I have no excuse. The Sugar Free Red Bull has been calling my name and I have been answering. It calls me a Weak Ass Dirtbag and I have no ability to resist its call and buy a four-pack. It doesn’t leave my teeth feeling sugary and gritty, it gives me some much needed ZING! and it tastes like a Jolly Rancher. But, why does it have to cost so much and call me names and taste so good? I am powerless to her temptress ways.

A while ago I had agreed to write for BlogRhet mostly because I would do just about anything for Joy of GingaJoy and because that site has some provocative writings by both authors and commentors alike. You need time to read it because you’ll want to get all wrapped up in what everyone is saying, but since my time is incredibly limited, I’ll be glad to get my own writing out this week.

It is amazing to be in this position I’m in. Both in writing and in life. Much of the time I’m in unexpected positions with strangers who don’t know nor do they recognize me as a person of color. More often than not, people of color know. Also, more often than not it is people of Caucasian decent who utter those words that make me cringe, close my eyes, and count to 10: I’m not racist, I have black friends!

Lately, in my dealings with parents (both black and white) I am confronted with finding a way to reach them. It’s not easy to hear things about your children that are unfavorable, but just this morning a white mother and her son came to see me to talk about his getting picked on and jumped by a couple of younger kids and he felt the need to say to me: I have a friend in P.E. who is nice to me. Nick. Black Nick. Do you know him? (We have 1300 students)

Well, no. I don’t know every black person, honey.

His mother sensed the discomfort I felt with that statement and chimed in.

Oh, we’re not racist. That’s just the way he is trying to tell you that this kid is black.

Yes, I realize that. I just don’t know why that fact is important. He got jumped by two kids. Neither one was black and we’re here to talk about his getting beat up.

Other situations are downright fascinating because of what I’m learning. Mostly, it’s the language of black folk. Now, I can turn in on and hang with just about anybody no matter their color. Sometimes, my job necessitates that I let the kids know I am an adult who cares and wants to relate to them without bringing myself to their adolescent levels. Saying “ain’t” isn’t in my vernacular, but I use it when I choose.

Recently, I’ve worked with a teacher who gave out Grammar Citations to students who used that and other abominations to the Pure English Language, but I vehemently disagreed with that. Slamming the language of a people by delivering holier-than-thou writ is not the way to show students the language that is acceptable in the working world. It can be done better than that. Telling students that “What works in the world of Work must be practiced in the world of School” has gotten me farther than I could have imagined.

Slang of the young has a curious fascination for me. Some of my favorites are “Get my name out your mouth”, “He be mean muggin’ me” and the one that always gets a raised eyebrow, “You better get him” are the colorful phrases I hear on a daily basis. Get him? And then what? Kiss him? Slap him? What do you want me to do after I “get” him? Usually, they calm down enough to smile when I say that. I know I’ve been included in their lives, however, when they call me “Fam”. Yo, listen up, fam, I ain’t do nothin’ to that girl. That teacher ain’t telling the whole story, Fam.

I envy their creativity and their innovation to dream up such phrases. I yearn for that ease with which they pronounce their expressions.

Yet, even in their discourse, I see a division. It’s in the lunch room, too. There are things which we cannot control and if the black kids want to sit with the black kids and the white kids want to sit with the white kids there’s not much else to do. Surely, they see it and surely they feel it, but we won’t force it.

These divisions are too big for me at times. Digesting the way kids talk, the way adults treat one another and teach their children to do the same, watching as society plays out in the classroom - it’s too much at times. Breaking them off in smaller chunks is the only way I can do that. Doing that requires my daily discourse to be open and hear things and that is sometimes an awful lot of patience.

Recently, it just required me to read something beautiful that the equally beautiful and talented MeL wrote to me that I cannot keep to myself.

And of all things, I’m watching “Beauty Shop”. And the girls are getting all “Amen” on Maya A. and Alicia Silverstone chimes in and they look at her like she just called out the girls on the plantation.

And here’s the point on it all.

I dawned on me. Here’s the thing.

The thing about me. About some other white-as-wonder-bread girls I know.

We’re of a generation that learned history, and some of us looked back with a little discernation. And I look at the black women. The powerful, beautiful women I know. And I don’t know what it feels like to come from where they from or have their history - their ancestry. But I can look at it, detached from it as I am detached from the slave-owning ancestors (or the polygamous ones from my mormon heritage for that matter) and I’m detached from it all. But where I see no beauty, nothing to be proud of in so much of my own heritage … I see the beauty in the heritage of the black woman - of their ancestors who survived, who overcame. I envy that. I envy the power of the struggle, the pride of the win.

The only thing in my own heritage that gives me any of that for myself? Yeah, got that from watching “Iron Jawed Angels” on HBO. If that’s not sad.. well. That IS sad, so there you go.

You talked lately (recently?) shit too many beers, y’all. About race. About the very quiet crickets on it sometimes.

So here’s my scoop. I’m timid to talk about it, but if I did.. it would be to say that it is beautiful. That when Maya says “and Ain’t I a woman?” I want to shout an AMEN to the heavens, but the freckles on my pink face remind me that the pride is not mine. Reminds me that all I have is generations of relatively priviliged whiteness where a few of the folks committed themselves to a life of cultish misery.

So here it is. I fear the black woman, because she has a power I know nothing about. She has an inner strength that I spend hours in therapy looking for. She lets her “FUCK YOU” flag fly, and while she pays the price for it in “those” looks and the knowing glances of the shitheels in the room, I wish I could at least fake confidence at least half as well as she does. Because she hides her insecurity and puts that strong chin up, while I’m off in the fetal position in full view in the corner.

Forgive any half-drunken missteps, I admit my ignorance wholeheartedly. But there’s pride there, and I wish I had it. It’s beautiful, it’s strong. It bears the beautiful badges of suffering - that which makes all women beautiful - but it wears it in a way my baggy eyes and worn out body has not yet managed. The pride. In my upbringing, pride was a sin. As an adult, I am learning that pride is a virtue. Who knew?

I couldn’t have said it better, Fam.

No one could possibly recreate the day I’ve had, not even in an After School Special. Not a Lifetime movie. Dare I say that not even a musical or Elizabethan tragedy could encompass the weirdness and oddities of what I come in contact with?

Yes, I dare.

I think I need to work on my Quiet Place or Happy Place or Zen because that whole “I can add to the lives of children everywhere (echo: where! where! where!)” is taking a toll on me. Mostly in the now common DOES ANYONE HAVE CHOCOLATE OR COCAINE IN THEIR POSSESSION THAT I COULD BORROW? moments I’ve been experiencing in the late afternoon.

I would settle for a nap, I suppose.

Best to sum up some highlights to explain:

6:20 am Still drifting in and out of sleep and hoping it’s not time to get up.

6:50 am Question myself with my eyes still closed. Is it time to get up? Should I open one eye?

6:55 am Scream at myself in my head, Damnit all to hell and back! When did morning come?

7:00 am Jump in the shower while yelling for someone to let Lola outside to pee.

7:20 am Dry off after shower and remember it’s time to see the gynecologist today.

7:20:03 am Return to shower to shave my legs. For the gynecologist.

8:45 am Hand out wrong packets of test information to teachers in team meeting. Vow to fix it for them and not repeat at Tuesday’s meeting of another group of team teachers.

9:10 am Listen to my first freshman student tell me she is pregnant. Remember vividly how this went for me as a freshman.

9:20 am Want to slap pregnant freshman’s mother for telling her she has today to “make a decision”. Begin to be very grateful for how this went for me as a freshman. Cry anyway. Decide not to return her to In House Suspension where she was kicked out for resting her head on her desk because there are bigger issues in this kid’s life than being in In House today. Cry again as she walks away from me.

10:45 am Leave school to make shaving my legs worthwhile at the doctor’s office.

11:00 am Realize I have wrong insurance card. Watch the Barefoot Contessa make this while sitting in the waiting room. Wonder if I have coconut at home. Remember that my mom is making fried green tomatoes, acorn squash and chili for dinner at my house. Gain 5 pounds right there prior to getting on scale at doctor’s office.

11:10 am Love dearly the new nurse in the office who doesn’t ask, “Do you need to empty your bladder?” when I walk in the room. She has a Tennessee-South Carolina-North Carolina hybrid accent that I’m digging and ask her about when she asks me, “Honey, do you nigh-eed to pee?”

11:13 am Wonder how I grew 3/4 of an inch since my height was measured last year. Contemplate the freak of nature I must be to do that in my 30s.

11:20 Pick up the Complimentary Waiting Room Copy of WebMD with Andy Garcia on the cover. Fan self. Try not to think of Andy while waiting in my paper gown.

11:24 am Stare at ceiling and think of Coconut Cake recipe I’m going to try. Flashes of Andy and the Barefoot Contessa force me to shake my head to rid self of such thoughts together in this awkward position.

11:30 am Watch as doctor takes my new Rx over to the chair where, yes, my panties and bra are ON TOP OF MY CLOTHES and set the prescription right in the left cup of my bra. Shake head to self because I’m mildly amused at this.

11:40 am Fully dressed and getting the standard report from doctor which includes him saying that I’ll need a mammogram in the next 4 years but not because he found anything, just because of my age. Realize that my eyebrows are raised and allow him to fill in the gap with, “You look healthy, Kelly. No lumps. Really. You have average breasts.” Wonder why he continues to refer to them as average. No, they can’t make me french toast or play Heart and Soul on the piano, but I’d hardly call them average. Average, he said.

11:55 am Drive back to work scrutinizing my average breasts and wondering if I need to stop and pick up almond extract for that cake recipe. Decide that I need a mixer like the professionals use. A pink one. Just because. Know that it will remind me of my average breasts because it’s pink, like the Breast Cancer Awareness color.

12:00 pm until 3:10 Deal with student suspended for drugs, he-said-she-said crap, an almost fight, two angry parents, one student who is sad that I changed her schedule because she really liked the view (read: the cute boy who formally sat in front of her), fourteen students who were ok with their schedule changes, and the messiest desk I’ve ever had in my life.

It gets pretty routine and humdrum after that.

Mornings that begin like this require skinny sugar-free vanilla chai drinks from your local drive-through coffee shops. You know, the cute ones with artsy-fartsy stuff. That sell local art with their free trade coffee products. That trust you enough to say, “Hey. Just take the blueberry muffin today and pay tomorrow. I trust you.” This is what September brings. Trust in the coffee world.

I hope that I don’t spend all my time writing about my job, though it is far more jam-packed a position than I imagined. Whenever I get a new project or phone call my thoughts are, “Hmm. Am I in charge of this?” or “Do I go to this meeting?” or “I HAVE TO DO WHAT?” Each time, however, I am learning something new and get advice that I scribble on a notebook to remember later. Recently, I heard this advice that I’ve been applying to whatever person who crosses my path:

There is messy work in this work we do involving human beings, but we are in control of two things every day:

1. Who or what gets our energy.

and

2. Our attitude.

Also, this advice:

Don’t take your walkie-talkie in the bathroom with you when you have to pee because if you hit the button everyone will hear you.

There’s a lot of stuff brewing up here at Mocha Momma and I’m almost feeling like I need a staff. Writing gigs, coffee tawlks, getting invitations to be flown places and test drive cars (all kinds of WOWWEE going on in my brain with that one). Other stuff is trying out products and there are some awesome things I’m going to get to test out and see how I like it. Some of the more fascinating ones are of the photography nature and I’m working on building my knowledge of my camera and some of the gadgets that go with it.

Other products are web-based things that can help build revenue for this site (seriously, I will need a staff, people! Send resumes! Send pictures!) and I’m playing around with Photrade. I first heard about it at a dinner in Chicago with the founder, Andrew, and lately we’ve been “in talks” (Staff! Hurry! I’m using lingo!) about how to best use the site to benefit both parties.

Other things keeping me busy are the 3rd season of The Office, reading some great books that were suggested by some friends on GoodReads, and catching some cool stuff online.

So, stay tuned. There’s stuff in the works. There’s also going to be contests and prizes and who doesn’t love a prize? Besides that dork in your office who picks his nose when he thinks no one is watching and has created a Booger Shrine on his cabinet? Besides him? No one.