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A Self Help Guide For the Last Few Zero Years by Douglas Lain
PART TWO
THE MARKETPLACE AND YOU
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
How do people get to a place of health? These days it's difficult to hold firm and go on with the charade, but one good first step is to figure out what is wrong (if it isn't obvious to you already) by identifying which parts of your life are most affected by your problem. Mental health professionals have developed various classification schemes useful for describing the important aspects of people's lives, and while it may seem cliché, a reasonably comprehensive summary list of life's various aspects or domains can present lasting happiness.
In order to better help you appreciate the importance and scope of this, I have included a list of questions to ask yourself and a few exercises.
Question One: Do you find it hard to concentrate on one thing for a long time?
Your answer seems to point to experiences in childhood. For example, let's say that in sixth grade you found yourself on your red Schwinn, the one with the banana seat that had a busted seam so that the foam pad stuck out the side when you sat on it.
You stopped outside North Middle school, put one foot on a pedal and the other inside the two-square box, and you watched a flock of geese fly overhead in a V, heading south.
You were going to earn another official tardy, which would bring down your grade in your English, but you didn't care. This time you stopped and watched the geese, listened to them honk and bleat as they passed. You took a deep breath. You adjusted the straps on your nylon backpack. Your backpack was zipped up, sealed tight. Everything was in its place: your three-ring binder, stapled homework assignment, and plastic ziplock bag of pens were all there.
Your first period class was a literature class, a class on fables like the grasshopper and the ant or the Taylor and the Giant, and while you enjoyed the reading, got a lot out of Mrs. Fuller's lectures, her descriptions of the genealogy of Cinderella and the tortoise and the Hare, you were still only scraping by a C grade because you could not find a way to complete all your assignments. So many of the worksheets and papers were merely busy work, mindless to the point of obscenity, and when you confronted Mrs. Fuller with the fact that you'd managed to understand and absorb the material without the tedious repetition her assignments required, she agreed that you had, indeed, learned, but insisted that since you would conceivably need the ability to take meticulous notes when you were in college she could not alter your marks simply because you had mastered the material.
"You must learn to follow instructions," she said. "You won't be able to get by if you rely on your native intelligence alone."
Stopped outside of school to watch the geese despite the fact that you were running late and standing still breathing the cool morning air, listening to the bird noises and the gravel moving as you swung your front wheel back and forth was an act of rebellion against Mrs. Fuller and fables and meticulous notebooks full of meticulous notes.
You walked into Mrs. Fuller's class, knowing that you were late, but not feeling the least bit contrite and without hanging your head or trying to be inconspicuous. You took your seat in the front of the class, making a loud squeak from the friction of your chair being pushed back, metal feet on the chair scraping against the tile floor, and when Mrs. Fuller asked you where you'd been, you said that you'd seen the geese flying south and that it was amazing how the birds knew how to arrange themselves just by using their native intelligence. Mrs. Fuller was perhaps moved by your description of the birds, but was not moved enough to offer you a chance to re-take the final exam. The exam was timed and you'd missed the first forty-five minutes of it.
"You have ten minutes left. You better start writing if you want to pass the test."
You'd known that you were late, known that you'd made yourself later still, but forty-five minutes? That didn't seem possible. You looked up at the clock and saw that it confirmed what the teacher had said. You looked at your Casio digital watch and it was the same thing.
The first question on your test was this: "Why did Cinderella have such tiny feet? What was it about tiny feel that people in China found to be so beautiful?"
You were in a bind. Unable to finish the test or find a rational solution, you turned to an irrational solution. You reset your watch, set it back by one-half hour. But when you pressed the little silver button, pressed into the indent on your Casio with the sharp end of your #2 pencil, you changed the date along with the minute. You moved your watch to an earlier point and somehow went back along with it.
In 1934 the administrators of school district 11 gathered up the yearbooks, newspapers, slide-rules, paintings, and other ephemera that had been produced during the first year of North Junior's existence, sealed it all in a metal canister and then set the canister behind the granite block that sat along the front façade at the entrance. This was a time capsule, and they chiseled instructions that the block should be pulled out of place and the canister broken open in 50 years time.
On the morning of January 7th, 1984, you stood outside the school, behind the yellow tape that marked off the spot of the front of the school where the machinery and construction crew did the work of removing the stone, and listened to the Walkman cassette player you'd received for Christmas as the principal of North Middle school gave a speech about the significance of the past and tradition and how innovation must always hold on to the central truths of American education. You couldn't quite drown out the speech with Matthew Wilder's one hit, although you turned the music to the highest volume you could without distorting the lyrics into an unintelligible jumble.
"Last night I had the strangest dream." You could make out every word of the song. You could make out every word of the principal's speech. You could see your breath and pulled your dirty blue down jacket closed. You stuffed your hands in your pockets and held the coat closed, as the zipper was broken.
Paul Moorhouse, the fat greasy kid with huge pimples and a tendency towards meanness and vocalizing his love of the Republican Party stepped up next to you. He shivered against the cold and asked what you were listening to on your Walkman.
You told him the call letters of the radio station, and he asked to borrow your Walkman so he, too, could listen. Cindy Lauper started singing, and you handed the player over to him.
"Keeps your ears warm," Paul said when the song ended and he reluctantly handed the Walkman back.
The principal held up a newspaper from 1934, the school paper Pen and Ink, and you squinted against the sunlight that was just making its way down and around the front of the building, pulling the shadow from the building back.
"History," the principle said.
And that's when the sense of deja vu hit you. You'd been bored by the past before, seen the unsmiling faces of your grand-parents contemporaries as school children before. Worse, you were reliving a commercial for low-fat yogurt on your Walkman.
"What shall we put in the capsule now and who will your children be when we open it again in fifty years? You'll be older; old. What will you have done with your lives? What do we want to tell ourselves, remind ourselves of, later on?"
You glanced at your Casio watch the take it off your wrist and used the buckle to press the indented button again.
You could see your breath. You handed the Walkman and Cindy Lauper's song "So Unusual" over to Paul Moorhouse and watched him shivering in the dirt around where the machines were working at pulling out the past from behind a marble block.
"I sailed away to China, in a little row boat to find ya," you sang under your breath. You sang the pop song you'd heard earlier.
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