How to Meet 12 Year Olds

There comes a time when a lot of us will (hopefully) fly the coop, leave the nest or otherwise take wing to find our fortune. A lot of us will build ourselves a lopsided nest, take a tolerable job getting up earlier than the worm, and maybe find ourselves a monogamous mate.

But what happens when we don’t have any fine feathered friends?

It is the lament of the working girl, “how can I meet people my own age?” So much emphasis is put on the dating scene that friends many times don’t get the attention they deserve.

Many people have friend they can tap from high school or college. But when you move away from home or get married, even the best of school chums can be hard to keep in touch with. On beyond work, where is a girl to find a flock to just hang out with?

Self-help books are full of thoughtful ideas of places to meet people, things to do, and hobbies to explore where you just might meet someone. One of these is volunteering. If you have the time, the books state, find something you’re interested in or take up the torch of a favorite cause.

What these books don’t state is that not a lot of twenty-somethings have the time or commitment level to stick with volunteering. I found this out when I attempted to infuse myself back into the theater. I was a two-year college theater major, and it was something I enjoyed, but didn’t necessarily think I wanted to do for a living. So, when I moved 750 miles from where I grew up, away from family and friends, I thought volunteering at the local theater was just the thing.

“It’s close to my house,” I thought, “I can even get some exercise biking or walking to the theater.” It was the perfect plan. Volunteer my University skills as a prop builder and set painter, and in exchange, get to meet incredibly interesting alternative theater folk with problems and dreams bigger than my own.

Of course, I began to realize this wasn’t exactly how it was going to work when I was introduced to the other volunteers, all of them at least thirty years my senior. I also had to put in some hard time behind the candy counter during intermission before I could work behind the scenes on a play. Pouring cokes and selling Mars Bars wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I stepped out onto Broadway, but I hung on long enough to get a gig running the lighting board for a production of The Music Man. Not a very cutting-edge drama, and the job actually consist of hitting a button marked GO seventy times on-cue throughout the performance. Also, as opposed to having martinis after rehearsals with Chaz the cross-dressing costume designer, and the girl who everybody just calls 7, I got to hang out with Jason and Mark. Jason and Mark were twelve-year-old boys who had yet to be hit with the curse of puberty. They were very into Audio Visual equipment and liked to use the word coaxial whenever possible. Needless to say, there were no martinis in Jason and Mark’s immediate futures.

The thing about the internet (and tv too I guess) is that there is no starting point. You choose your starting point, or gateway. Wether it's google, yahoo or your own personal web page, there is no defined entry point except the one you choose. This may not be ground breaking news, but even the best search is not going to be a complete index. In that way, the internet is not like the tv - where it is easy to click through even a few hundred channels. Even then, you know you will be seeing fiction or non-fiction, comedy or drama, movie or cartoon. Working on the internet is like walking through a library blindfolded. In a library, you can skim through the shelves if you don't feel like searching the card catalog for something specific. If you think you may be interested in something on redecorating your house, you know to go to the second floor to probably the 700s. If you poke around long enough, you'll probably find something. On the internet, you can't go to the "arts" section, you have to decide where to start, what to search for, what to randomly type into the address bar (try redecorating.com.) Its a bit like New York City. It is humbling in an aggrivating way.

Comic rant

Not as in funny, though it may be, but on comic books and comic strips and their surrounding culture. There is a book that keeps staring at me from the library shelves. They put the graphic novels right at the entrance so you can’t help but see them when you come in. Anyway, it’s called Understanding Comics and it has this little goggle-eyed guy on the front that just seems to be staring at you in a vaguely patronizing way. Once you start to read the book you’ll see that it isn’t so vague.

The author, Scott McCloud, has taken way too much of his time to explain how comics work and why they should be considered an art form. I’m not saying he doesn’t have some good things to say, but he rambles in a way that is utterly distracting and unnecessary in a genre that relies on pictures to get a point across. Pretty much he says, “comics are more than DC and Marvel.” Yes, who doesn’t know that? Probably not anyone who would pick up your book

It did make me want to start writing my comics again, thought. To resurrect Incognito, Inc., that strange universe within a universe where Rufus Incognito is an actor who plays himself in a strange mirror of his own life. Where his daydreams come to life and star all his close relations and acquaintances. Sigh. Just another thing to distract me.

I smell teriyaki.

You fuckin nasty little elves!

Last night all kinds of problems came crashing down on my head, the most of which was something I had no control over and that honestly doesn’t effect me directly. The least of which was the fact that my computer kept giving me crap about not being able to log on to the internet due to a bad connection. I thought this was something I could handle – or at least ignore long enough to put it in its proper worrying order:

1. War in Iraq
2. FCC deregulation
3. Dakota School closings
4. Morgan can’t log in to internet

Well, of course things never work out that way. It was more like:

1. Can’t log in to internet – world sucks – I am useless, can’t do anything right, can’t even fix the damn computer – try plugging it in to different phone line, try logging in on other computer, try changing settings, try uninstalling program, check modem, check dial up choices, try crying,
1a. Oh man, now I can’t even email something to another computer to take to a place
I can print it out – can’t print it out from this computer because my printer
cartridge is old and spotty – going to have to buy $50 printer cart and don’t have the money.
1aB – I, :-.Not going to be able to get contact information for Minnesota congressman or La Crosse Tribune to tell them about stupid Winona shutting down a tiny little country elementary school that I went to as a kid. And it’s not just nostalgia, I have connections to that school and to the people of the great community surrounding it that are watching the Powers That Be bulldoze them into oblivion – get all unfocused and angry, eat brownies and ice cream, play videogame and kick the shit out of the BAD GUYS. If ONLY I could do that in real life – there’s a lot of ass to kick out there.

But I went to bed. I dreamed of a meeting here in Cleveland of a group of Renaissance Fair people who brought fancy drinks and good pie and some other treats and were very intellectual and cool, and said that they had such a better turn out than they did in Chicago. Then I dreamed of a few of them who were working on a glider project and we loaded up this homemade glider and took it on a few test flights over some Universities. Woke up after a good nights sleep and a good feeling from the dreams. Made myself some coffee, came in here dreading to turn on my computer but thought I at least had to try.

LO AND BEHOLD I AM ONLINE!!!!!!!!!

Praise Jeebus. I blame rotten little elves. I guess my version of the worry system works in reverse too. A little thing can cheer me up immensely.