Communication

It is beginning to feel a lot less like a town and a lot more like a cooperative housing community here. Towns are big enough for communication to hide in fast-paced watches or behind distracted, darting eyes. Connections are interrupted by the occasional face of a stranger, diluting potency of real-deal talk.In a giant web though, you can stretch your thread far and still always follow it back through its points of contact, its criss-crosses, its sticky silk traps the meat of the matter.

It has been on the forefront of my awareness lately. I mean, I guess that it goes without saying, that communication is a rather central life concept. It has just had some significant scenes as of late. The good, the strange, the tough, the ugly.

The good I suppose, is always the boring part to talk about. I feel I have been able to interact very honestly with each team mate. Everyone in Packwood is a friend. I can hear the name of a local and know exactly who and why they are being talked about. I am "the Karaoke girl" the "t-shirt girl" the "garden girl" the "coffee shop girl". And best of all, I get to talk to the awesomest gal in Packwood on a daily basis.

The strange is strange. Our landlord repeating questions within minutes of each other because he does not know how to talk to us anymore.

And then there is why I am here.

The 7-year old that tells me he is moving in one day and is "happy because there are bad memories at that house" and "sad because I don't have friends." We walk to the gas station for a snack and he tells me he hopes I can be his recess teacher next year because bullying is a problem.

The smart little 1st grader that shows off her pen to me in class, which I instantly recognize to be the ones handed out by the child abuse counselor. "My brother and sister and I have a problem." and "I am sad a lot. I can't see my brother anymore." and "I wanted to write dumb on my paper" to which I respond "well that's a silly thing to write. No one in this class is dumb."

"I wasn't talking about anyone else."

"you're not dumb"

"yeah, right."


The amazing bookworm that gets shot down in class for being the only one to know what "aghast" means and when asked if she's ever wanted to be a writer tells me "I considered it but my family always shoots down my ideas. They say that they see me being striper or a truck driver and marrying a woman."

The kid that storms out of Open Gym because of a bully, which we only find out about later when talking to his mom about it. When we learn it was dealt with poorly at school and try to explain that we would handle it differently, the skepticism in his eyes is jarring.

And we are up against an absurd assortment of parental and authority figures.

Parents that have been concerned with Open Gym because of things that are actually not in our vacinity to monitor and yet instead of coming to us, we learn this be a parent informing us that "a facebook talk has been going on".

A mom that drives around with a "does not play well with others" plastered on her truck in neon pink...with a matching pair of testes hanging off the back.

A district that would rather build new baseball fields than fix a hazardous broken gym that gets utilized by kids regularly.

A school goes on three-hour lockdown after a parent threat against a staff, only to resume without so much as an announcement or reflection moment to address the subject afterwards.



What a web to be a part of.