My Grammar Brings All the Boys to the Yard
The best way to attract people to what you’re saying is to avoid distracting them with mistakes in your writing. I found these tips from The Write Life helpful for writers of all stages!
Which one is your Achilles heel?
AMC’s addictive meth-centered series, Breaking Bad, aired the premiere of its final eight episodes last Sunday. I sat front and center, clutching my pillow every agonizing second of it.
A few of my Facebook friends launched a discussion about how much they hated Skyler White, who is the wife of Walter, the anti-hero/villain. This was news to me; as much as one can like the willing accomplice of a methamphetamine drug lord, I rather like Skyler’s character.
Here are a few reasons why I get down with Skyler (oh, and I spoil plots shamelessly; if you are behind in watching, read at your own risk):
She is a bulldog when it comes to her kids. One great example of this is the span of time when she kicked Walter out of the house, into a separate apartment, for dealing drugs. She also demanded that his dealings be kept away from her children, as much as they could be. She even shipped them away to her kleptomaniac sister!
She is a gangster in her own right. It was easier to feel sorry for Skyler in the beginning of the series, when Walt engaged in two-celly deception and stashed money beneath floorboards without her knowledge. But once she learned of his side business, she bucked up, demanded her fair share (whatever that means) and undertook the laundering side of the operation. She deals with Saul Goodman.
Skyler is her own mastermind. She devised a plot to set up a laundering front business. She threatens wimpy German connects. Who is canny enough to realize that no one washes a rental car? Skyler White, that’s who. Skyler hasn’t killed anyone yet but I think she could nag anyone to death.
She gives as dirty as she gets. We love Walter White because he has grown so amoral that he cannot see the evil in himself. Skyler, in a sense, is Walt’s enemy because she stood at cross purposes with his mantra to cook blue meth or die trying. So we hate her. When she does dirt, like vindictively sleeping with grimy Ted, we despise her for Walt’s sake. We hate her when she dumps Ted like a sack of manure and we hate her when she takes Walt’s money to bail Ted out. And that awfully awkward dinner with Jesse? Classic. She and Walt deserve each other; we would have even more contempt for an angel of a wife in this series.
Her flaws make her human, whereas Walt grows invincible. I love what the writers have done with Skyler’s character. Juxtaposing Walt and Skyler, there is a clear point where Walt continues to break bad and Skyler…just breaks. My heart crumpled when she walked herself into the pool. I honestly thought she would need psychiatric help, of the straitjacket variety.
Skyler has a problem with follow-through on her threats (divorce, snitching, kidnapping) and that is her greatest weakness. She does criminally what needs doing, but she does not shoulder it well. We want her to suck it up. Her misgivings define her, humanizing her in stark contrast to the monstrosity of Heisenberg she sleeps next to every night.
Skyler is the bride of Frankenstein and she is wearing the meth out of her role. Slow clap.
A long time ago, I was a teacher. I initially didn’t want to be, though. I was terrified. I hated standing up in front of people unless I had a memorized script (like a poem).
I stood behind the lectern on the first day so the students wouldn’t see my knees shaking. I prayed my voice would hold firm where my appendages wouldn’t. Somehow, I got through that day. I learned names, I handed out sheets, I cracked a stale joke or two and I survived.
Over the course of that first semester, I learned to love teaching. It is the art of interacting with people in just the right way that successfully transmits what they need to know. Every classroom has a personality. Every student has a story.
I firmly believe that teaching is a calling. You cannot dial in the desire to teach; it must be rooted deeply within you so that harsh conditions like mandatory testing, problem parents, and bored students cannot choke its bloom to death. I stopped teaching because I recognized that my love for it was an acquired taste, rather than a vocation. Stress would have burned that fleeting taste right out of my mouth.
The hardest part about teaching college freshmen was combating the “I’m only here because I have to be” attitude inherent in students who take mandatory pre-requisites. Every teacher wants an engaged pupil. Without class engagement, students’ eyes gloss over during lectures on why the five-paragraph essay is best left in high school. It can be disheartening.
Last week, I wrapped up a course I took for memoir writing by Dr. Christal Presley. It felt beyond good to sit in a desk again after six years. Not only was Dr. Presley a supportive teacher, but the class atmosphere was magic. There is a vast difference between continuing education courses and traditional college classes. No one fell asleep in this class. No one piddled with their phone. No one slinked in unprepared, having not read the book or having defiantly plagiarized the assignment. No one glared at the teacher like, “Entertain me, mother@#%er, I’m bored.”
We came after work, the scent of coffee and corporate bull$@#! lingering on our clothes. We paid for our class out of our lint-filled pockets–no loans, no parents–we are the parents. We listened eagerly because we wanted to be there. One of my classmates suggested I could be a great writing teacher. But I am too selective; this is the type of environment in which I (and I think every teacher) would prefer to teach.
I wish, somehow, that we could teach our students, our children to take complete joy in education before it is at a palpable cost to them and something they cannot regularly partake in. Maybe then, the rigors of teaching would not tax so many spirits.
And for all the teachers crossing the thresholds of classrooms again, bon courage–and teach from your soul…they can never burn that out.
Shout out to P. Braithwaite for inspiring this post!
Three years ago, I started playing NFL fantasy football (FFB) and I sucked at it. I had Eli Manning as my starting quarterback and a host of other players that I did not know what to do with.
It wasn’t for lack of knowing the game; I’ve been a football fan since my hometown team, the Buccaneers, wore orange creamsicle unis (1992). I’d sit on the couch every Sunday and listen to my dad teach me the game. Football became our bonding ritual. And when I moved away for school, I’d call him up to get play-by-plays of how many veins Chucky popped yelling at Brad Johnson’s errant throws.
I quit writing my Master’s thesis from 1:00 pm to 11:00 pm every Sunday, and from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm on Mondays–even my then-boyfriend knew that NFL football was sacred. He learned to watch with me and never started conversations during a red-zone drive. So I married him!
When I joined a new FFB league two years ago, after playing one year, I wasn’t a complete novice. And I understood trash talk. Scrolling down the message board before the season’s opening, I saw this: “I see we have a few ladies in the league. We know ya’ll can’t really play FFB right. This is a man’s game.”
I really don’t know what they were expecting. A demure nod? A girlish giggle? A gracious bow-out before ignominious defeat? NAWL! I was heated! Perhaps I brought it on myself; after all, FFB is predominantly male-targeted. It was on! After I beat a few teams, someone else posted that the men could not let the women punk them like that.
That year, I won the championship for my FFB league and did a twinkle-toed curtsy on those fools.
Who said lightning never strikes twice? I also won the championship for the league in 2012 with no-name running backs and a previously unknown Colin Kaepernick! I am horrible at talking trash, but I did it anyway. For all the women out there who love football and who anguish Saturday nights over their second W/R choice: those wins were for you.
Needless to say, I’m back in the saddle for FFB 2013, and even if I don’t perform a hat trick (I used to be a hockey fan; go Lightning!), I plan on enjoying myself. I doubt any of my opponents will have any $@^! to toss my way after the enema I gave them two years in a row.
My FFB team name is Sugar and Spikes, because a win is so much sweeter when you spike the ball in their…yeah. To my league members, I say: mwah, minions! Watch the Queen conquer sexism one game at a time.
Dear Carlton Banks,
Chocolate child of the original Aunt Viv, you danced with fire at your fingertips and so they called you uncool.
I am like you. Conventional rhythm has long eluded me. My grinding is robotic, disjointed where my hips meet my butt. I pop-lock when trying to Tootsie Roll. I was Miley Cyrus before she discovered she was black.
We know: it is the greatest sin against blackness to dance like a white person.
You are the brother everyone expects to marry white because no black woman will have you. Earnest, you wear your heart on your button down sleeves. But they will pickpocket your Black Card from the back of your chinos for it. They will call you cornball and ridicule your dialect, instigate McCarthyist witch hunts into your politics. They will Uncle Tom you into the beat of their drum.
Lover of Barry Manilow and Tom Jones: it’s not unusual for you to be hated for knowing the mainstream Top 40 and not the Top 10 Rap Lyricists.
You are the answer key for tests they will fail.
You are the cheap laugh track at the end of the scene.
You are the punchline for body blows disguised as jokes, bruised inside out.
You don bow ties instead of polos and Christmas sweaters in July that have the nerve not to be Coogi.
The police pull you over even though you speak their language of ‘Sirs’ and unclipped consonants. But your skin is more than a brown blanket for hidden white flesh. I hear odes to the Bantu in your baritone.
I see you, a native son who dares to not wear the mask in the face of ridicule. Let no one strip you of your blackness til you bleed. Claim yourself when they say you are too white to be black and too black to be white. Do not cower, square peg of a black man, into their carved round hole.
And yes, brother, dance with your own rhythm; for as long as you hear the drums, Africa will always claim you.
love,
a square black girl
dara t. mathis 
