Today in the mail I got my first ever debit card. It was shiny and bright, and a little bit cold, with the MasterCard insignia and a shiny platinum oval with the word “debit” on it. My mom sent it to me last week Thursday. She had told me on the phone about how she spent the day going to the North Shore with my Step-Dad and picking up her new car, and then laying on the beach where the TV show Lost was filmed. I imagined her sitting at the café near Mark’s work, drinking a latte in her bathing suit under her favorite Capri jeans and a white shirt, tucked in, with her red Converse high tops. I miss her smell.

As soon as I got the letter, I looked at the handwriting that was as familiar as my own. The curving letters brought on a familiar feeling that I couldn’t quite place. I felt the hard rectangular outline of my new card inside the soft, off-white envelope.

I whipped out my card and immediately sprinted upstairs to show it to my Auntie Angie and Uncle Dave.

“I just got my first credit/debit card!” I yelled.

“Are you sure it’s a credit/debit card? It’s probably one or the other,” Dave asked.

“But it has the MasterCard logo on it, and I can use it as either in the stores,” I told him eargerly.

“Can you use it when you have no money left in your account?” he asked.

“Um. I’m not sure. I’ll ask my mom.”

“Do you mind if I look at the paper work?”

In the end I found out that it was indeed a debit card, and not the illustrious “credit/debit card” that I thought it was. My sudden impulse to shop, however, was not dampened.

“This is a new, great start in the world of finance,” Dave assured me.

Earlier that evening, after a dinner of pizza and lemonade, Angie had discussed my seven year old cousin Matt’s own leap into the world of finance: he was going to open his own lemonade company, and charge ten cents a cup.

“He should charge twenty-five cents,” Dave had argued, saying that, “it’s the going rate of lemonade.”

Over the remains of the pizza dinner, Angie said, “Matt is always asking me if he has a hundred dollars in his bank account. But he thinks about it as if there were a stack of a hundred dollar bills in Matthew’s pile, and a stack in front of Mom’s pile…” she gestured up and down, indicating the imaginary stacks of green money Matt lusts over.

Matthew is obsessed with the concept of a hundred dollars, and this obsession was heightened after he peaked inside my wallet one day to see my hundred dollar bill.

“WOOOW!” he had shouted, lengthening the “ah” sounding syllable in the word “wow.”

Ever since then, he’s been asking me whether I would give him my hundred dollar bill if he gave me a hundred ones, or if he gave me a ticket to Disney land, or if he gave me one of his baby kittens. I tell him that sadly, I need my hundred dollar bill in case of an emergency and that kittens are usually free.

“Aww man,” was his solemn reply. “So if I have change in my lemonade stand, will you give me a hundred? Wait, can I tell you something? What change do I have to give you, ninety cents? What change do I have to give you?”

“You have to give me ninety-nine dollars and ninety cents.”

“I don’t have change for a hundred, but I might have change for a fifty. Ok, hold on one second. I need to go ask mom if I have change for a fifty. Because I don’t have change for a hundred. But I might have change for a fifty. What change do I have to give you for a fifty? Because I don’t know a lot about change and stuff.”

“You have to give me forty-nine dollars and ninety cents,” I told him.

“Ok, I’m going to go ask mom if I have that. Hold on,” he said resolutely.

“I don’t have change for a hundred and I don’t have change for a fifty. But I have change for any other dollar bills that you could give me…So when you give me money for a lemonade, what dollar bill will you give me? A twenty?”

“Sure, I’ll give you a twenty, if you give me change.”

“What change do I have to give you? Ninety cents and what else? I have enough money in my bank account for change for a hundred, but not in my bank.”

“You have to give me nineteen dollars and ninety cents.”

“So you give me the twenty, and I give you the change. Let’s shake on it.”

“Did you fart?” I ask, sniffing suspiciously.

He looks sheepish and darts his eyes back and forth. “No, I didn’t,” he tries to look innocent.

“Are you sure? You have your lying face on.”

“I SWEAR!!!” he yells. “So I have to give you nineteen dollars and ninety cents for the hundred?”

“No, for the twenty,” I tell him.

“Ohh yeah,” he says. “I have a hundred dollar bill in my bank account. But guess what? I can’t open it until I’m eighteen. I’m serious.”

I tell him I believe him.

“I don’t want to wait until I’m eighteen, it’s SO far away. SOO far.”

“You’d be surprised at how soon you’ll be eighteen,” I assure him.

A little while later, out of the blue, Matt says, “If people bought infinity glasses, I’d be a millionaire.”

This surprises me, and for some reason I see a huge pile of bright orange Raybans.

Then I thought I heard him say, “No, I don’t really need them.”

“What was that?” I ask.

“You know what the two things are that I really want? I want a stack of hundreds, and a stack of fifties. But I tell myself, no I don’t really need them. Then I tell myself, yes I want them. Then, no, I definitely don’t need them. Money doesn’t need anything to me. No I REALLY NEED THEM, money is great I love it! No, actually I don’t need them, money is not good for people, it just buys stuff. Yes I really need the money! No, I don’t… That’s what I’m like.”

“Matt,” I said to him, “you are not alone.”

So today in the car, Matt was asking Angie how much money he would get if a certain about of people bought lemonade.

“How much money would I make if ten people bought lemonade?” he asked eagerly, and I could almost see the dollar signs swimming in his eyes.

“You would make a dollar,” Angie said.

“And how much would I make if a hundred people bought lemonade,” Matt shook his head with excitement in the way that only kids under 8 can do.

“ Ten dollars.”

“This,” Matt said, “is getting fascinating.”

So, thinking of Matt’s wise words, I fingered the smooth plastic of my golden debit card.

“This,” I whispered to myself, “is getting fascinating.

Mingling is not my area of excellence. But depending on the perspective, mingling can be a prime source for intriguing subjects. Behind the lens of my camera, I managed to dodge the smalltalk at Friday’s party. The bikini clad fourth of July merrymakers, and the hulking bodies of their counterparts roamed the deck of the beach house, and I walked around with my film SLR camera help up to my face, searching for the perfect frame.

“Can I take your picture?” I asked the tall man standing on the roof deck, the pretty high school freshmen, the two little girls in their pink bikinis, the group of three girls and two guys, balancing on the goofy bubble of just enough margarita.

“What kind of camera do you have?” one man inquired.

“I used to be a photographer,” another one insisted.

Though I was related to the host, I hadn’t met any of the attending partygoers, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of being on the outside of some interesting zoo exhibit, looking in. But that’s what I’d been doing recently on the bus to work, and I throughly enjoyed it.

Paying my two quarters to the bus driver the other day, a woman wearing matching demin jacket and pants with hundreds of two inch zippers on it caught my imagination. I couldn’t help but wonder were she shopped or at least who her seamstress is. I imagined a scenario on a similar bus, where one of her butt zippers came undone, and an elderly man reaches over to zip it up, starting an instant brawl starts after the woman shrieks, “Pervert!”

As my bus enters Chinatown, my favorite people to think about come into view. The old Asian women with their faces in a thousand wrinkles stare at me through the bus window, their eyes shaded with a complicated life story that I give to them, free of charge. Or the British family of four (husband, wife, son, daughter) wading through the throbbing crowd, dazzled by the ornate characters spelling out something exotic in bright neon colors.

I started catching the San Francisco bus about an hour after I got of the plane. Before I got on the plane in Hawaii, I made a list for myself of things that I needed to do at the airport and when I arrived in San Francisco. “Walk to security, show them ticket, show them ID, take off your shoes, put shoes back on, get on plane, find seat, sit…” and then “…catch a cab, get to the house, take a shower, eat breakfast, drink coffee, walk to bus stop, regard map, find work…” and it actually goes on for quite a while. Looking at this list constantly at first, I was desperately attached to it. Slowly, (by the time I found my own seat on the plane and realized I was sitting across from a fox) I was less dependent on my frantic scribbling.

A similar thing happened with my map. At first, the constant folding and unfolding of my printed google map nearly ripped it. I got off the bus at the wrong stop twice, and I discovered that when you ask directions from a San Franciscan, they really are committed to getting you to the right spot. This surprised me because my instant reflex to lost people is to point randomly and assure them warmly that they are almost there. One time, a woman I asked for directions actually walked me all the way to where I wanted to go, chatting cordially about her office job, and her recent trip to Europe. “Everyone says that Parisians are as sour as lemon,” she tells me, “but I never met one any less sweet than splenda”

Eventually, pounding the familiar city streets with confidence, I became familiar with just enough mileage to get me where I want to go.

Living and working in a new city, without the safety net of parents who’ll save my ass with one m’aidez call, it’s like buying a new lense, one that isn’t so magnified as my old one. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the subtle differences that add up that make what I would call independence; the difference between needing to know where you are so you won’t have to call your dad to drive you places, and knowing where you are so you can actually get home, the difference between making money so you won’t have to ask your mom for some extra cash and making money so you can buy yourself food and a  bus ride, the difference between learning in a classroom for grades and learning in real life so you can survive and flourish in the business world. Planning has changed for me, thinking about transporation has changed for me, my network (physical and virtual) has changed for me; all in subtle, small shifts.

The fear of this somewhat sudden push off the comfortable cliff ledge has mutated, also. Never before had I tested the jetpack that I’ve been building for my entire life and so twinges of nervousness at my potential fall plagued me. Now I’m a little bit more aware of my capabilities. I’m not confined beneath the clouds, and aerial shots are a lot easier.

Looking through a different lens, much like through a looking glass, changes my perception of reality.

But if I were to completely blame the scope of the lens, I would be misinterpreting myself and my recent, new found Independence. The person behind the lense has changed as well.

Genius child Arthus has sent me on a self discovery mission with this meme. So, let’s not beat around the proverbial bush: let’s talk about me.

Seven facts that you probably didn’t know about LOVELY LINDSEA:

1. I have a shoe fetish, precisely because I can’t buy very many shoes that fit. My feet are size 11.

2. My best friend in the entire world is named Claire, and she lives in Germany.

3. I once had a dream that all the people from Students 2.0 were having a party together in the Twitter website. Like, we were literally IN the website.

4. I am a cat person through and through. Cat’s rule and you know the rest.

5. I suck at writing consistently in my journal, but I try anyways.

6. Every night I play either David Sedaris audio books or This American Life podcast episodes to put me to sleep.

7. I might actually be a geek.

The next time you’ll see me write, I’ll be in San Francisco.

A random joke that Kurt Vonnegut tells: There once was an old man who lived on the edge of the border between two countries. Everyday he would cross the border with his wheelbarrow filled with odds and ends, and everyday the guard KNEW that the old man was smuggling something, but could never find out what it was. On the guards last day on the job, he was having a drink with the old man, and he finally just asked, “What have you been smuggling all these years, friend?” And the old man finally replied,”WHEELBARROWS.”

This is the only joke I know in the complete and unabridged history of jokes.

And I half feel like there’s some huge wheelbarrow staring me in the face, and for some reason, I’m refusing to see it.

***

On Thursday I went to a place where they shove burnt dead people into canisters and store them in a wooden building. It’s Buddhist temple, too. There are gardens surrounding the area, with fragrant flowers and a stream with koi in it. The whole place reeks of incense.

On my way in, I crossed over an ethnic looking red bridge, and I walked up to a huge bell. I banged the bell with a mallet, and I felt exhilarated to be making a loud noise, though somewhat embarrassed amongst Japanese and Mid-Western tourists and their families. I was by myself.

Just outside of the temple, I took my black rubber slippers off and stepped onto the cool concrete floor. There were some randoms lurking in the dark corners, and a little boy lighting a candle in front of Buddha. They all looked uncomfortable as the huge statue of Buddha stared serenely at them. From where I stood, the fat woman with the fanny pack and the comfortable shoes felt a strange connection to the equally fat, though unequally happy man sitting cross legged in front of her.

Positioning myself opposite of my fat friends, I mimicked Buddha’s seat and slowly lowered my eye lids.

Then there was black and empty and a slight musky smell.

When I came back up from the depths of my consciousness, a teenage girl was staring at me.

I walked out to the koi pond and watched as a couple from Florida fed the fish. The fish were thrashing around like ravenous sharks.

“Would you like some fish food to feed to the fish?” the woman asked me.

“Sure.” I said, and I sprinkled the food she gave me into a particularly large koi’s gasping mouth.

“Does that make you happy? Do you like that?” she asked me.

“Mmm. Did you know that the birds like the food too?”

“Really? Here you go. Feed them.”

I held my hand out and a finch landed on my index finger, its feathery weight heavier than I expected from one who dances on the wind. The finch’s beak gently pecked at the round, brown pellets, and I froze myself so I wouldn’t scare it.

Then it flew away and I walked on by myself.

***

I was waiting for the bus stop downtown, reading David Sedaris’s new book “When Engulfed in Flames,” when a woman approached me.

I half expected someone to approach me at this particular place, because someone always does. Whether it’s a homeless man with male pattern balding positioned four feet long dreds, or a robust tourist who is lost, I am addressed with phrases like, “Excuse me,” or “We need to stop this cancerous Vietnam War….mmphhmmmph…that gun shot me in the face…get your hands out of my…get yourself some anti-war packets and hand them out…”

This time, an old woman came up to me.

“Excuse me…do you know where King Street is?” she asked.

I looked up from my book at that moment, and my two eyes were met by one blue eye surrounded by white, powdery wrinkles, and one gaping, empty eyelid. It was like a gasping koi’s mouth in the place where an eye should be. I couldn’t stop staring at it. Blink. Pinkish blackness. Blink. There were no eye lashes.

“It’s right down this way, just keep walking on this sidewalk.”

“Thank you. I can’t see very well, because I have only one eye,” she explains. As if I hadn’t been staring at it the whole time. I felt guilty for flaunting my two good blues at her pink and blue.

“No…it’s ok. Have a good day.”

But that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say, “No, you don’t,” in the same sympathetic tone you tell your chubby friend, “No, that miniskirt doesn’t make your thighs look fat.”

Why is it that I’m so much more honest and open in my mind than I am in real life?

Your 1996 Theme Song Is: 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins

Shakedown 1979 Cool kids never have the time On a live wire right up off the street You and I should meet

On a whim this morning, I decided to do this quiz. I got a decent answer: Smashing Pumpkins. I suppose I would have preferred Radiohead, because I <3 Thom York. But alas, what can you do?

The nineties. Wow. That was a long time ago. That was when I may or may not have worn denim overalls. And that is something that my dear readership will never know/see the pictures that I’ve burned.

I remember my first day of school. My mom took me into the classroom and I walked in feeling like everyone had done this already. Like it was only my first day and everyone else had been here a week. I guess that’s how we all feel at some point in our lives; that everyone else has it figured out. Later, with age, you gather a wide array of wisdom and knowledge until you finally come to the conclusion that no one knows that the hell they’re doing. Funny how it works out, isn’t it?

In Pre-Kindergarten (two years before Kindergarten) I was a proud member of a global gang called the “Kissy Girls”. We were a bunch of neo feminists that decided the playground’s class ceiling needed to be broken. We wouldn’t take any more sexual abuse from the males who loved to kiss and run. We would reclaim our SLIDE!

The gang was made up of the toughest, smartest, and prettiest bunch of four year olds that Hawaii has ever seen. Our plan of action was this: run up to boys, kiss them, and run away. Complexity and depth were innate in our philosophies, obviously.

I started off running ground work, but eventually made my way up pretty high on the totem pole. Of course, secrecy was essential, and though I was a leader of the group, I never knew much of the history until much, much later.

It was only a few years ago that I found out Angelina Jolie used to be a fellow Kissy Girl:

‘I was a member of a group called the Kissy Girls…I created a game where I would kiss the boys and give them cooties’

Story of our lives.

[Yes, another article for the newspaper. But GO LISTEN TO HIS SHOW! Ktuh.org on Wednesday from 12-3 pm.]

Ross Jackson, an undergraduate majoring in Religion who’s “been ready to graduate for about eight centuries,” has been at the KTUH radio station for four years. And what exactly does Ross do as a DJ? “They give me a button so I can talk to Honolulu. It’s like a button, and I’m like, press…Honolulu… ‘Hey buddies!’”

Hanging out in the dorm rooms in his earlier years as a fresh-faced college student, Ross was a self-proclaimed “record store snob”. A KTUH DJ heard Ross playing his cLOUDDEAD and Nico’s Chelsea Girl in his room, and decided that Ross would be great as a KTUH DJ. After forcing him to fill out an application and actually getting on the air all those years ago, Ross’ icy reluctance to be a part of KTUH thawed. He realized that the radio station gave him the opportunity to spread great music to the population of Hawaii, and to be the best local radio show in his idiom.

One of the aspects of KTUH that Ross loves the most is KTUH’s lenient guidelines. These allow Ross, and any KTUH DJ, to play whatever music they want, regardless of how “popular” it is. “Maintaining a semblance of independent music important. Playing top forty would be against the station’s unspoken rules. You wouldn’t want to be playing anything that someone could hear on 101.9. That would be tragic.”

When asked what genre of music he plays on his show, Ross quickly spouted out this anecdote: “Some one asked Dan Bejar from Destroyer [an indie rock band] what kind of music he plays, and he said that he plays European blues, which of course he doesn’t. He only said that for the people who read entirely too many books. So I play modern classics,” he tells me with a slight wink.

When pressed, he admitted that he plays indie music. Not wanting to get into the whole sub cultures of “indie,” he briefly describes the mainstream music industry and how they control the music the mass populations listen to. He says he plays “modern classics”, but he laments that hardly no one hears these classic bands. He cites the latest Band of Horses album, saying that it should have more exposure than it had.

Despite the lack of exposure great bands don’t get, the mainstream media has been steadily splintering into a less monopolistic industry, which is good for independent listeners. Ross, of course, isn’t part of conforming masses being force fed the mainstream pop music. So where does he get his music? KTUH receives albums from the labels for the DJ’s to peruse, and Ross sits down and listens to them about once a week, but tries to avoid the inevitable radio ear, which tends to box him in. He also hits the Interweb for inspiration. “Pitchfork [an online mp3 blog] was really good for a while. It helped out Broken Social Scene a lot. But Pitchfork really fell of badly, as even most of [the major online music blogs] did. So really, truthfully? Torrent sites are most effective for from the gut reviews.” He mentions indietorrents.com. “Maxim will give you a better music review than Pitchfork.” At this he cringes in distaste, and disgust fills his eyes.

Though he adventures around indietorrent and other such sites, Born Ruffians, Helio Sequence, Pete and the Pirates, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Sea and Cake, Nick Drake, and Nico are some of his solid staples. As a DJ, Ross says, you have to explore music in three directions: past, present, and future. You have to know what’s classic, what’s great now, and what’s going to be good in the future. The driving base line type of “sexy rock and roll” will always be received well in a club type scene. As for twee rock, “I was going to start sock hops all over town and play Belle and Sebastian. It would be adorable.” He also mentions Andrew Bird, “the Edith Piaf of our time”, and some other singer songwriters musicians.

Andrew Bird’s live talent prompted the comparison to Edith Piaf. “He can’t sing the same song twice even if he wanted to,” and this is part of what makes him an interesting musician and something that enhances his live performance. The Shins, despite their ability to make write and produce great records, didn’t have this unique quality in their live performance when they came here in the fall of 2008. “Every song sounded the same as it did on the album,” he explains. That leaves something to be desired as a fan. You can listen to Andrew Bird live at Coachella, and his songs will sound different than when he played at Sasquatch, or the Pitchfork music festival.

And the constant line up of festivals in the United States make it an even more prosperous time than the sixties for music. “It’s an awesome time to be alive,” he smiles, and then corrects himself, “from a musical standpoint, not a political standpoint.”

With great power comes great responsibility, and KTUH gives that to its DJs. This can produce horrible shows or amazing shows, because despite the seeming ease of picking and playing good music, the formatting and the programming are challenging. The training director at KTUH helps them out, and most times they’re able to help them out. “Do a good show, or go away,” Ross chuckles. But he assures me that he’s “a huge fan of KTUH. It’s so much better than most of the college radio stations. People in Hawaii don’t even realize.”

[I wrote this article for the newspaper, but it's interesting so I'm reposting it here]

In early April at the Ihilani Resort, the Blue Planet foundation had a 3-day Global Energy Summit, where world leaders, energy experts, environmentalists and artists discussed the environmental problems we’re facing today. They explored the answers to the essential questions of our energy crisis: where do we need to go? How quickly? How should we get there? They plan to make this an annual collection of events that, according to their website, will “celebrate achievements, and inspire people around the globe with the power of human imagination to solve our energy challenge.”

The imminent environmental problems challenge our earth require a unique and unparalleled global response, making it necessary to put aside our partisan biases and come together to address these problems. Blue Planet foundation’s summit is a forum that will aid this need. The hope is that Blue Planet will be able to provide a platform for cooperation across interest groups, industries and national boundaries, and help create a new vision of the way we create and package energy. Their goal is to inspire a “global commitment to change” and the realization that the responsibility for the implementation of change falls equally on all of our shoulders. “Most of all, this will require a new level of communication, understanding, tolerance and trust, and a belief in new possibilities.”

The afternoon after the Blue Planet foundation had their last speaker, Bobby Kennedy Jr was lounging on the deck of a friend’s sail boat, relaxing in the Hawaiian rays and gazing out at the ocean. As one of the speakers himself, and as a man who has a passion for saving the environment, Kennedy had a lot to say on the concept of the summit: that Hawaii has the potential to become a sustainable model. “Hawaii has extraordinary natural resources,” he said. “Solar, wind, tidal, otech, biomass, everything. There’s no reason why they need to ship oil to the islands. Hawaii is the only state that’s still using oil as a major energy source. There are a lot better choices.” He turned his eyes to the horizon, his brows furrowed and eyes passionate.

Kennedy gave the example Iceland as a country that has benefited from almost complete switch to sustainable energy. With an unemployment rate of 1% and an extremely healthy economy, Iceland has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest. They’ve also switched from being 100% oil dependent to 89% geothermal dependent. Consciously making the choice to be sustainable, Kennedy says that they have demonstrated how switching to environmentally sustainable energy resources has spurred economic growth. Hawaii could follow in their footsteps. He believes that sustainable energy usage gives space for entrepreneurs to make money and provide jobs that benefit the environment, but also benefit the economy.

But isn’t sustainable energy more expensive than oil? “It’s not,” Kennedy insists, shaking his head. “Sustainable energy is actually cheaper.” The difference is made up in subsidies: the seemingly cheap price that we pay for oil is all because of the tax dollars that went to the oil companies through subsidies. So, when the hidden taxes are revealed, oil is more expensive.

It also doesn’t help that ex-oil company executives have suddenly been reborn as politicians. And when lobbyists are wooing their way around checks and balances, it makes it hard for any honest and good change to happen in environmental policy.

What should we do?

“Take the oil companies by storm! Run for the hills!” he smiles playfully. “No, we need to take our government back.”

For the final project in Ideas in Western Literature, two friends and I assumed strange roles/characters and rode the bus as these characters.

The characters were as follows–

The stuffed animal girl: Emily carried around her stuffed animal on the bus, cuddling it.

The laughing girl: This was mine. I started laughing very loudly and animatedly at Hamlet.

(I’m not laughing in this picture, but I was for most of the time…)

The crack whore girl: Jasmine dressed up as a crack whore (using my pajamas) and stumbled around Chinatown and on the bus.

***

What if you were on the bus, and some weird girl started laughing erratically? What would you do? Would you feel out of your comfort zone or unconsciously deem what she was doing abnormal? This is what we’re testing: comfort zones and the concept of normal behavior, or the code of social norms. We’re observing the reactions of people on The Bus to slightly skewed behavior.

There are several different points of view to look at this cultural assumption from. The most obvious is from the perspective of the observer of the odd behavior. When does the observer consciously detect that something isn’t right? Does the observer ever feel endangered by this erratic behavior? Is it a defense mechanism to feel ultra aware of people behaving out of the ordinary? Then you can look at this idea from the perspective of the person doing the strange behaviors. Do they realize they’re doing the strange behavior? Is it a conscious decision to be different from the normal?

Why does the observer react at all? We’ve narrowed down three main reasons: fear, curiosity, and discomfort. We received reactions to our behavior that fit into all three of these categories. There were the people who chose not to sit next to us because of how we were acting (fear), there were the people who exchanged amused/conspiratorial glances with other passengers and who looked at us with interest (curiosity), and there were people who looked away consciously and tried to neutralize the situation (discomfort).

What we were hoping to explore in our social experiment was normalcy. What is it and how did we disrupt what is generally considered “normal” behavior?

Our dialectic explores this question and others.

L: Hamlet hid behind the mask of his seeming insanity, and in the same way, we hid our own “normal” personalities behind our characters. And, like in Hamlet’s court, the people around us reacted to the craziness immediately. There were no suspended judgments of character, and despite our attractiveness and youth, people reacted negatively towards us. This implies that we are judged by our normalcy. Who we are inside doesn’t matter, neither does what we have all done with our respective lives, what only matters is whether we laugh out loud, etc on the bus or if we sit quietly and be normal. The consequences are obvious: if a person wants to move through live with the most ease, they need to behave “normally”.Out of the ordinary behavior is not rewarded by strangers or society.

J: So, what constitutes normal?

E: I would say that whatever people have seen repeatedly throughout their lives is what they think of as “normal.” An assumption I had going in to this project was that, because you always see crazy/weird/sketchy people on the bus, we would not invoke many reactions - yet we did. So, I think that what was really “abnormal” in people’s views was the fact that we were young, healthy looking girls acting this way. If we had been crusty, middle-aged, homeless looking guys, it would have still been “normal” to everyone to witness “abnormal” behavior from us.

J: I mean, every single person has a freaky or sketchy side to them somehow. They look normal, but inside they might have secrets… problems…fetishes, etc.

L: Maybe we all hide our freaky selves to try and be normal, but in actuality we are all like that.

J: If this is true, then how did society end up formulating the idea of “normal?” How did we all agree on what normal is? Is there something instinctual about it?

E: Well, in different cultures different things are considered normal. I think it develops as a result of survival issues. For instance, it’s not normal to invade other people’s personal space, because that is instinctively viewed as a threat.

J: I think we can see from our experiment that bizarre behaviors trigger a flight or fight reaction in people.

E: Yeah, because the black woman you accidentally kicked wanted to fight you! And when you were a mangy crack addict, people wanted to… flight you.

L: And there was that woman who kept moving away from Emily, and the man who didn’t want to sit next to her… it seems that more people wanted “flight” rather than “fight”!

J: In general, people reacted defensively, whether by wanting to run away or wanting to fight against whatever it was that was upsetting them.

L: But most people just wanted peace. Few people wanted to shake up the atmosphere.

J: I think they didn’t want confrontation, exactly.

E: That kind of brings us to our connection to Sartre and his idea of “hell is other people.” People dealt with uncomfortable (hell-like, one might say) situations because they didn’t want confrontation.

J: People are afraid to step out of their comfort zone, even if doing so will ultimately bring them more comfort. We didn’t only see this in other people’s reactions to our experiment, but on our own side as well. When that woman on the country express wanted to scrap with me, I kept pretending I didn’t speak English. It would have been way out of my comfort zone to tell her to leave me alone, or to ask for help.

L: You just ignored it - you hid behind your character, kind of like how people hide behind a fake “normal” exterior.

J: But I avoided confrontation because the situation was dangerous, not to appear more normal than I was.

E: so in your case, it was fear and/or a concern for personal well being that prevented you from trying to do something about it.

J: Yeah. And in that case, her behavior was not “normal” because it was so confrontational.

L: Maybe normal behavior is just neutral behavior, in that case. It isn’t normal to show strong emotions or emotional reactons.

E: And that fits in with our survival instincts idea, because revealing your emotions is kind of a weakness, I suppose…

J: I’ve got another example of how our society’s collective idea of what is “normal” has roots in our survival instincts…. we feel the need to find a mate, therefore we try to make ourselves attractive…preen, if you will. That’s why, when you see a “crusty” or unhygienic person, it isn’t “normal.” We base so much on appearances.

E: I think that makes sense. Even though in today’s modern society we may seem far removed from basic survival stuff like that, everything we have has all grown upwards from those concerns. Anything that’s “weird” to us is upsetting because we fear it will disrupt the natural order of things, like the circle of life, or the chain of being. (Like Scar killing Mufasa, or Claudius killing Old Hamlet, for example!)

J: Take our goth girl experiment idea. Society has this idea that girls are supposed to be soft and delicate. When goth girl dresses tomboyishly or imposingly, she challenges the gender boundaries and thus makes herself seem generally uninviting.

E: And she seems that way because people are alarmed by her upsetting the chain of being or the natural order of the world. Because she doesn’t seem to be fulfulling her… biological function.

***

J: What doesn’t make sense though, is that if everybody has a strange side to them, normalcy really can’t be defined.

L: It’s not about the “strange” sides of people, though. It’s about what they present to everyone else. I think we could agree that we all have aspects of our true personalities that are strange, but the reason they’re still abnormal even if they’re common is because it is not acceptable to display these aspects openly. Kind of like, we have all these latent urges, but we don’t act on them.

E: Yeah, that is the interesting thing… basically, we’ve concluded so far that “abnormal” and “normal” are constructs of society formed from basic survival instincts: avoid anything potentially dangerous so you won’t get killed, appear alluring to others so you can… procreate. But then why have we developed ideas like… having sex in public isn’t normal? Because the constant drive to propegate the species is about as natural/survival instinct as it gets.

J: Well there’s also… culture

L: religion, piousness….

J: That all wraps it up in different packaging.

L: Our instinct may be to have sex, but… we’ve been raised to go with abstinence instead?

E: So it seems that some boundaries of “normalcy” do not stem from biological/survival instincts, but rather from our attempts to rise above those things.

J: Basically, memes!

L: Memes fight against instinct?

J: Not necessarily…memes coat them, I suppose. I don’t know how to describe it.

E: (Now I have this weird image of a meme coated instinct in my mind. It looks like an ice cream bar…)

J: I guess what I’m saying is that survival instinct may be the core of what defines normalcy. But memes have encased it and given it guidelines and rules. I think that, aside from our instincts, each individual is built up of other things that form their unique personalities…whether these are forged through nature or nurture, I do not know. But these variables interact, and this is what creates culture; people agreeing upon ritual and tradition, because we need to interact with one another safely.

E: So… culture / “normalcy” is basically the compromise between… survival instincts and human memes?

J: Yeah. And different cultures find different ways to channel their instincts. For example the Mayas and Aztecs: their idea of protecting their existence had evolved far beyond cavemen using weapons. They moved on to the spiritual realm, and engaged in human sacrifice, because they thought it could protect them from the wrath of the gods. Now we look back on that and think it’s sick, because in our modern society, we’ve evolved and come up with a new vision of how to protect ourselves and how to interact. But that is constantly changing. We can look back at our American history from a few hundred years ago and be disgusted by the fact that we had slavery - that is not “normal” now. And even if we look back a hundred years or so, we’re horrified at segregation and the fact that women couldn’t vote - again, that’s no longer a normal state of affairs. So hopefully, societies of the future will look back on us and be disgusted that gay people couldn’t get married in the same way that we are scandalized that women couldn’t vote until the 20th century.

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