Adapted Learning Inability

I'm sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for someone to be done with a check-up.

In the waiting room with me is a little girl.

She can't be more than eight years old.  Her hair is messy, and her clothes don't match.  She's sitting on her mother's lap with her knees up to her chin and her arms around her legs, asking questions about the things she sees on the TV screen.  The pictures, the people, the products in commercials, anything she has the slightest bit of curiosity about.

This morning, in my psychology class, my teacher said something in his welcome speech that caught my attention.

He said that he was afraid for college students. 

Picture borrowed from lifeatdrtoms.blogspot.com

He had a fear that we had lost our desire to learn, that all those years of homework in subjects we had little interest in made us loose our imagination, our curiosity to discover what we do not yet know and our excitement to find the solutions.

And he’s right to worry, you know.

How many of us open a Biology book and think, THIS is going to be FUN.

... Not many.  We look at the bolded words scattered around the pages and think damn... I have a lot of flashcards to make.  Or how long is studying for this final going to take me.

We no longer hang our papers with good scores on the fridge at home, or rush off the bus to show our parents our report cards.  A lot of us just aren’t excited about learning anymore.  Somewhere in our twelve years or general education before college we had the passion sucked right out of us.

In college, it is hard to get excited about learning a subject that doesn’t pertain to your major without thinking “this is not how I wanted to waste 2 grand or two hours of my time." But every part of the world around us really SHOULD interest us. We have the opportunity to slow down our busy lives and take a good look at the different aspects within it; be it plants, rocks, literature, art, biology, or human anatomy.  And that is rare and is something we should enjoy. 

So why do we look at learning as more of a chore as we get older?  Why do we loose our interest in gaining all the useless facts and knowledge we can?

I think it’s safest to say that college kids run on caffeine and energy drinks and usually work two or three jobs. That leaves just enough energy to do as little work in school as we can get by with doing, while still recieving passing grades.

This is the only class I have where the professor encouraged us to act half our age.

I hope there are crayons and water coloring activities involved... I’ll have to check my syllabus.

Strangers

"I couldn't help but think to myself, just how much I love strangers sometimes."

A house has been left in my care for this past week. When I stopped by today I received quite the shock; there was a truck and trailer in the driveway, the garage was open and a man was walking around in the yard.

I wasn't sure what to do.

I walked slowly up the driveway with the mail and accidently scared the daylights out of him. I said hello and I introduced myself as the person watching the house. He said hello and introduced himself as the guy working on the house. I laughed and said it was nice to meet him. He returned the gesture.

I decided he was potentially harmless and went inside with lunch I had brought. I thought about how cold he'd looked working out there. I remembered how my mom used to make lemonade and bring it out to the guys who worked on our roof during the summer. I dug through the pantry till I found hot chocolate mix, whipped up a big glass, and took it out to him.

He looked shocked, but took it and thanked me. He took a big gulp, re-thanked me, and went back to work.

I went back inside. While I was feeding the pets I thought about how he might be lonely working outside by himself and decided I'd shovel the driveway again and give him some company.

I put all my gear on and went outside. I shoveled in silence for a little while, until he came back around to the front of the house. He laughed at me and said I was going a little above the call of duty. I l told him I was just trying to do a good job. We got to talking while we worked.

People cease to amaze me.

His name was Steve; he said it was an old-fashioned name because nobody is named Steve anymore. He's on his second failed marriage; both times his wives cheated him on. One wife was a traveling salesmen, and he told me that's the number one career known for un-faithful spouses.

He stopped at one point, he looked really embarrassed and said it was weird to talk with a complete stranger about something so personal, but also that people had told him talking about it would help. I told him that I didn't mind listening, and that sometimes complete strangers are the best people to talk to simply because they've no right to judge you and they don't know who you are.

He considered this and went on.

He finds himself now a single dad with two sons, one nineteen years old, and one eleven. He moved back to the cities to be around family for the support during the divorce. He had lived in Hawaii when he was nineteen, and said that he hates the cold so much that he has no idea why he ever moved back.

"Stay in school," he told me. He dropped out and became a carpenter, and he regrets it now. He likes knowing how to do all different kinds of things though, and when he is sent to a job they don't even tell him what it is he will be doing till he gets there.

I told him my plans for the future, how I wanted to go into interior design and architecture. For a little while he even let me follow him around. He showed me what he was doing on the house and how it all worked with the electric boxes and bricks. It was cool to shadow someone who works by hand with the things you may one day be designing.

He kept telling me I was going over the top taking care of the house. And when I started scraping off the car in the driveway he just shook his head and laughed. I explained my situation and how I was trying to kind of impress the people whose house I was looking after. How I figured going over and above the job given sometimes does the trick.

I stayed out there while he was packing up the trailer, fiddling with things in the garage till he was done. I wanted to give him a proper goodbye.

"Well Aimee, it was very nice to meet you."

I shook his hand and said it was nice to meet him too. He told me I shouldn't try so hard to impress people, that he thought I had a "good heart," and that I'd go far in life just being me.

I told him that I hoped everything going on in his life would get better; he said he believed it would all pan-out eventually.

Then, he got in his truck, and began backing out. I took his empty hot chocolate cup and headed inside. I couldn't help but think to myself, just how much I love strangers sometimes.

I don't think people understand my reasoning for wanting to be a bartender. I want to be the girl in the old movies that hands a beer to a customer and asks him why he looks so down. I want to lean with my elbows on the counter in my band T-shirt and my face in my hands and listen as he tells me his stories. I love being that person, that just listens without giving advice no one plans on following. Because sometimes advice isn't what people want. And half the time they wont follow it anyways. 

They just want somebody to listen to them. Without judging who they are. And today just further confirmed that desire. I never mentioned those plans to Steve, but I feel he'd have understood during our chat this afternoon.  It's funny, how a complete stranger can se more promise in you, and believe in you more than those that you've known your whole life.  The ones you expect that 'support' from. 

An afternoon well spent.

If I Had A Million Dollars

In the song the artists list-off houses, cars, outrageous animals and other things they would purchase or give away had they the money to do so.  They sound like grownup kids in a candy shop, with a million dreams to match every dollar.

I work, as most know, at an SA gas station in a smaller town and we sell lottery like the stars come out at night.  There's a flashing neon sign in our store window that runs the amount of each jackpot every few minutes. 

Work is really slow, in fact I'm writing this on my break as we speak, and I caught a glimpse that one jackpot, the Mega Millions, is up to 290 million dollars.

290 mill!  A week or so ago a customer told me that someone in New York had won 16 million on that same lottery.

I started thinking about purchasing a ticket myself.  What would I do with all that money though?  Business is slow and ideas began popping into my head.  
They say money changes a person.  We've all heard the stories of past lottery winners; quitting their jobs, retiring early to a private beach and then ending up in some dramatic scandal due to greed taking over their better judgment.  
Well, there's those people and then there's the little old couple in Idaho that wins a couple million and donates as much as they can to charities, while keeping there jobs and living a comfortable, humble life.

So what would you, or anyone do, with that kind of money? 

I know so many people with financial problems; loosing jobs, not being able to afford school, housing foreclosures, etc.  
I know someone who can't even afford his or her own divorce.  With our national debt and the economy down the toilet it's about all we seem to be able to think about.  People are more cautious about swiping that credit card. I know for a while I handed mine to my mother and told her not to give it back to me out of a streak of self-discipline.

I have a few ideas, of what I would do with such money.  People like using the phrase "If only," and I've remembered some things they have told me they’d like had they the money for it.

I would help my mother get somewhere warm, because the cold makes it hard for her to breathe.

I would give my dad any tools he needed to start-up his own computer business.  He's always wanted to be his own boss.

I would buy my friend Annie her own helicopter, because she's wanted to be a pilot since she was eight years old.

 I would buy my ex boyfriend the nicest, fastest car I could find.  I remember once when he told me that if he had a nice car he would be happy, because it's all he really ever wanted.

I would help pay for my friend Tyler’s college education, so he could get out of his house and start life on his own without the worry of debt.

I'd pay off my friend Jess's school loans, so she could start her life with her boyfriend comfortably.

I'd buy Lizzy a hamster, with an awesome wall-to-wall crawling cage, just because she's always wanted one.

I'd buy my sister Megan a dog or two, and donate some money to the human society in hope that it’d solve all animal cruelty problems and those sad commercials wouldn’t show up on my TV screen anymore.

I would help my friend Aaron start and design his own coffee shop… he’s a little addicted to the magic bean (:

And for myself, well I've always dreamed of traveling the world.  I'd pay off my college loans before bringing my boyfriend, and best freind, Peter, with me, to see the seven new and old wonders of the world together. 

 It would be great to win that 290 million, to think of all the things I could do.  Those are just a few of the things I’d do first.  
The things I really want, money, of course, can't buy me; new bones and lungs for my grandma, or a time machine to take me back with all the knowledge I have today. 

So what would you do, if you won all that money?  Is it really that easy to solve our problems, and the problems of the people we know?  For the longest time I've stood by the fact that money cannot buy happiness, and I continue to believe that. True, your life would be easier.  But most people's problems aren't about material objects, those objects just act as a comfort.  And as far as happiness goes, it's human nature to always want more than we can have.

I'll admit... I'm probably going to end up buying one or two tickets before I leave work today.  But for those of you that are mentioned in this blog, if I win the 290 million dollar jackpot, you be sure to keep me to my word.