doctor’s, and even at home. Someone with a label, such as, “assistant,” doesn’t do what the label says. It looks like the person is doing his or her best to perform a job, but it simply is not the job that is described. In our example, this “assistant” may create more difficulties and obstacles than were there at first. So it is with our Department of Education. I am going to call it by its real name here, the Department of Frustration, just so we don’t get confused. Within the DOF is a spelled-out hierarchy of who gets to do what. (It’s also within the prerogative of that person not to do what they are labeled to do, so this thing has layers, like ogres and onions. Gosh, lots of similarities come to mind.)
Our DOF brings teachers from the mainland (mightily reluctantly, it appears), and has them live and work here for a several months before they will pay them. I’ll bet that none of us established islanders could do that comfortably, and that’s without having the added concerns of moving expenses and all that. If you have friends or relatives thinking about teaching in Hawaii, you would do well to warn them so that they can plan accordingly. A pay delay of at least two months is almost guaranteed to happen. Mind you, this isn’t a deliberate or planned thing. It’s just part of the frustration. And we really, really need teachers.
Purchasing and contracting are so labyrinthine and spelled out as to mock the most retentive of us. Janitor’s shoes must be purchased through a series of steps, developed by the Union with the DOF: 1. Janitor puts in a written request to shop for shoes. 2. Janitor finds DOF approved shoe distributor. 3. Janitor goes to distributor and writes down the model number of the desired shoes. 4. Janitor puts in a written request to purchase the shoes. 5. Janitor waits for the DOF to get his shoes for him. 6. If Janitor’s shoes cost more than $75.00, a new procedure must be followed by which she pays the difference.
When I purchased reimbursable items for the schools with my debit card and provided receipts, I was paid back after two months. Except for the third time, when the DOF sent notice that they needed my personal credit card statement to show that I had actually paid for this purchase. Nevermind that they had reimbursed twice before. Nevermind that a debit card is like a check which immediately deducts funds from the account. After explaining these things over five conversations, I got my back up on that one and decided to donate the stinking supplies. Apparently, however, the DOF cannot have unresolved paperwork. After half a year of requests from the school offices for my credit card statement, I found a reimbursement check squeezed into my mail.
Our DOF brings administrators from the mainland (profoundly reluctantly), and has them go through a two year training program called Administrators Certification for Excellence to become administrators. Not training for excellence, mind you, certification. Experienced Superintendents and Vice Principals, along with the promoted ranks, are put in sub-zero refrigerated classes that have been thrown together for the initiate. For random local meetings, monthly weekends eighteen times over two years, and two solid weeks in the summer, our school administrators get to wear winter parkas through a windowless gauntlet of intellectual hazing and initiation routines similar to those banned on college campuses.
A Principal (“trainer”) pulls up next to a Vice Principal (“ACE”, mainland superintendent) in the summer school parking lot, raps on the window, and advises, “The ACE’s are to park in the dirt in the back.”
The rules for the two week training are written, including, “Family visits are not allowed.” In America! As taxpayers, we are funding plenty of electricity and travel expenses. Our tax dollars may be pretty safe, however. For the employee to receive per diem reimbursement requires presentation to the DOF of a completed flight coupon – you know, the thing you have to hand over to the airlines to be allowed to board the aircraft. The reason stated for this procedure is to be sure that the person really attended. Why not just catch the flight and never bother to show up for the aggravation? Two weeks of training administrators in school procedures, and nobody thinks to take attendance? They figured out that one mid-training this year and revised the rules, so we’re still out the money. The ACE training is a deliberate and planned event. We have 142 vacancies listed in the islands for administrators.
Where does all this leave us when each August rolls around? Our kids do their best to follow the instructions, the teachers do their best to instruct, the administrators to administer, and the DOF to… well. All concerned parties at the bottom of the DOF hill: students, parents, teachers, a chorus of support personnel and volunteers, and school administrators, are to be commended for their perseverance and dedication to learning in spite of the Department’s actions or nonactions designed to make learning stop (all verbal intentions to the contrary.) The system is broken, and yet the brave souls in the schools are still managing to do education.
A proverb reads, “They grind up my people like bread.” This obscure phrase clarifies how people get used up by the system. Employees are like a grain of wheat that can either be planted and nurtured for a greater future harvest, or ground up and eaten to satisfy an impatient appetite. Those at the school level of the education system get run through the mill every time.
A current Hawaii school administrator says that I’m putting things too mildly and have hit only a few high points in the stupidity. If you ever wonder why we have trouble keeping people in the schools, consider that the kids are the best part of a job in education. Everything behind the scenes has completely forgotten the students. When we expect Education to come out of a Department so well oiled in Frustration, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. “The system is NOT broken.” DOE advocates (board members) assert. The system is so deeply entrenched that it now is attempting to perpetuate itself through dominance-based pecking order routines established to keep the workers in line. In one way it is true that the system is not broken. It is highly effective and is excellent at what it does: Frustrate.

Something in the air

I almost gave up on traveling in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. It wasn’t due to fears. It was due to having to jump through so many hoops to get on a plane. Living on the islands isn’t conducive to avoiding airplanes, however, so I just got over myself and went through the routine. Our security procedures have morphed several times since inception, with the latest version being the new Travel Security Agency.
Sometimes I am required to remove my shoes. Sometimes it’s okay for my laptop to go through the screening. Sometimes I’m instructed to keep my shoes on and to hand my laptop to someone personally. I’m fond of the game Simon Says, so I play along. They’ve gotten me a few times, though. One time Simon didn’t say for me to take off my shoes. I hope that randomizing procedure keeps the bad guys guessing.
I keep wanting to tuck into my suitcase a pair of handcuffs and a whip. But I always talk myself out of it by realizing that I’m too busy getting my body on the plane to be able to know when to watch while a TSA agent maintains composure over my suitcase contents. Besides, I’m not going to waste either my money or prime suitcase real estate.
If you type “Airport Security Hoopla” into your internet search engine, you’ll get some interesting perspectives on what we do to keep planes safe. I learned about the TSA there. I’m hoping that all the folks who were doing the screenings before the agency was formed are now working for the agency. I hate to think of anyone losing their job over all this. That would just be another way the terrorists win.
Speaking of jobs, I try really hard not to harass the screeners (schemes of making them blush excluded.) That would be like killing the messenger for giving me a message I didn’t like. And they’re pretty good about not harassing me back. Any sort of policing job has got to be a publicly-challenging position.
Where this will end is anyone’s guess. They have eased up considerably now, even letting passengers touch the airplane. The next attacks, if there be any, will likely come in such an unexpected form that it’s hard to say that the screenings are worthwhile. But I’ll abide by the rules all the same. It’s just that I can imagine the destructive side of human ingenuity developing weapons made of other materials than metal and in sizes too small or flat to be detected. Ah well, that’s just a product of too many movies, I suppose. But then I remember the communicators on the original Star Trek series being way out there as an idea when I was a kid. Now the airlines have to beg passengers to shut off their communicators during take off and landing.
The greatest screening tool at our disposal is human intuition. In his insightful book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker spells out how folks know beforehand that something bad is going to happen. Usually, the reports are from victims after the event, telling of the slight of hand, the look, or the feeling that something was wrong. There are multiple telltale signs that, if we are willing to trust ourselves, are detectable by our highly accurate insight. Fear is not the enemy. Terrorism, by its name, seeks to debilitate by creating fear. That’s a problem for the bad guys because fear is smart, when used as an intelligent gift.
I was surprised when my crochet hook was allowed through this last airport screening. I knew that knitting needles were likely out of the question. But, how secure are we really? Didn’t they realize that I might intend to crochet an Afghan?