Baby Steps

I once said in this column that islanders have to "cling to the rock." Those were just words back then. It was something I said before, when staying on the rock looked much easier and more possible without tremendous outlay of effort and ingenuity. Now it's time to turn myself into a barnacle. When things get difficult, for example when I have to apply for a job, or when I've had a falling out with someone, or when everything costs more than I think it should and less money comes in than I think should be the case, I contemplate leaving the rock.

Then sometimes I think I don't have any place else to go. But that isn't accurate. I have many other places I could go. But as the old saying says, "Wherever you go, there you are." I'd have all the same issues anywhere else, less the money it would take to move. No, an alternative location is not the answer. When I say to myself, "I don't know what to do" or "doing what needs to be done seems too difficult", then I know I'm not thinking outside the box. And it's usually a box I've created in my own mind. When moving forward gets challenging, I try to remember to take baby steps. There are lots of times the next baby step is obvious, and that's very nice. Then there are times my mind fills with images of anonymous, as yet unidentified, awful next baby steps. That's when I turn on the TV and zone out. After a while, grace steps in and holds my head and tapes my eyes open until I see the baby step in front of me I couldn't see before. The next baby step might be getting a piece of information or making a phone call. It might be writing a column.

Writing this column is what has kept me clung to this rock. I have made my dearest friends on the island because of the column. I have been buoyed many times in a moment of doubt by a friendly stranger saying, "Don't you write for the Islander?" One of my favorite such moments was when I could think of no other baby step than to go to the transfer station with my recycling. The woman next to me looked over as we tossed in jugs, cans, and paper. "Are you the author?" she said. That moment made my day and the thought of it comes back to me often. 

It's really neat when grace forces me to see a baby step that's fun and unexpected. Like going on a first date. Fun??? I know, when I started the twelve first dates I was scared. But now it's fun. Who knew? What does dating have to do with clinging to the rock like a barnacle? I believe fate asks a little action of us, a little foot work in the form of baby steps if you will, in the area of love. And love is like glue (insert correct biological term for barnacle glue here, all you microbiologists out there) when one wants to be a barnacle on a place.

Remember Dr. Leo Marvin, the psychiatrist played by Richard Dreyfus in the movie What About Bob? He wrote a fictitious book called Baby Steps. It's a long book about one very simple common sense idea. When you're afraid, or when things seem difficult, take baby steps toward what you want. My mom used to call it "biting off small pieces." In the movie, Leo, a world renowned psychiatrist is about to make a lot of money and continue his rise to fame by selling his book Baby Steps.

It turns out the seemingly normal Leo really isn't the mega god his fans had turned him into and eventually he crumbles when stalked by Bob, a new client. Ironically, Leo is himself admitted to a mental hospital, while Bob, his super needy, super neurotic client, triumphs over all and wins the hearts of everyone including Leo's family. Bob's triumph is a result of following the advice in Leo's book which, ironically, Leo gave to Bob in an effort to get him to leave his office. Sometimes when I don't know what to do, I think of What About Bob?, and about taking baby steps. The brilliance of What About Bob? is that the kernel of truth is, you really can accomplish a lot and overcome your fears if you take baby steps.

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© M.E. Rollins

High School Redux

As a shy person, I mostly did not enjoy high school. It wasn’t the school’s fault, I was just shy. My high school was an "experimental school", a public school in Portland in the "late sixties, early seventies." Don’t you get tired of saying that, "late sixties, early seventies"? I do. Dang, why couldn't peace, love, and understanding have fit into one decade, it's so laborious to keep saying, "late sixties and early seventies." But yes, I was born smack dab in the middle of the baby boom, and new high schools were needed to digest the egg in the snake when we all hit puberty.

Our classes fit into what was called the modular system. Something like twenty-one twenty minute periods starting at eight am and ending at three pm. Two or three periods, or "mods" clumped together made a class that lasted forty to sixty minutes. It was very cool as new education theories go. Make high school more like college, teach responsibility by allowing free time between "mods". But what was great in theory did not work so well in actuality for kids like me who had a social phobia so bad, that one rude comment from a boy could send me to study in the girls' locker room, or to hide out in the ceramics studio with all the other social-phobes during those socially valuable "free" periods.

After many years and a goodly amount of therapy, I've discovered the only way to deal with shyness is to act not shy. Practice, practice, practice. I've had many years of practice, and now I can say I can walk into a room of strangers and only almost run back out the door, not actually run back out the door. The funny thing about this is, most people find me quite charming and warm. I've learned to be charming and warm. Because I know most people are kind, and phobias, are just that, phobias. Not based in reality.

So I had a hard time with the social aspect of high school. But what I've discovered recently is, apparently it's never too late for do-overs. Because all the social awkwardness I literally hid from in high school, then escaped again by hitting the books in college and pairing up and marrying young, has come home to roost now I find myself making a new life. Writing this column is another form of practicing not being shy. And here's a secret. Sometimes writers are like actors. Shy exhibitionists. Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? Well it is contradictory, but real.

Here I could launch into my theory of why some writers and some actors are shy exhibitionists. It's an interesting thing to ponder. But that wouldn't get me to my point for this week. My point is, moving to a small town is like getting a second shot at high school. Because all the characters I knew, or didn't know, in high school are alive and well right here in River City it turns out, and all the social situations I found awkward then are just here in another form as well. Maybe the reincarnationists are right. Maybe we do just have to keep doing it over and over until we get it right.

Hopefully, I won't be run out on a rail for making the observation that small town life is like high school. Surely I can't be the only one to have noticed we have the "popular" kids, the science club kids, the jocks, the Jesus freaks, and the drama club. Right now you're probably trying to figure out which of those groups you fit into. Here's a hint, it's most likely the same group you belonged to in high school. I for instance belonged to the quick witted intellectual snobs with social phobias group. Same as now.

Perhaps it's all this dating I've been doing that's got me thinking about high school. Well, to be honest, I've had about as many dates so far here as I had in all my high school years. That's why I tend to be pretty bad at it. That's why I've agreed to date twelve guys. See it is a do over of high school. High school, only better. Better because there are a lot of self aware, self accepting people here. The same cannot be said for high school the first time around. And this time I come better prepared to the proverbial lunch room table myself.

Not that coming better prepared necessarily makes it any easier to pick up where I left off forty years ago. In some ways it's harder. I feel like Kathleen Turner in Peggy Sue Got Married. An old person in the mind and body of a teenager. Well, maybe not the body, unfortunately, but the mind anyway. And you know what happened to Peggy Sue when she went back to high school? She discovered that although she thought she wanted to do it all differently the second time around, once given the chance to do that, she saw the wisdom in her original choices.

Not so with me. If this is my high school redux, this time instead of checking out in various ways, I'm choosing to be fully alive and awake, so I can learn the lessons I didn't learn then. Like finding out all my worst fears are not true. Like finding out I am smart, I do have good ideas, I can make decisions, I can support myself, and I can be happy. I must be a good student, because this time around it's only taken a year and a half to get those lessons. All the rest is just practice, practice, practice.

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© M.E. Rollins