I have the coolest Little Sister

I’m going to be honest here, so hold on to your hats. I became a Big Sister several years ago.  I sort of fell into it, actually. I was at a viewing of some artsy flick at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee during the Milwaukee Film Festival, and volunteers were there, passing out literature on Big Brothers/Big Sisters. My friend (let’s call her Muffin) was going to do it too; she said she’d prefer a boy, though, to go hiking and such things. (BBBS will allow certain mixed matches –  with a Big Sister and a Little Brother below 12).  Well, Muffin still has not joined up, but I was matched very quickly. I was leery as I don’t much care for strangers’ children, but I tend to enjoy volunteer and philanthropic work, and seeing as how I’ve been broke pretty much all of my adult life, volunteering time seemed a good option. So I asked for a teenager, because I seriously didn’t know what I’d do with a 10-year-old.

My first match lasted about six months. Lil’ #1 switched back and forth between newly divorced parents and her mom was a drug user, so making and keeping plans was not easy. Lil’ #1 was also painfully shy, which complicated things all the more. She never called me on her own and she never returned my calls. When I moved in with the BF, I gave them some stuff– an old bookcase and my five-year-old Mac, some random household items. I was fine with not accepting money, but her mother insisted that she would pay me a hundred or two hundred dollars, so I said fine (I thought she’s be insulted if I refused her money, like I saw her as a charity case).

And then they disappeared.

The mother’s phone was out of service and I left messages on her father’s answering machine. I had a feeling they were avoiding me because the mother didn’t have money to give me, and just thought that was a terrible shame. This teenaged girl needed someone stable in her life and I felt terribly guilty for making a poor decision by giving them that stuff. I messed up.

When the organization couldn’t reach anyone in the family for a couple months, they officially closed the match. Before long, I was matched with another Little Sister. Lil’ #2 (and the second family, for that matter) were different in tons of ways, but similiar in others. The match lasted a bit longer that the first before their phones got disconnected, and this mom was just as unstable (and a little scary). I used to invite Lil’ #2’s brother with us to get him out of the house, too.

Again, after a couple of months of the organization being unable to reach anyone in the family, they informed me that the match would be officially closed. I felt guilty again, but this time, guilty at the relief I felt to not have to deal with that family anymore. I adored Lil’ #2’s brother (sweetest kid, wow), but Lil’ #2 and her mother were so difficult. And of course, she’s definitely the kind of kid who needs the program, you know?

Around this time, the mother of Lil’ #1 called me to ask me to visit her daughter in the hospital. Lil’ #1 was about to have a baby. She told me the sex of the baby and the kinds of items they might need. You can imagine how shitty I felt: the 15-year-old who I should have been there for was about to have a baby, and her mother saw me as a potential source of gifts. I asked the mother to put Lil’ #1 on the phone and told her she was welcome to call me anytime, but I did not go to the hospital (thus, I did not bring a gift) and I have not heard from either of them since. And I still feel terrible about the whole thing; it sucks all the way around.

When Big Brothers/Big Sisters asked if I wanted to be rematched, I almost said no. After these two bad experiences and feeling like I did no good for either of them– even sometimes feeling like knowing me was poison to these girls, I thought I’d had enough.  But for some crazy reason, I said yes. I had to go in for another interview because it had been three years since the first one, and I almost blew off the interview. But I went.

And then a couple weeks later, I got an email from the Waukesha County match coordinator who said she had a feeling she had the perfect match for me. I was skeptical, but I agreed to be meet her. The apartment is not far from my house and there are three really amazing generations of women living there. When I met Reed, we instantly connected, laughing and talking about music and movies. The first time she rode in my car, I was playing a mix CD and she knew all the music, including Rilo Kiley:

Plus she whistled and sang along with “Young Folks” (Peter Bjorn and John– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sc8aOIEsQg). (How cool is that?)

We went to the mall on Sunday so I could spend a gift card and it took me forever to figure out what to get. She didn’t sigh or act bored or get irritated. At the candy store, she handled the way I indulged my Hello Kitty fetish with kindness and even quietly endured my smoking lecture (well, she bought candy cigarettes. What could I do?)

It's for my sandwich-- now I won't waste plastic bags!

She is hysterical and insightful and warm.  She adores Ellen DeGeneres and dislikes Ann Coulter. She’s not afraid of  going downtown, eating new foods (including vegetables), and meeting new people. She’s seriously cool– on our first outing together, I took her to Bucketworks (http://www.bucketworks.org/) to model t-shirts for my friend Tim’s site, (find us on the “Chicks in Shirts page”) where we had a blast picking out shirts to model and props to use. http://www.teecycle.org/Teecycle.org/Teecycle_Home.html).

I get that she moved up here from Tennessee and her friends are all still there, but I don’t know what she needs me for. She’s got her stuff SO much more together than I did at 16. So I’ve decided I’ll be her cheerleader. What teenager doesn’t benefit from someone saying “you can do it”? She tells me she wants to study philosophy and mythology in college and I say “super!”  She says she and her mom are going to start playing World of Warcraft, and I say “Fun!” She tells me she’’s read most of the books in the Twilight/Thirteen Reasons Why section of the library, so I tell her “we’ll find  a bigger library!”  

This girl’s going to do some pretty amazing stuff, and I’m excited that I get to hang out and be there for it.

I am feeling lucky. I still think about Lils 1 & 2, and I worry about them and the baby, but a story that Reed told me makes some sense to me. Her story was about how, at Kroger, she once told a man she didn’t know to “go for the yellow roses.”  She says that even the tiniest interactions we have with people makes us a part of their lives. She told me that I am a part of the lives of every student who’s ever been in my class. That’s hundreds of people– maybe over a thousand (I’m not sure; I was an English major, you know). Wow. So even though the relationships with my previous Little Sisters didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up over it. It is possible that I’ve had a positive effect on at least a few of the people who’ve met me (even if someone having a bad day saw me slip on an icy sidewalk and laughed. Not that I ever slip. I am the definition of grace, just so you know). And maybe those yellow roses from Kroger made someone happy.

In summary, Reed rocks.

What? There are still men out there who aren’t feminists?

We’ve all heard that women still only make a sad percentage of what men make in this country. I heard today from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) that the current U.S. number is 78%.  And I’ve heard all sorts of bullshit reasons why that is. At a holiday get together couple years ago at my parents’ home, one relative of mine even said that she’s fine with it because she’s never known a man who called in sick because of PMS. My cousin and I took offense as neither of us have called in sick for PMS and found the idea laughable. My cousin, awsome as she is, made jokes the rest of the day about getting her “women’s pay” discount at Target.  After all, if women make 78% of what men make, then all women’s purchases, cable, bills, cell phone plans, even college tuition should be reduced appropriately, right?

People, especially young women, don’t want to call themselves feminists because of the negative connotations of the word. In my classes, I tell my male students that if they think the women next to them have just as much a right to be there as they do, they’re feminists. And they get a little weirded out, because they think that feminists are militant bulldykes.  Of course, that’s not the case; only a very small percentage of feminists are militant bulldykes. I’m quite girly, and I am one mad mat feminist– I’m wearing a pink shirt today and I have a Hello Kitty toaster, for the love of poundcake!

My brand of materialist feminism includes anyone who doesn’t think human beings should be judged by their naughty bits. Or their parents. Or their cars (or lack thereof). Or their noserings. Or even an accent or tattoo.

So, as a materialist feminist, I’m already for pay equality. It’s a no-brainer. Equal pay for equal work isn’t just good for women, it’s good for families and human beings. It is just. Companies providing family leaves isn’t a P.C. way to say “maternity leave” — all employees should be able to take time to welcome new additions or care for children, parents, or other family members. That’s just good for everyone. But when I talk about these things, sometimes I get blank stares, like I am trying to explain postmodernism. Maybe to see things this way, one has to think a certain way.

But there are numbers coming in related to this recession that should encourage all Americans to be for pay equality too, regardless of how Alex P. Keaton-esque their mentalities, because it seems that men –even single and childless men– are being directly negatively affected by women’s lower salaries: According to NELP, while men make up roughly 50% of the workforce, they account for 80% of the layoffs that have occurred in this recent economic downturn. Now, that just doesn’t seem fair to me.  Even after accounting for the higher percentage of  jobs held by women considered slightly safer in a recession (like education and healthcare), there is obviously something else at play here.  And guess what it is? Yep, I already told you: it’s pay inequality. If women earned what men earn, the layoffs would be closer to 50/50, not 20/80.

Think about it: layoffs occur to cut costs, so it makes perfect sense that the employees making the bigger bucks (i.e., the men) with the better benefits are more often the employees let go. 

I love men, I really do, but I wonder how many men out there are at home, on the couch, who once sat in an office or at a conference table and decided against promoting a woman, or maybe turned down her plea for a pay raise, simply because of her anatomy.

I love women, I really do, but I wonder how many Ann Coulter clones out there (except stressed out about money and irritated with having their sad, diminished man home on the couch all day) once complained about “women’s libbers and career girls” who just couldn’t be content with homemaking.* Well, I’m not going to say “Suck it!” or even “I told you so” to those men and women. I’m just going to ask if we all get it now. Do we all get it now? Equality isn’t just good for the people fighting for it, it’s good for ev-er-y-one.

—And to any women out there who’ve been laid off, it really, really sucks, and I feel for you, but think of it this way– in your former position, you were just as valuable as a man! Rock on, sister!

*I am tempted to discuss the possibility that, historically, some women have been drawn to the idea of having a job because they need to, like, pay for stuff, as opposed to simply wanting to wear pants for a change, but that might have to wait for another entry.