NOTHING
Rebecca Bauman
Issue date: 5/7/09 Section: Opinion
I've got nothing to say today. I got nothing. Nothing.
Which is sad when you consider how much is going on around campus. Belligerent, bone-headed preachers instigating screaming matches in the Oval. A new president taking the wheel from an old favorite. Scary, scary budget cutbacks. Protests against domestic violence in the rain. Provolone cheese shortages in the Gorilla Crossing.
During a recent English class exercise, I was asked to write out a list of things that I "feel strongly about." And I froze, my pen hovering above the fine lines of my legal pad as everyone else scribbled on and on about Sudan and abortion and stem cell research and gay marriage.
I could only write: "caged animals."
My English teacher caught my unblinking stare, my panic.
"Oh, come on!" she said. "This is what you do for a living."
She's right. I'm a columnist. I'm paid to opine, the stronger the opinion the better. My sole purpose is to rant and rave and, hopefully, persuade.
I must have spent hours thinking about what matters to me. I must have spent hours scrawling out my ideas, typing up point-by-point arguments, hours wrestling with my editor about really needing to use the F-word in this column or that column, because what I'm talking about this week - ooooh - it just begs for the F-word.
But as I get older, I find the things I feel "strongly" about are becoming more and more abstract. I don't know how to write a column about "caged animals" or "women with rape fantasies" or "the things that might live in your strip pit." I have more questions than answers, fewer certainties than ever. I pick my battles with more care, because I realize that much of my youth has been spent living impetuously, from knee-jerk reaction to knee-jerk reaction. I don't want to waste any more energy.
Or, more likely, I don't want to seem pigheaded. Not anymore.
This, of course, threatens my career, the livelihood that requires I risk pigheadedness every week. Now I'm inclined only to point out what I see as a familiar and sorrowed pigheadedness in my fellow students - to question the merits of "fighting back" against that preacher in the Oval, of sitting on sleeping bags on a rock under a tarp in the rain, of running for public office for no other reason than to remind people that they can, too.
Which is sad when you consider how much is going on around campus. Belligerent, bone-headed preachers instigating screaming matches in the Oval. A new president taking the wheel from an old favorite. Scary, scary budget cutbacks. Protests against domestic violence in the rain. Provolone cheese shortages in the Gorilla Crossing.
During a recent English class exercise, I was asked to write out a list of things that I "feel strongly about." And I froze, my pen hovering above the fine lines of my legal pad as everyone else scribbled on and on about Sudan and abortion and stem cell research and gay marriage.
I could only write: "caged animals."
My English teacher caught my unblinking stare, my panic.
"Oh, come on!" she said. "This is what you do for a living."
She's right. I'm a columnist. I'm paid to opine, the stronger the opinion the better. My sole purpose is to rant and rave and, hopefully, persuade.
I must have spent hours thinking about what matters to me. I must have spent hours scrawling out my ideas, typing up point-by-point arguments, hours wrestling with my editor about really needing to use the F-word in this column or that column, because what I'm talking about this week - ooooh - it just begs for the F-word.
But as I get older, I find the things I feel "strongly" about are becoming more and more abstract. I don't know how to write a column about "caged animals" or "women with rape fantasies" or "the things that might live in your strip pit." I have more questions than answers, fewer certainties than ever. I pick my battles with more care, because I realize that much of my youth has been spent living impetuously, from knee-jerk reaction to knee-jerk reaction. I don't want to waste any more energy.
Or, more likely, I don't want to seem pigheaded. Not anymore.
This, of course, threatens my career, the livelihood that requires I risk pigheadedness every week. Now I'm inclined only to point out what I see as a familiar and sorrowed pigheadedness in my fellow students - to question the merits of "fighting back" against that preacher in the Oval, of sitting on sleeping bags on a rock under a tarp in the rain, of running for public office for no other reason than to remind people that they can, too.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Pittsburgh Moving Company
posted 7/10/09 @ 11:19 AM CST
I think this is just part of growing up, growing out of that teenage angst that had us all feeling like everything matters, like everything is a fight that we must win. (Continued…)
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