Sleeping on beauty

Most of you know that a lot of things I write are critical of society, whether it be social clichés, political ideals, or the reality of American society in general terms, and that more often than not they are written within an abstract concept. Or in simpler terms, I like to question people’s decisions and ideas without just being point blank. I always found the best writers were the one that could be persuasive while also captivating their readers, like the book Naked by David Sedaris. It’s about his life, and the entire book is so funny yet it conveys a message that is simple and cutting. It’s about culture and American prejudices and maturity, but you have to look for the message, and that’s why I love it so much. Or in a song when the lyrics are about nothing yet everything at all. It’s wonderful because its not defined but rather implied. Beauty is simply the way in which you interpret it.

And that is where my story comes tonight. To most it will seem stupid and not even worth the time I take to type it, but this isn’t written for them. This is written for the ones who want to look past what is being written and see what is actually being said. Speech is not the words in the sentence, but rather the meaning the words take in context to the idea. Structured in style, but unbridled in its definition. This is written to the people who understand the beauty of a grammatically correct sentence that actually says something, rather than a sentence that is beautiful for the eye but hollow for the mind. Beauty isn’t the appearance, but rather the interpretation of the appearance.

There are few things that ever annoy me as much as kids, and to think I was ever one sometimes makes me want to apologize for my childish mistakes, which is why when I took a job as a referee for YMCA K-3rd grade basketball this winter I wondered if I had made a big mistake. Kids are like puppies except potty trained and able to communicate in something we can understand [sometimes at least]. They whine constantly, need immediate attention, and by themselves are practically helpless in the world. I have never found them cute or even all that entertaining, but rather an annoyance that would someday mature and maybe become slightly intelligent.

Yet I took a job where I would be forced to be in contact with them once a week for a few hours. That may not seem like a lot, but to me it was more time than I really wanted. I said the right things when I was hired, that I wanted to help out the YMCA and that I liked to work with kids, but the truth is I wanted the free membership and needed the paycheck to pay for my insurance and cell phone bill. Is that wrong? Probably so, but it’s also the truth which isn’t always right.

The job started in December and I wasn’t looking forward to it, I had the look of the other referees but I didn’t have the attitude. I didn’t care what really happened with the kids, it was an easy job that paid well. And it stayed that way I went week after week, watching these little kids butcher the sport, but thinking they were the greatest things to hit the carpeted gym floors. Every game basically followed this simple game plan: get the ball, shoot the ball, miss the basket, rebound, repeat. Passing is not recommended. It was pathetic to watch, and I knew right then I doubted the sport lasting much longer at this pace.

But the more I came, the more this mutilated attempt at basketball grew on me, and the kids, they weren’t stupid just uninformed. Worse still I realized it was I who was stupid for being so judgmental. I’m the one that is always crying out for equality, the one that tries to defend the minority instead of the majority, and believed I wasn’t the one that was prejudiced in my family. No that was my grandpa who didn’t like the blacks. It was my dad who couldn’t stand the homosexuals. I was the one who gave people a fair shot, but all this time I was also the hypocrite.

I always try to forget my childhood, and not that it was bad, it just wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t ever a popular kid, I didn’t learn that hygiene existed until somewhere in middle school, maybe later, and I moved more than any kid I knew. People didn’t grow up being a nomad did they? I’ve always secretly wished my dad wasn’t so good at what he did, because then maybe I would have just been able to live in one place my whole life, go to a school my entire life like most of the other kids, and have friends for more than a few months before we decided it was time to pack up and move again. Secretly I wasn’t ever satisfied with never being the best, but rather the outcast, and I never thought twice about it until now.

Working at the YMCA is the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had, I feel like I’m actually being productive and helping kids do what I didn’t do enough as a kid, mainly just being a kid. Today it set in more than most, I’ve gotten to know these kids, how most of them ingest more sugar than I once thought humanly possible, and how it doesn’t matter to them how bad they butcher the game or even the final score, because what is being taught is so much more subtle than a scorecard. It’s about kids learning the little things in life, trust and being part of team. It’s about the kids who don’t normally have a place to fit in to feel like they do.

And maybe that’s the beauty of it all, because I am my own foil. My own flaws are magnified by the mind and the simplest thing such as a ball made of rubber. Flaws like beauty are purely based on how they are interpreted, and just like a wonderfully written novel, the flaws are not simply hollow nor clearly defined, but rather complex and more often than not based on your own skewed perceptions. Senses fail because we are not simply alive but rather living. We feel things the body can’t express, we believe in things we can’t see. We have ideas and concepts and language. And that is why a perception becomes skewed and never right yet never wrong as well. Because it’s not just a word in the dictionary, flaws are what we perceive what we can’t perceive with our senses. They’re the parts of us that we take out on others, because we really are only unhappy with ourselves.

That is the beauty of it.