Lost Our Finesse

In October, one of the girls started sleeping in a Scooby Doo costume. It’s a full-body footied-onesie with a hoodie that has ears. I’m not joking. She did not buy this for Halloween. It looks very comfortable. After her, another girl surfaced with a similar, raccoon costume. At night, when I check on them for lights out, they are usually sitting at their desks, the heads of cartoon animals drooping down their backs. Their straight, dark hair adding fringed bangs over the animal eyes. I wonder if they wear the hoods while they sleep, totem pole animals in skinny, twin beds, staring up to their ceilings like spirit animals.

***

Over half the girls stretch their underwear on tiny hangers, like dreamcatchers in their windows. At first it was a little shocking, as if I were reading their journals. It reminds me of being at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul where hanging thongs – the Ts like cotton Jesuses strung up on specially made circle hangers – covered walls of booths and the vendors called to my friends and me, “Angels, where is Charlie?” Being the type of person who buys underwear from bins at Target of the 5 for $20 variety, I had to ask a coworker why one would hang underwear up to dry. “It’s not good for the elastic to go through the dryer,” she told me, “or at least that’s what my friend said.” I’m glad she had to ask, too. Dangling window pendants, suspended in their rooms and the common bathrooms with pink, block letters and tiny, repeated graphics. Many of them had never done laundry, needed help with settings and soap, asked advice on what to wash together, but this they learned before my name.

***

There is a future art major rooming above our living room. She’s been creating a gianormous eyeball for the past month or so. We hear the blender as she mashes newspaper for the muscles surrounding the larger-than-a-watermelon-size eye wedged in cardboard. While her room is normally messy, the eyeball brought new levels of chaos. Recently, on a heater investigation with the Head of Maintenance, he pushed his way into her room, smashing papers on the under the door and bowls with chopsticks and things stuck to them. I wondered what he was going to say about the fact that he could only sporadically see the floor. “Someone doesn’t want her security deposit back,” he said, checking to see if her windows were open. When he spotted the impossible-to-miss-eyeball, the stunning blue of the iris, he took two steps back and shook his head.

***

I’ve started collecting their phones at dorm meetings. If I see them, I take them and they get an early bed time for the week. Yes, I’m that person. I’ve imagined keeping them to hang like Calder mobiles in our lounge area: their bright, plastic covers over slim, metal bodies swinging over couches and tables like a dorm portrait. Their various rings calling out to their owners, alerting them to messages from beyond. The vibrations causing the phones to dance in awkward, puppety swoops. When I’m on duty, I stare at the long beams crossing the room picturing the image of what I’m sure would be my masterpiece.

 

***

The other day I was writing something for one of the girls and they informed me that most kids their age cannot read cursive.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“They don’t teach it, so people don’t, like, see it and most can’t read it. Like, I can, but, like, most can’t. It’s weird, I know.”

“They don’t teach cursive anymore?” I asked. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head.

“That blows my mind.” I told her.

And immediately the quote from “Duets” came to mind: “And they say our society has lost its finesse.” If we were cutting humanities and arts and it was working – kids were mastering math and science or becoming star athletes – that would be one thing, but that’s not the case. We are just cutting. So our children are these half-formed humans who don’t read cursive and can’t not text for a 20-minute meeting. They can’t write essays or memorize poems. But these are the same kids who wear animal costumes to bed. Whose underwear is as colorful as their cell phone cases. So, why do we stop teaching curlicues and fun words? Why is it that we underestimate their imaginations? I think it says more about adults than the kids.