Mrs. Ellen Riggins

I made a note to myself at the top of my Gmail tasks list about this time last year ago: racketball.

About all I was doing at that time was rewatching West Wing and Friday Night Lights. 

In the first episode of the third season of FNL, everything is going to hell.  For Smash, who had been a star player during his senior year (and during the whole first and second season), shit’s bleak.  He’s recoverning from an injury, but he;s told that he’ll never be back to the condition he was in before he got hurt.  He’s freaking out in the steaming rage under the surface way that’s the only method of grief that hypermasculinity allows for.

Coach Taylor (dreamy Coach Taylor) picks him up one night without notice, and in the next scene, they’re in a racketball court, both still in their work clothes.  There’s lots of grunting and sweat, etc., and Smash is like, “Coach, my life is over, and also why are we playing racketball, ‘the Whitest sport ever’?”

They’re playing racketball because running football drills ad nauseum would not do the trick.  Smash needs to restore his speed and agility, and racketball demands plenty of both.  (Coach Taylor doesn’t say as much, but that’s the unspoken reason.)

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There’s sometimes wisdom, I think, in not taking a challenge head on.  In coming around instead with creativity.  

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I never knew that selling wedding dresses and volunteering in a prison was gonna work as a method for feeling purposed.  But it’s turned out to be way more effective than the linear path I took because I thought I was supposed to – good grades, then degree, then job, then you win.  That shit did not work.

filing

I came across Anita, a documentary about Anita Hill's 1991 testimony to Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment of her.  I was only five then, so I don't have any memory of it, but I'd heard it alluded to.  I'm glad I watched it.

There's such an air of, "Ohmygod why are you making a big deal of nothing," to the footage.  Actually, beyond that, it's like: "You are fucking up our shit by bringing this up! We are White men trying to do right by bringing in a Black guy! Why won't you shut up?!"  Putting her testimony on trial? What? 

(Although watching Senator Hatch come after her was not unlike watching White folks in the media and in local governments attack the characters of the Black men and boys that their police have murdered.  For example.)

There's a scene in the documentary where she shows all the file cabinets in her basement, filled with correspondence she has received over the years.  She randomly pulls one and reads it aloud, a letter of sincere support.  Earlier though, she shares that she has one file cabinet full of insults and threats she's received.

My former principal shared her file with me once.  I only read some of its contents; an anonymous letter shaming her for not shh-ing Black families cheering for their children at graduation stands out in my memory.

I have a digital folder full of screenshots from this whole incident.

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There's something about filing.  About collecting.  Does cool-headedly putting mean messages aside help to restore a sense of dignity?  Like, in my case, I'm like, "...Hm... Alright, ya fucking asshole.  Noted.  I'll just keep that. shit. right. here."

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My Facebook feed, perhaps coincidentally/perhaps because August is approaching, has had a lot of stuff about teachers and depression on it lately.  Once I noted the trend, I bookmarked this one and this one.  I take issue with several of the things these dudes have to say, but I'm feeling the need to start filing teacher depression stories somewhere.