The weeks of sunshine deceived me. “I have to wear flip-flops,” I told myself. Also, “it doesn’t matter so much if I forget to bring a tea bag. I don’t NEED to drink tea.”

Yesterday I went on a field trip with BMS to the wildlife safari. It was a lovely trip, only the flip-flops combined with the lack of tea left me chilled to the bone.

I went into the warm restaurant to splurge on a cup of tea. There was a group of college-age guys in there who wore dirty baggy clothing and dreadlocks. I couldn’t figure out what box to put them into. They looked like gangster hippies. But why would gangsters become hippie, and then go hang out at the local wildlife safari?

That had nothing to do with the story I’m telling, I just thought it was interesting.

Today I ran shivering into the coffee shop, still wearing flip-flops, with no tea in my backpack, but too cheep to spend money on tea again. So I sat down and ate my lunch with some of my friends who were in there.

Then I looked out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were two of my friends from Grocery Depot.

I had once very enthusiastically tried to convince these ladies to go to college, only to be told that their church didn’t usually allow people to go to college. So needless to say, I was very surprised to see them on campus.

“Hey guys!” I said, running out and giving them a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I just got my GED,” said one of them. “I’m going to do the bookwork for Grocery Depot, and so I want to take some accounting classes.”

“I’m here for moral support,” said the other. “We’re trying to find McKenzie Hall…”

“Oh, I can show you where that is!” I said. I took them down to McKenzie Hall, and helped them find the offices they were looking for. They wanted to talk to the academic advisers for accounting, but both advisers were out of their offices right then.

I showed them how the paper on the door shows when they’ll be back, and how to go online and find the advisers’ email addresses and set up a meeting, etc.

Then we parted ways and I went back to my friends in the coffee shop.

…

Have you ever read “The Catcher in the Rye?” If so, what do you think of it? I’m reading it right now, and while I’m not sure I can say I recommend it, it is very interesting.

In it the main character, Holden, is talking to his sister Phoebe about why he is failing school. He says it just doesn’t interest him.

“Doesn’t anything interest you?” she asks him.

He thinks about this for a while. Then he says, “You know that poem that goes, ‘if a body catch a body, coming through the rye?”

Phoebe tells him that the poem actually says, “if  body meet a body, coming through the rye.”

Holden says that he always thought it said “catch.” He used to imagine a field of rye where children would play, but there was a cliff on one end, and he was the only adult around. His job would be to catch the children if they were running too fast, and not looking where they were going, and headed for the cliff.

So even though he seemed to not be interested in anything, he would like to be a catcher in the rye.

…

Like Holden, I sometimes do random things and think, “if this were a job, I would like to have it for a very long time.”

Today, that’s what I thought when I showed my old friends where to go and what to do around campus.

I would like to find people that haven’t the first clue how to navigate college, and just answer all their questions, and show them where to go, and who to talk to. I wish that could be my job.

…

A random side note: Trying to find an image for this post, I googled “cold days and dream jobs” and came up with pictures of swimsuit models. Somehow I found that extremely humerus.

Except recently I’ve been writing poetry about people at Linn Benton, just for the fun of it. People who I don’t really know, but see around.

I’m adding this disclaimer because I often find poetry to be really pretentious, and I want to point out that this is completely in fun and I’m not actually trying to write “good poetry.”

Okay. Here goes.

Mermaid Hair

there is one girl
I see around LBCC
who’s more “different” than me

she has mermaid hair

and when she walks by me,
I always stare at the dresses she wears

that are weirder than mine

full of taffeta bows in an 80′s design
with a blue-greenish shine

and sometimes I wonder how it would be
to decide
on my own
that I’d like to be known
as the “different-ist” person at LBCC

]]> http://emilysmucker.com/2013/05/10/poetry-about-people-at-linn-benton/feed/ 4 emilysmucker Screen Shot 2012-10-21 at 9.50.50 AM http://emilysmucker.com/2013/05/10/why-im-a-bad-mennonite/ http://emilysmucker.com/2013/05/10/why-im-a-bad-mennonite/#comments Fri, 10 May 2013 07:26:46 +0000 Emily Smucker http://emilysmucker.com/?p=2226 Continue reading →]]> Sometimes it’s hard to explain to people that it’s not WRONG for a Mennonite girl to go to college, it’s just different. Slightly odd.

People tend to think of the Mennonites as either a quaint idyllic community where everyone makes their own butter, or a legalistic community where everyone must abide by strict rules at the risk of getting shunned.

Some churches do have lists of rules, but more than that, the Mennonites have  unspoken lists of what’s normal to be interested in, and what’s abnormal/somewhat fishy with potential send you down a slippery slope.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve always had a tendency to be interested in the fishy-slippery-slope-ey things.

Here is a list of them:

1. College

People ask me, “so what do you do?” When I say I’m a college student who teaches part time, there is a certain strip of Mennonite that will always say, “oh interesting, tell me about your teaching.”

2. Fairy Tales

3. Acting…

…which often requires copious amounts of makeup, so that’s kind of a double-whammy.

4. Fashion

5. Dancing

These days I’m not into dancing the way I’m into fashion, acting, fairy tales, and college, but when I was in my teens this was a big deal for me.

I didn’t know anyone who danced, but I would copy dance routines from movies and then teach them to my friends.

Once I got in trouble at school for dancing, so I went home and found every Bible verse that referenced dancing, and printed them out. Each reference was either positive or neutral towards dancing. I showed them to people but no one’s attitudes towards dancing seemed to change.

So I was basically like Ren McCormack, only without the happy ending.

…

In parting I will do an annoying clarification.

I’m not looking for anyone to say, “oh don’t be so hard on yourself! I’m sure you’re actually a good Mennonite!”

Calling myself a “bad Mennonite” is a joke.

The End.

I have a habit of writing blog posts and then not posting them because I think they’re too emo.

As far as I can tell the problem lies in the fact that I blog in my head too much.

I’ll get an idea for a blog post on romance, or what it’s like to always be different, or why I’m not a real writer, and I’ll regurgitate it around in my head for days, imagining what I will write once I actually have time to get to a computer.

Well heads, as you know, are kind of emotion machines. So the regurgitated thoughts turn into emotion vomit.

Sorry for the visual.

…

A random thought:

Often, my view of people is drastically changed once I friend them on Facebook.

People talk about how easy it is to hide on the internet, and how much of the online world is smoke and mirrors.

But when you friend people on Facebook you learn what they really believe in, and what they love, and sometimes how gullible they are.

Things that don’t often pop up in regular conversation.

Maybe they would pop up in regular conversation if “regular conversation” consisted of one person saying to another, “all right, tell me all about yourself, everything you’ve ever wanted to rant about,” and then just sat and listened for as long as it took.

Not that that would be a good idea, it’s just an interesting thought.

…

The world is full of sunshine. It’s incredible.

Yes, said Esta. There is candy coating. There is muck beneath that. But underneath that muck is the real Emily. The Emily who makes hard decisions. The Emily who writes books.

…

I’ve been reading my old diaries lately. Above is something I wrote when my landlords kept getting fed up with me, and I had to come to grips with the fact that not everyone was always going to like me.

Below is a story from my Bridgewater College days that made me laugh.

…

I trudged back towards my car, hood up, head down, sick and miserable. Then I heard a voice say, what sounded like, “why are you looking down?”

I looked up. There was Adam. He said, “are you okay?”

“I’m just kind of feeling sick,” I said.

“Huh?” said Adam, like I was an idiot.

I floundered around, not sure how to reply to that. Then he said, “I couldn’t hear you.”

“Oh. I said I was feeling sick.” I gave a shaky laugh. “When you said ‘huh’ I thought you meant, ‘ how on earth could you think you’re feeling sick?’”

“Wow, how could you get all that out of one syllable?” He asked.

I shrugged. “I’m a girl?”

In any case, we talked a bit about me feeling ill. And he said, “yeah, you look like crap. I’m one of the few guys who would actually tell you that.”

What a funny thing to say.

What an Adam like thing to say!

Someday I will live in a very busy place, and in the early morning I’ll sit outside and drink tea and watch the world hustle and bustle by.

The opportunity to do so rarely presents itself, but today I went to my math class and it was all review for the test, so I left and got tea and sat in the courtyard in the early morning sunshine.

Motorcycles were parked in the courtyard for an event later that day. A man was cleaning the fountain. People walked by.

Suddenly the man cleaning the fountain said, “Hey Emily!”

I recognized him. Um.

I bumped into this janitor last spring, and, being a friendly person, asked him all about his janitorial work.

He then proceeded to ask me out. Despite being, oh, probably at least twenty years older than me.

There’s not a lot that embarrasses me, but guys I just met, especially old ones, showing romantic interest in me, is just about too much embarrassment for me to handle.

This winter I ran into Mr. Janitor again when we both ushered for the winter concert. That’s where I experienced the great triple embarrassment.

Before I continue I will make note that I also find it embarrassing when people think they’ve offended me and they actually haven’t. This may be a knee-jerk reaction to being the “sweet little Mennonite girl” on campus.

The day I ushered, I didn’t have any supper, and was ravenously hungry. Somehow the Janitor caught on, and proceeded to buy me a brownie.

While the Janitor was buying me a brownie, a guy from Open Source club started to apologize for offending me so bad during the last club meeting. Even though I had zero recollection of ever being offended.

And while that was going on, some kid I didn’t know, who was with the Open Source club guy, started demanding to know who I was. “Who is she? Who is she?” he kept asking his companion, and when he was ignored, he turned to me and said, “who are you?!?”

I didn’t even know how to answer that question.

Today there were no brownies, not apologies, nobody demanding to know who I was. Just a friendly janitor who said “hi” and then went back to cleaning his pool.

However, when I got on Facebook an hour or so later, it was the weirdest thing. My friend Bethany, who as far as I know has never been to college nor has any interest in it, had posted a picture of the courtyard, and the janitor, and a little bit of my head hidden mostly by a bush.

The point of the picture was to point out the motorcycles. But seeing the picture appear like that, from someone who I would never have expected to be on campus, gave me an eerie twilight-zone feel.

…

I never posted about the janitor before, even though I thought it made a good story, because I was afraid he would somehow, someday, end up reading it.

But today I thought, you know, if he by some bizarre chance read it, he might be embarrassed. But then again he embarrassed me.

Maybe that is vengeful thinking.

…

I’ve decided I need to stop worrying about posting something deep or thoughtful or with a perfect bow-tie ending, and just post more often. Whatever comes to my head at the moment.

We’ll see.

Esta Doutrich and Jenny Smucker are two people who have blessed me this way. Somehow I never knew how close their birthdays are; Jenny’s is today, and Esta’s was yesterday.

Today’s post is in honor of them.

Jenny.

Thank you for teaching me that it’s possible to be best friends with your sister despite nine years age difference.

Thank you for amazing me with your intellect and wit.

Thank you for your fashion advice.

Thank you for the impromptu sleepovers.

Thank you for bringing me kittens and books and tea and hugs when I’m feeling down.

Thank you for understanding my sense of humor.

Esta.

Thank you for making an effort to befriend me even before we’d ever even met.

Thank you for listening and offering expert advice to all my problems, especially those pertaining to depression.

Thank you for getting what depression is like.

Thank you for your fun and funny personality that makes life so much more enjoyable of a place to live.

Thank you for the overflowing bounty of insight into the world you possess, due to your faith and your hunger for knowledge and your understanding of culture.

Jenny. Esta. You have now idea how much you’ve blessed me in life. I love you tremendously.

Happy Birthday.

I sat in the back seat. This was my view.

We stopped at Multnomah Falls. Everyone pulled out their smart phones to see if Multnomah falls is anything special, like the tallest waterfall in North America or something.

I tell you, road trips with smart phones are a whole different ballpark than road trips without smart phones.

Of course the info they were googling for was right on the plaque behind them.

It is the second tallest year-round waterfall in the United States.

The topography in extra-eastern Oregon always reminds me of how I imagine the wild English moors to be whenever I read “Wuthering Heights” or “Jamaica Inn.”

We stopped in The Dalles. The thrift store we visited had some bizarre mannequins on display.

Dan’s sister and her husband own this amazing old motel in eastern Oregon. That’s where we stopped for the night.

I got some tea and sat at the bar and imagined that my friends and I were settling political disputes that would end in a bar fight and a pistol fired at the chandelier.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early for a long day of driving. The skies got sunnier and the ground got browner as we drove along.

We spent Sunday night in Montrose Colorado with another of Dan’s siblings, and then left Monday morning for Canon City.

Yes, Canon City, where I lived four years ago. Justin, Dan, Preston, and Stephy had a good friend at Bible School named Heather who is now living in Canon City also, so the main objective of the trip was to go see her.

That’s Heather on the exercise machine. They house we stayed at had exercise equipment that people would randomly use.

Dan and Preston were busy playing “four pics one word,” which is a smartphone app that we played relentlessly during this trip, everyone competing against each other by trying to see who could get furthest along in the game.

As I said, traveling with smartphones is not like traveling without smartphones.

Monday evening we just chilled. Justin took too mega-stuffed oreos and put them together into a mega-mega-stuffed oreo.

Tuesday we all headed to Colorado Springs and fulfilled a childhood dream: Visiting Whit’s end.

After that we went to the mall and tested mattresses.

Wednesday we went to this wild western restaurant way up in the hills. It was called the “General Store,” even though you couldn’t buy any general things there except things like general bacon and general eggs and general coffee, already prepared and ready to eat.

All the locals told us we had to eat there, and they also told us there were dogs in the restaurant.

Dogs in the restaurant? Hmm. I imagined that they would probably be running around under the table begging for spare scraps of bacon. Instead they were enclosed in a pen of sorts.

I kept waiting for one of the dogs to stand up and give a speech from that podium, but it never happened.

When I lived here, Skyline Drive was the thing to do on a Saturday night. After the resturant experience was over, we all headed to Skyline to see the view and take pictures.

Hey look, it’s me and Stephy and Heather and Colorado.

Justin and Stephy. How presh.

They told me that when they went to Bible School people thought they were dating.

I thought that was funny.

They’re actually brother and sister.

Just so you know.

Heather insisted that we must experience the redneck bliss that is “subbing.”

Subbing is driving along back mountain roads in a suburban with the top cut off.

Despite Heather’s enthusiasm in this picture…

…she’s not a fan.

I put a scarf over my ears to keep them warm.

“You look like a woman riding in a convertible in the 50′s,” said Stephy.

“You look like Thelma and Louise,” said Dan.

(Later I dreamed that my sister Amy and I were Thelma and Louise in a magical green car from the 50′s.)

The back country roads took us to this little Wild West town full of casinos.

As far as I could gather, it was once a mining town, which became a ghost town because it was in such a remote area. Wanting to revive the town and preserve its history, Colorado voted to let it have casinos.

We didn’t go into any casinos. We just walked around admiring the historical buildings, ate lunch, and then went subbing back home.

I took a nap, and missed the great excitement that ensued when Preston found a scorpion crawling on him.

Stephy decided to fly to Ohio and see her boyfriend instead of driving home with us. So Thursday morning everyone else took Stephy to the airport while I hung out with people I’d known when I lived in Colorado.

That evening we left to go home.

The ride back was very uneventful. We drove straight through the night, so I slept a lot of the time, and when I wasn’t sleeping we occupied ourselves by listening to Odyssey.

And then, as soon as I got home Spring term started and I didn’t find time to post a bevy of pictures until now.

But now they are posted.

And I hope you are satiated.

The van sways, and I hear a crinkle as Dan opens another energy drink. Justin shifts in his seat. I hope he can sleep. I hope Preston can sleep, in his cramped seat, only partially reclined because Justin sits behind him.

I wish I could sleep.

I have the entire back bench to myself, and slept delightfully for the first few hours. Every time I woke up there was a soothing melody on the radio to lull me back to sleep. “Forget what we’re told, before we get too old,” and then I’d dose off again.

Then I got a backache. Maybe the seat belt buckle was digging into my back for too long. I tried to ignore the pain, but I cannot fall back to sleep.

I sit up, doing strange silent stretches to ease sore muscles. We are in the wilderness, surrounded by giant hills lit up in the moonlight.

I look carefully at the moon, trying to see a face.

On Monday, Dan insisted that there was a face on the moon, that he’d always been able to see it.

“You can see anything on the moon if you look hard enough,” said Justin, laughing.

“No, I’m serious, it’s there,” said Dan.

We shook our heads and laughed.

Later, as we were walking into Walmart, I saw Dan looking intently at his phone, then at the moon, then back at his phone. He stepped sideways suddenly, still looking at the moon, and crashed into me.

“Woah,” I said. “What are you doing?” I looked at his phone, which had a picture of a white circle with three black spots.

“I’m trying to draw the face on the moon,” said Dan.

Now, at four thirty in the morning, I try to recall Dan’s picture as I look at the moon. Ah! There they are, the three black dots that could be eyes and an open mouth. I wonder why I’ve never seen this before.

We round a corner, and suddenly, instead of moonlit hills, I see a valley filled with city lights. Just like that, wilderness to civilization. In my euphoric tired-but-awake state of mind, the scene is doubly breathtaking.

Where are we? Are we out of Colorado? Are we in Utah? I scan road signs for clues, to no avail. I bet we’re in Utah. Utah roads stretch on forever, taking you everywhere. Driving through Utah makes me think of the words of Tolkien.

The road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the road has gone

And I must follow of I can

Pursuing it with eager feet

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet

And whither then? I cannot say.

The Goals:

1. To see their friends from Bible School, and my friends from when I lived out here.

2. To hang out in the Colorado sunshine and do whatever.

So far the plan has gone swimmingly, except for the fact that most of the hanging out has been in places with no wifi. I’ve been longing to post pictures.

That’s one thing I learned in my journalism class last term. Always post pictures on your blog. It makes it less boring.

Stephanie decided to be spontaneous and fly to Ohio today instead of driving home to Oregon with us. Her man lives in Ohio, in case you wondered why anyone would want to spontaneously fly there.

Everyone took her to the airport, but I stayed back, thinking I would visit my best friends from when I lived out here. I wanted to believe that I have very good directional skills, so I didn’t ask anyone how to get there. I just started walking.

I took several wrong turns, which was okay because the day was brilliant. When I finally made it to my friend’s house, I found that no one was home. I went inside anyway. The dog barked and growled at me for a while and then fell asleep. I got online.

And…I didn’t have my droid on me. My droid with all my pictures. So you’ll have to be satisfied with the two randoms I scavenged up.

On our way to Colorado we stopped in The Dalles. We went into an extremely bizarre thrift store, as you can see by the manikin shown in the above picture. The store was selling a book of beauty spells. I didn’t know such books existed outside of fairy tales.

In real life they’re creepy and occultic, not fairy-tale like. Just sayin.

Yesterday for breakfast we went way back in the boondocks to this wild west restaurant on a mountain. It was quite the place. There were dogs inside the restaurant, the coffee pot was 100 years old, and the couple who own the place sat down at our table and joined our conversation.

Preston and Justin sipping their coffee. Ironically, this restaurant was one of the few places we’ve been that’s had wifi.

That’s all for now, folks. Hopefully more pictures and stories will appear on Saturday.