Under the Raydar — 10/28/10

So, I made a bad decision. Well, a series of bad decisions that led me to one place: a required 8 a.m. class my senior year of college.

In the midst of midterms one of my classmates sat down next to me and started ranting about how tired and stressed he was, ending his speech with a semi-coherent “Need coffee.” Then he looked thoughtful and mused, “Jumping jacks. That would be nice.”

It was 7:55 a.m.; our professor was still fiddling with her PowerPoint.

“Right now?” I asked.

“There’s time.”

I turned and followed him out of class, into the slated hallway, and we began to do jumping jacks. He started doing handstands, and I told him I had never done a handstand without water, and he said, “Why don’t you try it?”

I can’t say I succeeded, but then I was laughing and we walked back into class with smiles and a rush of blood to the head, which felt a lot like energy.

As we sat down, I turned to him, I said, “When life gives you 8 a.m.’s …”

We both agreed: “do jumping jacks.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about what we do when we are forced into a less-than-satisfactory situation, when we are frustrated by something we cannot control. Some of our solutions seem fun, normal: put on high heels and go out, go for a run, vent to a friend and too often it seems, complain. We complain about midterms, we complain about reading, we complain about exams: all of the things we expected when we signed up for Middlebury. Complaining is not invalid, and in many ways the catharsis that comes with it is beneficial, but that circumstantial jumping jack session led me to think about the times that have really struck me as fresh, unexpected ways to deal with the expected: with our anxieties and our stress.

Fairly recently, a friend of mine got into a minor car accident, and she was very shaken up by its triggered response to other very serious personal events that had been troubling her. She wanted a cigarette, so we decided to drive to go get one, but she wanted the car ride to vent. So, we decided to drive along the highway for about 45 minutes, bypassing at least 30 closer, more convenient gas stations. When we arrived at the 24-hour CVS, the cashier carded me, since I was with her, and I hadn’t brought my ID.

My friend just shrugged. “Well, I can’t have a cigarette. So … let’s dye our hair!”

After a few minutes, we returned to the checkout station with chips, blue hair dye, loofas, and candy.

We ended up calling our friend, who lived another 40 minutes away, asking her if we could dye our hair in her bathroom. She said, “Why not? It’s midnight on a Sunday,” and we drove over.
My friend turned to me and said, “Hey. Once we get there, I don’t want to vent anymore. I can’t change what happened.”

But she could change her hair. And we did.

We stayed up until 5 a.m., bleaching, dying, cutting our hair, drinking beer and eating candy and we turned our cell phones off. So, we had work the next morning at 7 a.m.? It was of no consequence.

When life gives us something expected, when life gives us something stressful, when life gives us something like an 8 a.m., a midterm, a list of things planned for but suffered anyway, there comes a time when talking will not help. There comes a time when all you can do is dye your hair blue, do jumping jacks in the hallway of Bi Hall, forget what you cannot change and recognize what you can do: and that is something unpredictable in the face of the predicted.