I'm trying to write a "personal Statement" for a graduate application. It's only supposed to be 1-2 pages, something I should be able to write in about...40 minutes, but for some reason, this has taken me about four weeks now, and I still don't have a clue where I'm going to start. What is it that makes this so much more difficult than any other essay? I never had so much difficulty with any of the scholarship essays I wrote, and it's basically the same thing. I'm supposed to tell them why they should accept me into the program--why I'm interested in English, what I've done to explore that interest, how I can add to the conversation...

I guess in some ways it's more like a job interview than anything else--an interview directed by the person who held the job initially, and knows precisely what it takes. Most of the scholarships I applied for were funded by people who had little idea what I would really be doing, and I could generalize my interests to the point that they sounded impressive without necessarily being concrete or realistic. It was like selling a new computer to 65-year-old woman who couldn't tell a mac from a pc. Now it's like my customer is computer science major, working for Intel, and no matter what I say, I'm bound to embarrass myself.

Drug Testing for Tots

I suppose, before I go any further, I should clarify that the drug testing was for the sake of the tots. No children were harmed, I mean tested, in the making of this blog.

Today I attended an orientation for certificated substitute teachers in the Alvord Unified School District. I received my invitation to said orientation almost two weeks ago by email, and was informed that if I did not RSVP by December 5th, no materials would be prepared for me. Not wanting such a calamity to occur (by not occurring), I replied to the email immediately. When I arrived at 8:15 this morning, I was pleased to see that no materials had in fact been prepared for me.

The oversight was quickly corrected, and soon, after climbing over a pair of particularly pointy pair of stilettos, I found myself tucked snugly into a third-row seat in a sea of prospective subs. I then proceeded to wait for the program to begin...

In the meantime (that is one work I really don't understand. How could time conceivably be considered mean? Apparently few other people have ever wondered this, because I just searched it every way I know how, and came up with nothing other that that the term originates from the 14th century. Also, Greenwich Mean Time is a time zone (?) in Europe. Or something like that.)I filled out an application, a fingerprint order form, and a packet of other forms, read through the entire "Certificated Substitute Teacher Handbook", and texted everyone in my phone who I knew would respond in a timely manner. Around 9:40, a woman came in with two boxes: one filled with red booklets and the other with cleaning supplies (comet, windex, etc.). The woman was introduced as the risk manager for the district, and after asking us to read several pages from the booklet, she told us not to do stupid things (like stand on chairs with wheels, especially in heels), then showed us a video about blood-borne pathogens.

For those of you who don't know what those are, they are diseases communicable only through blood or genital fluids. That's right, we were getting a lecture on how not to contract AIDS from our students. The film, made circa 1990 (I'm guessing because a doctor in one segment alluded to the 80s as a bygone era of medical insecurity, but the clothing could not possibly be any newer than '91.), advised us that, because it is impossible to tell who has a disease and who does not, we should assume that everyone is carrying a communicable disease of some kind and thus, we should keep our distance at all times. If a child begins to bleed, for whatever reason, we are admonished to stay far away, throw the child a towel, and run for our lives.

Next, we sat. For a long time. While we waited to be fingerprinted. The video could not have been more than 20 minutes long, and maybe the "risk manager" talked for about as long, so that's about 40 minutes worth of "productive meeting time. The remainder of my 5 hour stay at the office was spent texting everyone I knew who would possibly respond to me in the mid-morning/early afternoon.

After that, I finally got to go to the Occupational Medicine center for my free drug screening. There, after being warned about the potential hazards children posed on my health, all of my belongings were taken from me and locked in a small white box, as I was lead into a sinkless bathroom, in which the toilet tank had been sealed shut, and handed a little plastic container and told, "I'll need about half a cup," as if I could simply tell my body how much urine was necessary and it would oblige...

When I'd been given back my things and allowed to wash my hands, I decided that the world is a menace to itself. No one is safe. If you don't already have Tuberculosis, Hepatitis, or HIV, and are not under the influence of some illicit substance, the world is poised, ready to infect you at any moment. So do yourself a favor, and take the path of Universal Precaution, because you never know when a child is around the corner waiting to bleed on you or stick you with a needle.

April is the Cruelest Month?

My mother has always been a tad idealistic. She’s a sucker for multi-level marketing (a euphemism for pyramid schemes if you ask me—if there is a significant difference, please let me know) and when those are in short supply, she’s got a closet-full of fall-back entrepreneur plans. She’s been a seamstress since I can remember, probably since she can remember. She’s made wedding cakes and wedding dresses, taught cake decorating, worked in a hair salon, sold legal insurance, painted pottery, run a store in our front room (Becky’s Unique Boutique), and she’s always wanted to own a restaurant or bakery. Above all, she is a firm believer that she can do anything she puts her mind to, so long as she can keep her mind there long enough to do it.

In the case of my name, this belief held true. Three years before I was born, as the story is told, my mother decided that she wanted a baby girl born in April, named April Rose, and her mind was set on it. Knowing you were a planned baby is worse, in some ways, than knowing you were an accident, I think. My mother once told me that on the night of my conception, she and my dad were fighting, but she had a plan and she had to carry it through. I could have been spared that story. The doctors induced labor on April 1^st, April Fool’s Day, and I literally flipped. I was breech, and was born by cesarean the next day.

While my mother was healing from the surgery, my father was left to fill out the birth certificate, and a few days later I left the hospital as Mary Elizabeth Osborn. Her plan, so carefully undertaken, and successful up until the moment that the pen hit that paper, had been shattered. I can imagine the disgust she must have felt when she found out. What I can’t imagine is how my father didn’t know that I was supposed to be named April. If she had really been planning for three years, it doesn’t seem possible that she could have forgotten to mention the fact. Did they never discuss my name before my mom went into the hospital? Or, more abhorrent, did my father know and name me Mary anyway? My parents were divorced about three and a half years later, and I can’t help but think that this mishap, whether oversight or intentional insult, was an early indication of what was coming.

When they went to pick my sister, Lisa, up from Brownies later that week, the pre-pubescent girls gathered around me, prodding me with their sticky little fingers, and one of the girls inevitably asked my name. That’s when my mother finally burst into tears as she wailed, “Mary!”

Mary’s not a terrible name. I’ve known a Mary or two in my lifetime, and without exception I’ve found them to be more than passably pleasant. But I am not a Mary. After the Brownies outburst, my mom and dad went back to the hospital and changed the name on the birth certificate. Mom and Dad compromised, perhaps one of the last compromises in their failing marriage, and I now bear the name April Elizabeth Osborn.

I hated the name April as a kid—though not as much as I secretly, quietly disdained the name Mary. I hated that it’s the name of a month, and that the first thing most people ask when they learn my name is “Were you born in April?” and that the first thing they ask when they find out that I was, in fact, born in April is “Is that why your parents named you April?” I hated it when boys chanted “April is a fool!” every April first while I was in elementary school.

But the name’s grown on me. Twenty-plus years will do that for you. In my sophomore year of college, when I started speaking Spanish with one of my roommates, it was only natural for my name to become Abril, which flows better in Spanish than the English version. It was only after being called this for a year that I realized an old friend who had autographed a shirt for me once had made it out to Aprile, not misspelling my name, but translating it to Italian, his language of preference. My affection for my name, and by extension for my mother, has grown with my realization of its versatility.

According to an online encyclopedia (Wikipedia), “The derivation of the name (Latin Aprilis) is uncertain,” it could mean “to open,” alluding to springtime, or it could be derived from Aphrodite since it is traditional to name months after gods.

So I could be one who opens, or one who is open, to situations or people. By definition I cannot be closed-minded. I cannot dress in black too often, as this would go against the illusion to springtime, and I cannot be completely and utterly plain as my name is related to the goddess of love, lust, and beauty. But there is uncertainty in the derivation, so I could be all of the above, and if I were, would it be surprising? If I were a gothic girl of less than average beauty and singularly stubborn in my views, would anyone look twice? Would anyone look once? Or would they all look the other way? Would it all make more sense if my name were Mary?

I’m none of these. Or at least, I like to think that I’m not. I dress in gray more often than black, but pink, blue, and even green, all have a place in my closet. I won’t pretend to have the beauty of Aphrodite, but I do pride myself in my openness. But until I wrote this essay, I never associated that pride with my name, nor do I really now. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that if my mother had been a little less emotional, if she hadn’t cared quite so much, or if my father had been a little more stubborn, I might have turned out a completely different person. When friends hear this story for the first time, they screw up their faces and say “you don’t look anything like a Mary,” whatever that means. If the story were reversed, they would probably say the same thing about April, and I have to wonder whether Mary would have molded to me, or I to Mary. But at the end of the day, I’m just me.

(April 2008)

The Origins of my Borrowed Views

There is very little original thought on this planet, and I do not claim to be the possessor of any of it. That being the case, it is highly unlikely that anything I say here hasn't been said before. I am absolutely certain that, even as I am writing this, someone somewhere has thought the exact same thing. Therefore, to avoid any possible copyright infringement/plagiarism, I hereby acknowledge that my thoughts are not my own but are a compilation of the thoughts of others which I have heard, processed, and regurgitated as they appear here. To the original owners of these thoughts (including those which have yet to be written, or even thought, by me): I both pay you homage and ask for your apologies. Hopefully more of the prior and less of the former, but as my thoughts have yet to be recorded, it's difficult to tell just now.