It Was Personal History Awareness Month (And I Missed It)

 It Was Personal History Awareness Month (and I Missed It)

Would I lie about something like that?  It’s important to be aware of one’s personal history. I try to be aware of my personal history as often as possible. Unfortunately, I forgot to commemorate it it last month. I was too busy throwing away all of the term papers I didn’t read during the summer semester and entering fictitious grades into the system. I spent more time creating personal histories for my students than I spent commemorating my own history.

Enough about their personal history. I’ve got my own personal history, and I have a lot of it. Ask my wife. Worse, ask my mother. She’s eighty-five years old and every time I visit, she can’t remember my name, but she beckons me with a reminder of my personal history.

The whole family was gathered for Easter dinner a few years ago, and my mother wanted my attention.

“You. The one who broke the Tiffany lamp forty years ago! Could you stop talking and pass the roast beef that you hacked to pieces?” (Another entry onto the ledger of my life of crime--- the hacked roast beef). The lamp again. She hasn’t used that one for awhile. She saves the Tiffany Lamp Incident for special occasions. I should quit trying to set the record straight about that one. Any response just raises more questions.

“Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? Ralphie was beating me with the cat and I was getting my eyes clawed out. It was me or the lamp!” I replied.

“Ralphie wasn’t even there at the time, were you, sweetheart?”

My brother Ralph has a clean blotter. The firstborn of our family has never done anything wrong, and at middle age, he still won’t confess to his part in the Tiffany Lamp Incident. If you believe my mother, his personal history reads like The Lives of the Saints.

“I was with you, shopping at Sears, Mom,” Ralph said. You gave me the charge card to buy underwear. I still have the receipt.”

I let it go. We’re all grown up now. He has a possibly verifiable alibi. 

But who keeps a receipt for underwear for thirty years?

I’m surprised that nobody mentioned Personal History Month during the last faculty meeting. There’s always some sort of awareness week.

Maybe everyone else was too busy throwing away unread student papers and making up students’ personal histories too. My colleagues criticize me for acting detached. Maybe it’s true. Next year, I’ll remind everyone of Personal History Awareness Month in a departmental memorandum and urge everyone to disclose something very personal about himself at the next faculty meeting. Then I'll tell everyone about my fallen arches.

Wow. I’ve got something to look forward to now.

Post script: As I look on the list of notable things on the list, I see that it was also Self-Discovery Month. What in Hell is that? Was I supposed to have spent a month looking for myself? I guess it’s sort of like back when we were all urged to get in touch with our “inner child”. I was bummed out when I found out that my inner child had left the country and was last seen building sand castles and canoodling with a scantily-clad local beauty on a beach in Tahiti.

I sent him an email but he never wrote back.

Gender Awareness Month

Our faculty meetings are themed events. Last spring semester, the theme was Gender Awareness Month which coincided with Double Standards Awareness Month. The people who decide what we should be aware of every month cram a lot of awareness into every month as if we don’t already have enough to distract us. Just how many things is the human mind capable of being aware of simultaneously before it becomes too dangerous for one to even tie his own shoes for fear of awareness oversaturation?

Someone should run a study of this pressing social problem.  I’ll ask a former student who took a grant writing class this semester to help me write a proposal, and she and I can embark upon this journey together. Maybe we can tie it in with some sort of survey of gender, writing ability, and ethnic privilege.

Maybe the whole Awareness Month thing is about bonding, but I never feel any closer to anyone after any of these meetings.

I can see a small connection between being aware of gender and double standards (separately, of course). Women have to contend with glass ceilings in their careers and a reported shortage of toilets in football stadiums, concert halls, WalMarts, and other places of mass gathering. (I’ll overlook the fact that this department is overrun with women and the fact that the last two department chairs were held by women, and that the university maintenance engineer swears that  the faculty women’s bathrooms rival the Taj Mahal in spaciousness. I’ll take his word for it. His name is Ravi.

Last spring the faculty was encouraged to assume a role or engage in a behavior common to the  opposite sex.

Wait. We were encouraged to assume a role or engage in a behavior common to a DIFFERENT sex and/or gender.  (It’s confusing, and I have only a tenuous grasp of the many perceived differences).  In addition, we were encouraged to be aware that “we” (i.e., men) adhere to a code of double standards. Nobody EVER talks about the double standards that favor women.

Fine.

At the following faculty meeting, we were asked to tell what we had done to observe Gender Awareness Month. It got off to a bad start.

“I horked up an oyster and spit it on the sidewalk,” Emily, the new young female lecturer volunteered. I wonder how long it took her to think that one up. I also wonder what sort of company she keeps.

“I’m carrying a double-strength prophylactic in my purse,” the female Women and Gender Studies professor said. “And pepper spray.” (I have to remember pepper spray for next year’s Gender Awareness Month. I have no idea what pepper spray and double strength prophylactics have to do with gender awareness, but I’ll work it in).

There was an admission by one professor that she wrote her husband a love letter forgiving him for being a slob, and that —slob or not— she will always love him. To underscore her awareness of the disparity in their genders, she said, she threw her dirty clothes on the floor too.

Then they turned to the male faculty— all six of us. (There are actually seven of us but the Queer Theory guy didn’t make the meeting. He rarely shows up).

“I changed the baby’s diaper last night,” a young male first-year lecturer said meekly.

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO THAT!”

That doesn’t look like much in type, but when you hear twenty-five or thirty women say it in unison, it’s pretty scary. It seemed planned. I wonder if the women have separate, secret faculty meetings. It would be just like them. They're always one step ahead of the guys.

Then it was my turn. I had forgotten about the Gender Awareness thing.  I wasn’t ready for the meeting, and my mind raced to think of a different gender behavior that I could conceive of engaging in.

“I’m wearing my wife’s panty hose,” I said. “My wife complains that they’re uncomfortable and inconvenient, and I must admit that both are legitimate complaints. You women should be awarded medals for what you must bear every day. I can’t imagine what a brassiere would do to my psyche.”

Silence. I think I shocked everyone but not for long.

“I want to see and touch those panty hose you claim you’re wearing,” the department chair (a woman) demanded.

I reminded her that it was also Double Standards Awareness Month and that her request evinced a gross (if not illegal) double standard. I reminded her that if I asked to see and touch her panty hose, I’d probably be fired. (Sometimes I amaze myself at how fast I can think of snappy come-backs).

When the rest of the men were polled, each one falsely admitted to being a panty hose guy too. After the meeting, they thanked me for saving them. They had forgotten about the Awareness Month too. I think they were shaken up by the reaction to Mr. Baby Diaper as much as I was.

I don’t think the meeting accomplished much in the way of bonding, but it surely elevated my self-esteem. I stood up to the department chair, and I struck a blow for maleness, even if I lied. The women had to take our word for it. If that isn’t equality, I don’t know what is.

I just checked the calender's next Awareness Month. It’s a short list, but it is (among other things) Scleroderma Awareness Month. I have no idea what scleroderma is, but it sounds like it oozes and is highly contagious. I think I’ll get another cup of coffee, walk to my office and lock the door. I may even cancel classes for the rest of the fall term. The students are all getting C’s whether they learn anything or not.

Besides, they should stay home if they have scleroderma.