Forever Young: Being Your Own Manic Pixie Dream Femme
An excerpt from We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change, by Myles Horton and Paulo Freire
Myles: One thing about learning is that you have to enjoy it. You said to me in Los Angeles that you wanted to become as a little child like I was. Picasso says it takes a long time to grow young, and I say it takes even longer to become as a little child. So that’s the height we are striving for.
Paulo: And Myles, the more we become able to become a child again, to keep ourselves childlike, the more we can understand that because we love the world and we are open to understanding, to comprehension, that when we kill the child in us, we are no longer. Because of that, in Los Angeles, my daughter Magdelena said that about Myles, “He’s a baby!”
I’m sitting in my living room, writing this while blasting Simon and Garfunkel (as much as one can blast Bleecker Street or Scarborough Fair) into a pair of headphones that were one of those forgotten item impulse buys at the airport; a little too pricey for my budget but a necessary guard against loud talkers and crying babies. I glance at my feet over my computer screen propped up on the coffee table, realizing the motion I’d sensed in my periphery was my own feet softly tapping to the beat, the last remnants of black toenail paint seemingly cling for dear life on the solitary big toe that still has polish on it. It’s been quite a journey, my friend, I think towards the lonely adorned toe. The remaining black strip of polish on the tip of the nail looking more like a mustache on a blank face than the evidence of a professional pedicure from long long ago (at least six months if I’m being blatantly honest with myself). The next clipping and it’ll be practically off, I think excitedly, quickly followed by, what a weird sentence to string together even for ME! And an altogether strange way to lazily rid oneself of toenail polish! I smile impishly at myself. The thought passes with a shrug as I adjust my seat for a cozier recline.
I bring my legs into a cross-legged position on the couch, squirming deeper into the comfort of my well-worn cut off jeans. They are a pair of old 501s, the ones coveted by hipster jean fiends and cowboys alike, but the label rubbed off long ago leaves no trace of their ancestry. The seams themselves seem as though they may be soon to follow, the familiar golden yellow thread spindling out of place giving way to the frey of the waist band. Being a second hand pair of shorts, I often wonder what kind of life they led before me. What kinds of seat cushions or grassy knolls supported the bottom of the previous wearer. Though I can’t allow too much thought towards this topic before giving way to ponderings about whether or not their former living mannequin wore underwear or not. Not that I judge, it’s just not something I feel I need to know.
My eyes move up to the primary-color red shirt I’m enveloped in, the item itself twice the age I was when I got it. The word Astrocamp across the left breast, slightly mottled from years of washing machine tumbles, an allusion to the softness that only a fabric that has endured 20 years of washing machines could have. It’s funny to think now how ten year old me somehow filled up the extra large t-shirt better than the thirty-one year old me does. But I smile when I think of my younger self, a pudgy, precocious, and insatiably inquisitive child with an affinity for astronomy, baking, and fiction.
In many ways the two iterations are curiously similar: a cheerful daydreamer commonly known to befriend “the new kid,” a role that often included bringing them over to my house for fresh baked cookies. I often joke with friends how I actually coaxed them into friendship by sweetening the deal with promises of cupcakes and cookies, straight from the recipe book my grandma passed onto my mom who then passed it on to me. Generational baking knowledge at it’s finest. Perhaps that is the secret ingredient that I’d been adding unbeknownst to me, the magic that helped form bonds of friendship.
Finally I get back to my initial wondering before sitting down to write: why calling someone childish or childlike has such negative connotations. As if being a bright eyed question master is the most heinous crime one could think of. And if being like a child is such an abhorrent thing for an adult to be, then where does that put me: a thirty-one year old woman sitting next to her pet rat Monica Gellar, wearing a shirt from 6th grade, with what some may call a “skunky” but I prefer “witchy” streak of platinum blond (ok, it’s actually still pretty yellow because I never bought toner…) in the bangs she cut herself? Where does that put a person who needs to talk aloud to herself to think and at times has conversations with the trees when they blow? Or a grown woman who dives head first into the bracing Pacific waves then sugar coats herself in sand to warm up while her more mature counterparts watch from afar, their perfectly oiled appendages baking in the sun next to a littering of seltzers?
Perhaps that’s why I have often felt nervous or shy in front of strangers, people who had yet to be introduced to the exuberant quirk and all-over-the-place excitement inextricably linked to the core of my being. But I think I’ve been to enough therapy to recognize my nervousness stems from a fear of not being accepted and an uncertainty about if my past efforts as the self-appointed middle school welcome wagon would cosmically grant me the same kindness when I would be the “new kid,” but in adult-world.
For so long, I’ve been guarded from revealing too much of my authentic self, worried that it might overwhelm people or come off as “unprofessional in a work setting.” I remember a time I got a sort of promotion at school, only in that my new office would be closer to the front entrance. During the meeting about my change of position, my boss noted with a smile, you know, now that you’ll be near the front office, you’ll be passing more parents and visitors. The comment at face value seemed an obvious one, but later, as I looked down at our feet, I indiscreetly compared my greyed-from-overuse Adidas and brightly colored socks to her fashionable-yet-feet-friendly pumps, I realized the subtext to her comment.
And although I professionalized my dress code for about the first few weeks to school, after a while I went back to my own silent youthful rebellion. I swapped the painful pointy toed shoes not meant for wide size 11s like mine for my well worn Chucks, affirming to myself that comfort and quality lessons were worth the potential dress code violation. I remember one of the school counselors smiling and jesting with me, you know, my 13 year old niece has the same phone cover as you. I had looked down at my glitter spackled phone case, the one that has water in it so you can watch the glittery hearts float back and forth as you move your phone entranced by the magical mysticism of their movement. No I didn’t know that, but your niece sounds pretty cool, I had responded back as I skipped and giggled gaily out the door, my colleague playfully chuckling in my wake.
It was at that point that the tripwire was finally triggered, and the explosions of childlike curiosity and wonderment were finally allowed to burst brightly in the sky. I had stopped resisting my inner child, that chubby 10 year old astronomy nerd that lives beyond limits within her own imagination. Yet it is only until now, upon a fourth or fifth reading of a book so important to my growth as a learner and educator, do I finally feel the fullness and connection to that girl. To that girl I say, I won’t ever block your shine again. Shine on.
