Line up in lines

I have to run away and pay someone to listen to me bitch and moan about stuff (therapy) in thirteen minutes, but I thought I would try and write this down first.
So as I might have mentioned, I teach wee little humans in an after-school program. When we stretch and warm up before the class, we talk about things. Mostly we talk about the weather and do we need to be wearing boots yet and if Converse are made of leather do they count as boots, or we talk about pets and the kids recount long, dull stories of amusing things their pets have done, and then express shock and horror when I tell them I do not have a dog, nor a cat, nor even a measly goldfish or hermit crab. On one memorable occasion we talked about gross things to eat. Highlights included jellyfish, eel, chalk, dirt, and Rocky Mountain oysters. I had to cut that last topic a little short. Anyhoot, yesterday I had just the one kid in my class and we were talking about school. I was bitching about having to do a Spanish test next week, and he was bitching about having to do a Spanish test tomorrow that involves knowing all the south and central American countries and their capitals (way to go on context, Pip's Spanish teacher, but epic fail on actually teaching him any Spanish). Somehow it got around to all the reading I have been having to do lately for my social psych class and I found myself trying to explain the Asch line studies to him. It went roughly as follows...
"So I had to read about this thing for my psychology class. You know what psychology is, right? How people think, and why they do the stuff they do? Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, sometimes psychology people set out to prove stuff that everyone sort of knows is true anyway. Like conformity. Do you know what that is? Like, when a bunch of people are doing something, that means you're more likely to do it, too. Or you might do something on your own, but if a whole lot of people are doing that same thing, you're almost certain to do it. Anyway, this guy Asch, he decided he was going to prove that for a fact. So he did this test thing...he got some people to look at some lines, like...well, there were three people, right? And they all had to look at some pictures of lines, like, three lines. And then they had to look at a picture of one line. And they had to say which of the first lot of lines the second line, the one all by itself,  which one of the first lines it was most like. You know, like, it was as long as line A, line B, or line C. And first up, the person who was being tested, he would say what he really thought. But then the other two people, who were really in on it, like, they were working for the man who was doing the experiment, they would lie and say "Oh, I think it's like line A", when everyone could SEE it was exactly the same as line B. And then the person who was being tested would get a bit confused. And he'd think "Well, I can see it's like line B. But these two other people, they're saying it's like line A. Maybe they know something I don't. Maybe I'll look a bit dumb if I say line B and it's wrong. Hm. I better just say what they're saying. They're probably right." So even though they knew for a fact it was wrong, they'd still say it, just so they wouldn't look dumb or make a fuss or anything. Isn't that weird?"
Pip mostly listened as I spouted off this diatribe, but I think I pretty much lost him towards the end. When you try to explain a lot of things to kids, they sort of look at you like, "I have no idea what you mean, and honestly don't know why you'd even be thinking about this in the first place." Which begs the question, if we all knew to begin with that people will do stuff that other people are doing, did we really need someone to make people look at a bunch of lines to prove it?

Riddled with disease

With this god-awful chest congestion thing I have going on, I sound like Lindsey Lohan. I swear, someone spilled a drink on my alcohol-monitoring bracelet. It wasn't my fault. I'm still the lovable moppet from "The Parent Trap," honest. On a quasi-related note, we were making jokes about how with my bandana-covered hair and hacking cough, I could be a cancer patient. *cough, cough* "All I want is one more day. One more good day..." *cough* Hi-larious. There is a special place in hell for people like us.

I might get a B on a mid-term. Maybe even a C. If I get A's on everything else, I'll still get A's overall, I think. Or maybe I won't. But either way, I'll still be me. And I'll be OK. You'll still like me.

I have to activate my shiny new credit card. I am slowly becoming part of the problem.

I have to go to sleep, stat. Spanish in nine hours...ay, mi vida. Punk isn't dead, it just spends more time conjugating verbs and goes to bed earlier.

A Missive from Iphy's Interior Monologue

Let me be perfectly clear.
What I'm about to say can be boiled down to one very, very simple message: you aren't good enough. You've never been good enough and you're never going to be good enough. You will never be strong enough or smart enough. You will never be thin enough. You will never be sociable enough or achieve enough. You will never be liked enough or be organized enough.

Whatever you do, and there are so, so many things that you will NEVER do, but whatever half-assed efforts you actually get around to making, they will never be up to standard.
No one will ever be proud of you because there is nothing about you to be proud of. You will never do anything to be proud of.

You weren't good enough at gymnastics. You weren't good enough at piano. You weren't good enough at theater. You weren't good enough in high school. You certainly weren't good enough after high school. You weren't good enough to stop either of your marriages from failing. You're not good enough at your job to do it without messing it up.

You aren't a bad person, don't get me wrong. You're just a sub-par, ordinary, mediocre loser. You're inoffensive enough, not good enough to be famous and not bad enough to be infamous. It's sweet to watch you try, though. Your squeaky little efforts to practice and study and work out and be organized and get your ducks in a row are just charming. I look at you pretending like you're going to get somewhere, and I want to tell you not to bother, but it's just too much fun. Silly rabbit.

You only get what you deserve, and you don't deserve anything good. You deserve bland, ordinary nothingness, peppered with occasional spatters of pain and misery. Why are you surprised and upset when things don't turn out the way you want them to? You don't deserve to get what you want. Only people who work hard and get it right get what they want.

You don't work hard. Everyone thinks you do, but they're wrong. You don't practice enough or study enough. You don't have your promo together. You don't do any of the things you supposedly wish you could do because you can't get your shit together to take a class or make a phone call. It's all so easy, but somehow it's too hard for you.You could make it easy on yourself. You could fix up your promo and then get enough gigs to just perform and not teach. You could have gotten scholarships and not had to worry about school fees. You could have set up a study schedule. You could have been organized and got your shit together, but you didn't. And then you have the audacity to complain because things are difficult?

Is it dark, hiding there in the shadow of Your Potential? That great, big Potential that you supposedly have? You could performed all over the world, but you haven't. You could get a wonderful, high-paying job in the straight world if you wanted to, if you could finish up a degree in Something Sensible. You could change lives through the social arm of your current job, if you just committed yourself. You could work with big name companies if you'd just get your promo together and audition. You could get a street show together and do all the festivals and have a life that was one big party. But there's always an excuse, always a reason why you don't, can't, couldn't, didn't. And so your Potential looms, and you crouch there in the dark, getting paler and weaker and more insignificant every year.

So go ahead and pretend like you're going to change and things will be different, you'll get better, you'll be happier. You'll take your meds and go to meetings and show up on time to class and get straight A's and practice two hours a day and lose ten pounds and call your parents every week and see the dermatologist and get that scholarship and date guys who think you're just wonderful...and you still won't be good enough. Because even if you fulfil my list of demands, you're still falling short. Because you should have done it better, and you should have done it five years ago. You should never have let this happen in the first place.

Stick as many cheery post-its on your mirror as you want, repeat positive affirmations until you're blue in the face, tell yourself you're nice and pretty and everyone likes you...knock yourself out. I'll still be sitting back here, laughing at your feeble efforts. You and me, we're always going to be together. You can't get a divorce or move to another country to get away from me. I'll always be with you, little Iphy. You can count on me to keep you in line and stop you from getting ideas above your station. You'll never be good enough, and as long as you're not, I'll be right here to remind you of that.