The Rules of Unneccessary Freak-Outs

Since our friend Tropical Storm Edouard completely ruined my beach plans, I am left to sit here in my living room, complain about a blister, and ponder the human tendency to FREAK OUT. Good old Edouard has reminded me of another tropical acquaintance I once had, Hurricane Rita, circa 2005. Rita showed me what happens when the world freaks out. For those of you who may not be familiar with that yet, this is what happens: People wait in a 2 mile long line to get a tank of gas, pay $20 for bottled water, and wait in traffic moving at the pace of 2 feet/min. All in all, most of this turned out to be completely unnecessary. The hurricane proved not even strong enough to propel my brother’s skateboard-kite hybrid and all those who ended up stranded on I-45, with no gas, felt like suckers for missing a 6 day vacation. Granted, Hurricane Katrina had just happened so nerves were a little on edge, but then again New Orleans’ peripheral looks like a contact lens. So anyway, this left me with my first rule of freaking out:

Freaking out when a hurricane is coming and you live in a bowl: OK

Freaking out when a hurricane is coming and you live on a cookie sheet: not OK

Moving on to example 2 of the freak out instinct. This morning during my scholarly scour of the Houston Chronicle, I came across a peculiar showcase of human nature, “145 Die in Northern India During Stampede at Shrine.” My first thought: Whoa. I guess those cows aren’t so sacred after all. But upon further examination, I realized this was not a stampede of cows or other such quadrupeds, but of HUMANS. A HUMAN stampede killed 145 people. That’s 29 basketball teams, or 20 mini vans, or 5 classrooms of kids, or in other words a LOT of people. Apparently, a rumor quickly spread that there was a landslide so the Hindus visiting this shrine (located on a cliff) went completely berserk. People were pushed off the edge and/or trampled resulting in the deaths of mostly women and children. (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5922320.html or for a similar story see Alma 30:59) But in the end, the only avalanche was the one of panicked pilgrims trying to run away. It’s shocking to think this many people died because of . . . nothingness really. So here’s rule 2 of freaking out:

Freaking out when you may trample small Indian children: not OK

Freaking out when you may trample apostates named Korihor: OK

All this caused me to reflect on freaking out in my personal life. Apparently, it’s something I do often. However, I feel my occasional hyper ventilations are very often deserved (i.e. anytime I’ve had to go ice skating) and in the end, when I realize the problem was nowhere near as big as I made it to be, it was much easier to deal with (except for ice skating, that’s still a big problem). So I suppose hear is my final rule of freaking out:

Freaking out when it results in death, destruction, carnage, chaos, paranoia, etc: not OK

Freaking out when it results in anything else but the previously mentioned problems: OK!!!

Or at least in my personal, prone-to-freak-out, opinion :)

just a thizzle my nizzle: an only slightly hypocritical essay on pop culture

I, very unoriginally, have an obsession with black people. Especially the thug/life-50 cent type. The affinity for the Afro crowd is so cliché I almost considered giving it up at one point. But this phenomenon spreading through white middle class suburbia is hard to resist. For some reason, me and my peers are always trying to one up each other on our street cred (of which we really have none) and become more like our brothaz [sic]. It’s all fun and games when we jam Young Jeezy and strive to use “gat” in regular conversation, but I’m beginning to think this perceived cultural appreciation is simply racism in modern form.

Even now, I’m not sure what is that intrigues me exactly, but I can trace my slighted obsession back to the day I left Houston, TX. Absence makes the heart grow fonder: a truth I learned while immersed in white bread Thousand Oaks, CA. My love became absolute when I announced at a Young Women’s sleepover that I “really liked black people” and then the super cool Mia Maids delivered an issue of Slam magazine to my house. Moving back to Houston I went to a school with a 30% minority population, at least according to shoddy yearbook facts (they also claimed we only had 200 Asians . . . right . . .) I learned true R.E.S.P.E.C.T. when I got shoved by a shorty in the hallway for moving too slow. I learned there was one corner of the courtyard you just didn’t stand in unless you wanted to get doghoused (definition still unknown). What I never learned, however, was whether these people created the stereotypes or the stereotypes created them. It was hard for me to think anything but the former, when girls like Ufoma and Shameeqwa* wore their “apple bottom jeans and the boots with the fur” to class and made consistent C’s.

Enter Marti, a fellow coworker during my summer of temporary employment. Marti was an older black lady who liked to talk. She started her life story by relating to me how she’d been on food stamps, was currently on disability pay from the government, and had no husband. Just as my eyes started to glaze over, thinking that I’d heard this sob story before and it probably had something to do with the giant sitting in the room named Race, Marti’s story took a different toll. She had a college degree, was a Republican (gasp), liked to read Greek philosophy, and had previously been an international government employee until congestive heart failure and a run-out husband (who was white) left her broke. Marti started talking about how disappointed she was in her daughter: a musical genius, soccer star, and young mom who was throwing it all away to make it as a rapper. She wished her daughter would stop speaking “ebonics” and start speaking English. And this got me thinking. Maybe I’d got that chicken—and—egg situation mixed up after all. Maybe the stereotypes were creating the people. It’s not so hard to believe, since every time I turn on the radio I am reminded that “shorty wants a thug” or that it’s normal to “bag you like some groceries” (ew, seriously, who gets away with saying that? Answer: Young Jeezy, who is one of my least fav people ever). I can only imagine that some of my fellow classmates at Klein High were acting the way they had been indoctrinated to, through what they voraciously defended as their “culture”.

So here’s my point: kudos to all those who use rap as an art form and not as a way to capitalize off an already downtrodden ethnicity. Because ever so quickly the “culture” of thugs, drugs, and ho’s is finding its way into white mainstream America where it may permanently settle down. Can’t we embrace the culture that is actually culture? Like, I’m thinking, Diana Ross, Langston Hughes (my favorite poet to date, which is only partially due to the fact that his poems are short), Miles Davis, Scott Joplin, and even Talib Kweli (a cut above the rest of the rappers, in my opinion)?

In the words of my aforementioned favorite poet:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America

*names have NOT been changed