Why Teachers Should Eat Twinkies, and Begin Building Their Defense

Now that using my cellular phone in the car is illegal unless I succumb to the bluetooth brain tumor implant that allows me to drive and talk legally, I must find creative ways to curb the boredom caused by my commute.

Today, on my way to work, I counted exactly 651 For Rent and For Sale signs. On the reverse commute home, there were 667. This is approximately my credit rating, I think. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what my credit rating is. To be honest, I'm not sure I even know what a credit rating is, in the concrete noun sense. In other words, I wouldn't know a credit rating if it slapped me in the face.

I know how a credit rating is used: in order to judge the content of your character. In fact, I know by heart the credit rating of at least 24 out of 53 of my facebook friends. I know this because they have told me their credit ratings, reporting proudly 750s and 800s. (This information was unsolicited, and in one case listed as a status).

Now, after receiving gmails and facebooks from upstream-swimming friends my age in other parts of the country who are buying homes, the margins of my computer screen now assault me at every opportunity, telling me that I'm entitled to know my credit score online from a variety of reliable sources. The assumption behind this target marketing must be that I'm in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses relationship with my Facebook friends because I have congratulated them on their successes via these free services. However, the marketers are using a flawed assumption.

Instead of mimicking my friends, I embrace that they are often stronger swimmers than I. In addition to swimming upstream, they have the ability to thrive in both fresh and salt water. They are strong, adaptable, capable, FICA people, and I acknowledge that I can't compete with them. On a scale of 300 to 850, they are 800s to my 652. While I'd like to dismiss this measurement completely, I also have to acknowledge that in many cases, their FICA scores, while indeed meaningless, often parallel their virtue. I'd give them 800s too. They are virtuous, voting Democrats, who buy a series of Yoga classes, recycle, believe in public education (outside of LAUSD), and wear Che Guevara T-shirts. They are working very hard. They wake up early in the morning. They are on time.

It's easier for strangers to get my credit rating and purchase history than it is for them to access my academic transcripts, the latter of which are protected under the Buckley Amendment to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. An unofficial credit rating is free. An official academic transcript is $10 ($20 for rush orders), and available only to the student. This is true unless the student is "foreign," or a "suspected terrorist," in which case The Patriot Act trumps The Buckley Amendment.

California, as reported in the Sacramento Bee, is in danger of having its credit rating reduced from an A to an A-, blurring the boundary between credit and GPA, just when I was about to understand it, and further confounding my sense of "official" vs. "unofficial."

I'm ashamed to admit that ratings, in general, are too abstract for me. I am the type of eccentric who cashes her paycheck, and asks for it in one dollar bills. I like to touch the edges of objects, and have a hard time believing in something's officially exists unless there is a combination of logical and empirical evidence.

As an experiment last semester, my students were asked to cash three consecutive paychecks, and then compare how they spent their cash with how they spent three directly-deposited, consecutive, virtual paychecks. In every case, students held onto their cash more firmly than they held onto the abstract money spent on their debit cards.

At the Apple Store last February, I bought myself the requisite bluetooth device (which doesn't work). I tried to pay in cash, and six sales associates didn't know how to "process cash." They all used handheld, credit card scanning machines, and only the manager of the store had "Till Priviledges."

California is considering paying its workers in official IOUs, like they did in 1992, while under the leadership of Republican Governor Pete Wilson. Governor Schwarzenegger doesn't believe in excessive spending, excluding recall elections that cost an estimated 30-35 million. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, "the IOUs will look like regular state checks except they will be printed on darker green paper and bear the issue and maturity dates and the word 'registered.'"

A strange aside, did you know the former president and CEO of eBay, Republican Meg Whitman, is running for governor in 2010? Tangentially, Ronald Reagan believed that the only pure, objective way to be a civil servant was if you didn't need the salary. It kept you disinterested.

I Wish I Were a Chicken

On the Westside of Los Angeles, here's a view of what it was like when CNN announced Barack Obama as President Elect of the United States of America.

I was sitting in my friend Bryant's living room. He is the only person I know who is even-tempered enough to make a pot of chili on the day of this historic election. Bryant is also self-assured enough to not take the flake factor of Angelinos personally. While the majority of my friends were anxious, neurotic, sloppy, sleepless messes, Bryant described himself as "anticipatory." While the rest of us had become YouTube and Huffington Post junkies and were emailing each other frantic links at 3:30am with the word "scary" in the subject line, Bryant was calmly gathering information, interpreting date, and analyzing strategies. It is safe to say that Bryant is the Barack Obama of my small circle of friends- except that unlike what we know of Barack Obama, Bryant dressed as Sarah Palin for Halloween- and therefore, Bryant's house is just about the best place to watch the election.

In honor of the biggest economic crises since The Great Depression, he also served bathtub gin and government cheese.

There were signs of change early in the day. It was the first time in 15 years of voting that there had been a line at my polling place. A party guest admitted that this was his very first time voting, and he was in his 30's. I waited an hour and 45 minutes to vote, and was happy about it. I knew only one of my students would be voting for McCain, and that student claimed it was because he wasn't a "socialist."

Mostly we all thought Obama could win, and would. But in Los Angeles, there was still a lot of fear. Liberal Democrats have their own fear to contend with, mostly that perceptions of public opinion and actual public opinion change like how I've heard the weather changes in some other states. But after all, it was both windy and rainy in Los Angeles, could this be a harbinger of change in the rest of the country?

I arrived at Bryant's house at around 7pm (traffic, blah), and allowed my friends to update me on the recent predictions of blue and red states. Ohio... blue. Pennsylvania... blue.

"I told you Pennsylvania wasn't just filled with a bunch of racists," I defended my home state, proudly!

McCain couldn't win at this point. Why were we still so scared?

Then, that blinking noise came up on CNN that suggested another state was about to be called. (Everyone glanced at their iPhones first, to make sure it wasn't an incoming text message). We were all multi-tasking. Communicating with relatives and friends throughout the country, giving each other minute by minute updates, and factoids from the polls.

Obama was at just over 200 electoral votes at the time, and we all expected him to gather a few more right away. Instead "Barack Obama President Elect" flashed across the screen. We all looked at each other, and my girlfriend said, "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

People did it? The polls were accurate? Seriously. The United States really was ready for a change? Was a black man actually going to be the president. Was Barack Obama really the first BLACK PRESIDENT?!?!?! Was Michelle Obama going to be the first First Lady with an actual ass?

"I want to cry, but I can't," my girlfriend said. (Soon, she would, of course).

And then, it sunk in and we all went onto the balcony and started celebrating. Pouring Champagne. Toasting. Screaming. Neighbors coming outside is not a common thing in Los Angeles, and neither are pedestrians, and everyone was in the street screaming, "Oh my god! Oh my god!" And then (as is more typical in Los Angeles), the phone calls and text messages started flooding in, "OMG! OMG! OMG! We did it!"

Seriously? There would be no stealing this election? We didn't have to watch another excruciating manual recount?

And then, shortly after, I noticed that Bryant had stopped watching the television, and taken out his laptop computer. He was starting to gnaw on a hangnail with the intensity he usually reserves for an episode of So You Think You Can Dance, or Project Runway. Bryant was calculating. Strategizing.

And then, it hit me. Proposition 8. California's Ban on Gay Marriage Initiative. What was particularly disturbing about this conflict in California identity was not entirely (as the No on 8 people put it) "unfairness" or "wrongness" of changing the California Constitution to discriminate against Gays and Lesbians. That was both bad and obvious. However, the juxtaposition of Californian values in this election was particularly disturbing. Let's face it, Californians have always been contradictory in their legislation. After all, we have a governor who rides a private jet to Sacramento each day, yet purchases carbon credits to offset his footprint. Our education system went from among the best (and cheapest) in the country to one of the worst in a relatively short period of time, mostly because we hate property taxes. We have a public housing crisis, and hire taxicabs to drop our homeless off at Skid Row.

Sometimes, we're generous about immigration, touting slogans like "Legalize L.A." Other times, we're nearly fascist, threatening to throw illegal immigrants' children out of school entirely, or banning affirmative action in the name of equal rights.

So what was particularly disturbing about this day? California, like always, was a living contradiction.

Barack Obama's candidacy mobilized young voters, diverse voters (racially and socioeconomically). The voters were finally telling us that they were moving beyond race. This climate of hope and change, which is so exciting and promising, reminds me that Americans might have a future. Also (although I know it sounds cold), the racist politics and G.O.P. values may finally be dying out and being replaced with a more modern, global way of approaching the world. However, as Californians voted overwhelming to allow chickens to spread their wings and turn around in their cages (I voted in favor of that too), they also voted to amend the constitution to define marriage as "between one man and one woman." Californians helped elect the first black president, the first president I can recall who actually acknowledged the diverse "real" America in his acceptance speech. Not "real" America, but REAL AMERICA.

Another generation indeed is coming of age. Thankfully. And they are capable of change. They've proven it. They helped elect the first black president. They are capable of viewing the world in complex ways. They are capable of action.

Yes, another generation of voters has already come of age, and is finally displacing the old style of politics.

They believe in change.

They believe in community.

And, they (like the generation of voters before them) is anti-gay.