Lost Tooth

I remember losing teeth. It was an exciting, fun thing that meant I was growing up just a little bit more.

With twins, however, or at least with my twins, it can be a little more complicated than that.

Dulce lost her tooth, finally, and miracle of miracles, Natalina was excited for her. Celebrated with her.

For a few moments.

Natalina was happy because she truly wanted Dulce to lose her tooth first. That way, her sister would prove it was safe. These are the things my children worry about.

Soon enough, though, the jubilant shrieks died down, and Natalina began with the quiet ribbing. She didn't like the way the big tooth looked, she said. She thought Dulce looked better with her little teeth.

We're going back and forth right now between teasing and support, and honestly, that's more than I'd hoped for. Particularly coming from a little girl who just an hour ago threw a tantrum at a party because she'd eaten her entire slice of pizza and Dulce had eaten just half. This is the life we live.

For now, we'll take what we get, and the little girl who doesn't believe in the tooth fairy will get some money under her pillow tonight.





 

Riots may be a necessary part of societal change...until we change society

Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society. Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets. As ‘normal’ citizens watch the events of Ferguson unfurl on their television screens and Twitter feeds, there is a lot of head shaking, finger pointing, and privileged explanation going on. We wish to seclude the incident and the people involved. To separate it from our history as a nation, to dehumanize the change agents because of their bad and sometimes violent decisions—because if we can separate the underlying racial tensions that clearly exist in our country from the looting and rioting of select individuals, we can continue to ignore the problem.

While the most famous rant against the riots thus far comes from Kevin Sorbo, where he calls the rioters “animals” and “losers,” there are thousands of people echoing these sentiments. Sorbo correctly ascertains that the rioting has little to do with the shooting of an unarmed black man in the street a few weeks ago, but he blames it on the typical privileged American’s stereotype of a less fortunate sect of human being—that the looting is a result of frustration built up over years of “blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures.”

Because when you have succeeded, it ceases to be a possibility, in our capitalist society, that anyone else helped you. And if no one helped you succeed, then no one is holding anyone else back from succeeding. Except they did help you, and they are holding people back. So that blaming someone else for your failures in the United States may very well be an astute observation of reality, particularly as it comes to white privilege versus black privilege. And, yes, they are different, and they are tied to race, and that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me a realist. If anything, I am racist because I am white. Until I have had to walk in a person of color’s skin, I will never understand, I will always take things for granted, and I will be inherently privileged. But by ignoring the very real issues this country still faces in terms of race to promote an as-of-yet imaginary colorblind society, we contribute to the problem at hand, which is centuries of abuses lobbied against other humans on no basis but that of their skin color.

Sorbo is not alone. One of the Tea Party’s pages has hundreds of comments disparaging the rioters, bemoaning the state of our country, and very much calling skin color on the carpet as the culprit of this debauched way of dealing with the state of our society.

“To hear the libs, one would think that burning and looting are a justifiable way to judge negative events that effect (sic) the black,” commented Ray Hause. “I intentionally used black because of a fact that you do not hear of these events when another skin color is in play. It is about time that the blacks start cleaning their own backyards before they start on ours.”

However, the conservative group to which Hause belongs gets its name from the founding riot, The Boston Tea Party. For those who need a quick history brush-up, in 1773 American protesters dumped an entire shipment of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest The Tea Act, which colonists maintained violated their rights. In response to this costly protest and civil unrest, the British government enforced The Coercive Acts, ending local government in Massachusetts, which in turn led to the American Revolution and created our great country.

Samuel Adams wrote of the incident, claiming it “was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights” according to John K. Alexander, author of “Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician” (pg. 129).

That protest back in 1773 was meant to effect political and societal change, and while the destruction of property in that case may not have ended in loss of human life, the revolution that took place afterward certainly did. What separates a heralded victory in history from an attempt at societal change, a cry for help from the country’s trampled, today? The fact that we won.

In terms of riots being more common in black communities, that is true only when the riots are politically aimed.

The obvious example here is the L.A. Riots of 1992, after the Rodney King beating and verdict. I would put forth that peaceful protesting is a luxury of those already in mainstream culture, those who can be assured their voices will be heard without violence, those who can afford to wait for the change they want.

“I risk sounding racist but if this was a white kid there would be no riot,” commented Thom Nielsen on the Tea Party page. “History shows us that blacks in this country are more apt to riot than any other population. They are stirred up by racist black people and set out to cause problems. End of story.”

Blacks in this country are more apt to riot because they are one of the populations here who still need to. In the case of the 1992 riots, 30 years of black people trying to talk about their struggles of racial profiling and muted, but still vastly unfair, treatment, came to a boil. Sometimes, enough is simply too much. And after that catalyst event, the landscape of southern California changed, and nationally, police forces took note.

And the racism they are fighting, the racism we are all fighting, is still alive and well throughout our nation. The modern racism may not culminate in separate water fountains and backs of buses, but its insidious nature is perhaps even more dangerous to the individuals who have to live under the shroud of stereotypical lies society foists upon them. 

Take Jerry Lister’s comment for example:

“I believe the only way to stop the blacks from rioting is to film every person involved and prohibit them from receiving ALL public assistance for life.”

Instead of tearing down other human beings who are acting upon decades of pent-up anger at a system decidedly against them, a system that has told them they are less than human for years, we ought to be reaching out to help them regain the humanity they lost, not when a few set fire to the buildings in Ferguson, but when they were born the wrong color in the post-racial America.

 

Gazelles and Elephants: Fitting in at five years old -- Contributor Post

Pi and Phi are 5 now. They attend Kindergarten (two different classes so they can both shine their stars individually as bright as possible). They both insisted that they are old enough to ride the bus to school, and because the bus is actually available to them now that they are in Kinder, I agreed. So they ride the bus to school every school day morning.

I drop them off and watch them interact at the bus stop with the other kids. They’re the only Kinder kids in our little neighborhood, so mostly the big kids are leaving them alone and letting them run around like animals waiting for the bus.

Run around they do, too. Every single day, they drop their packs in the bus shelter and then have races from one sign to the other. About 200 feet of a race they do over and over until the bus gets there. Squealing, rambunctious, and overall dorky. Phi runs with his hands clutched high to his sides, a bit like a T-Rex. A smile of pure happiness. His feet hit the ground with the strange, awkward, delicate gait so familiar to other parents who have children on the spectrum. Toes pointed down, still somewhat clompy somehow. Like an elephant doing ballet. So happy.

Pi’s arms are thrown back and her clomping hits whole foot down, her face also has the same smile. So happy. She is a gazelle.

The other kids are mostly silent while Pi and Phi enact these daily races. Pi and Phi encircle them, run between them, around them, near them. You can see the other kids pull back, stare at them. I want to tell Pi and Phi to chill. Be cool. The kids are judging them. I keep my mouth shut. One kid does a mock tiptoe of Phi to his other friends, and they cover their mouths to smile behind their hands. They know better than to laugh where parents can see them. Phi doesn’t notice, just keeps running. Keeps being happy.

I want to scream at these kids. You think it’s awesome that you can run better than him? Running is hard for him. He’s a different animal. You are gazelles, and he is an elephant. His squealing trumpet of glee comes from a differently shaped throat than your own. Is it such a point of pride that yours was shaped different? Do you work for hours to make your gazelle throat shape the sounds that all the other gazelles make?

No he does not have grace. What he has, instead, is hard work. He has perseverance. Thank goodness that’s part of the package with Autism. The same thing that makes him line up puzzles for hours is what makes it possible for him to make words that others understand. He works past the point of wanting to stop. I am furiously proud of his words.

I remember his testing, and them asking us for a list of his words. For a week we tried to put together even ten words that he said at the age of 18 months. Duck. Ball. … Umm.. Daddy? We struggled to find any words that he had actually said. Now, at age 5, his vocabulary is huge. He inherits the wide breadth of spoken word that his father and I use daily, and it shows.

But the kids at the bus stop don’t see that he is a hard working elephant stuck in the land of the graceful gazelles. They see that he is not part of their herd. They close ranks.

So he runs with Pi. Pi who doesn’t care, yet, about gazelles and elephants. All animals are different to her. She takes it in stride.

I want the other kids at the bus stop to see what she sees. I want them to feel the pure joy that he feels.

I’m proud of my mismatched animals, and so furious at the herd that closes them both out. I know that in their classes there are other mismatched animals, and they find them and befriend them. The herd at the bus stop is not their whole world of experience, but only a small window onto it.

I also know that the herd at the bus stop is going to grow. That as they get bigger, it will become more and more evident how different they both are to the herds they encounter. Him for his everything, and her for her acceptance of these things and for her own differences. That the ruthlessness of peers will run their world for the next fifteen some odd years. There is not a thing I can do to change it.

I know that they are going to spend their lives collecting their own herds of mismatched animals. I hope they do not spend too long trying to assimilate into herds that are not their own and do not accept them. I also feel sad for the limited scope of the herd of gazelles at the bus stop. They have not yet learned the value of the different animals. I hope they learn it someday.


...

Polly is a twin mother who writes at Pollychromatic. Check out her blog.




 

Fail Kitchen -- Doggie Sandwich Fail

Did not nail it. Nope.

Making it as a freelancer

As I outlined in Wired, it's not necessarily easy to make it as a freelancer. I thought I'd list out a few things to give you an idea of how to go about it.

1) You need a network.

Join blogging groups and writing groups, but not for share for shares or follows for follows. Participate as if it were a social group. Leave links for contests and open calls that you find. Ask questions about your pieces. Start discussions about things entirely unrelated, to help people relieve stress (okay, make sure they're tangentially related). Anyway, build a group around yourself, going through the same trials and successes. It's important. So many times you need an intro to
an editor or can give one. We have to help each other out.

2) Submit, submit, submit.

I get rejected a lot. Like, a lot. Sometimes, editors tell me never to talk to them again. Ever. (oops, on that one). And I keep going. Because sometimes they say yes. And if they don't, sometimes, someone else will. People say this all the time, but I've been keeping a record since June of my pitching numbers, weekly. Here they are, so you can get a feel of what I really mean:



Week 1:

11 pitches
2 rejections
6 acceptances


Week 2:

13 pitches
5 rejections
4 acceptances


Week 3:

12 pitches
3 rejections
2 acceptances


Week 4:

6 pitches
1 rejection
4 acceptances


Week 5:

6 pitches
3 rejections
1 acceptance


Week 6:

15 pitches
1 rejection
7 acceptances


Week 7:

5 pitches
1 rejection
0 acceptances


Week 8:

23 pitches
10 rejections
5 acceptances

Still reading?

Okay, final step: Don't expect to make good money off the bat, but put a cap on how much you'll do for free.

When you're building your platform, it's tricky because, yes, you need exposure. But at the same you can't let the aggregates own you. Don't think you aren't worth money. After you have the bylines you need, try the paying publications. They are out there, and they are accepting pitches.

Even when you are writing for paying publications, though, the money is inconsistent. Some weeks I make nothing. Like, literally zero dollars. One amazing, magical, unicorn week, I made more than $1,000.

Make sure you set aside a chunk for taxes. You do not want to be screwed come January.

Remember to follow your checks. Some publications pay through paypal, but many others do physical checks or direct deposits. There are usually contracts involved, and you have to send invoices through whatever system the specific publication you wrote for has in place.

You sometimes won't get paid for months, but you will get paid, and you will get started. It's a rough world, and you have to have patience, stamina and perseverance. But you can do it. If I can do it almost anyone can.