When I was little my mother cleaned hotel rooms and my father pumped gas.
Consequently, I retain a visceral horror of making a mess in rented accommodation, and a profound fondness for hanging out at gas stations.
This week I’m lodging in the Women’s Faculty Club at Berkeley. Does this mean I am dining in the breakfast room, lounging around in the swanky parlor, or enjoying the gardens?
No. I am barricaded in my room, hiding from the housekeeping staff.
Regardless of how much my life changes, I feel like I should be working with my hands, not my head. I always feel seasick when I notice that I am no longer entitled to my place in the underclass.
Though I must admit that while I have anxiety about people cleaning my room, I am wildly amused and gleeful about lodging in the faculty club of a university I was not eligible to attend as a youngster.
The fact that I spent all of my high school years idling in a mix of remedial and vocational classes mattered not one bit in the larger schematic of this life.
A pox on the houses of all the small-minded small-town teachers who tried to convince me I was worthless and stupid as a disabled kid! Curses on the guidance counselors and professors who told me to drop out when I became a teenage mother!
While I am sufficiently contrary that I probably only bothered to accomplish half the shit I’ve engineered as an adult because nobody wanted me to succeed…. I remain appalled at all the needless trouble I had to wade through to get here.
