Passive Aggressive Suburbia

Chapter 3: Debt Trackers, Model UN frenemies, the 2008 Inauguration, and Being Unfriended by the Potato Salad Making Neighbor

“I read the whole Obama Care Bill.” – A former classmate

It was never my intention to politicize my school experience, it just happened that way, the politicization. Whether I was in government class staring at my daily dose of the debt tracker that my teacher had put on the overhead for everyone to gawk at, defending Obama, or defending poor people, I was known as the liberal crusader by my peers. To me, many of my peers confused being humane and rational with being a raging snowflake. At the time, the term “snowflake” had not quite caught ground, so just saying “liberal” was insult enough. My school experiences shaped me today. Navigating an environment that was hostile towards me and my views was so, like, hard.

These were some of the highlights of my pubescent, angsty, raging liberal days.

Follow Tara as she navigates her suburban landscape as a pubescent, angsty, and raging liberal.

Passive Aggressive Government Class

I don’t think we ever got past the amendments in my American government class. The year was 2013. It seemed like every day, my teacher’s only priority was to show students the debt tracker and inform us that we were all doomed to pay $60k a year for the entirety of our adult lives to save America from the mess Obama created. Well yeah Mr. Pittman, my current self is clearly getting the last laugh, at least as of now I am. The icing on the cake were his spiels about how socialist and scary China was.  I never felt directly attacked in that class, but I did feel pressure to be prepared for any political debates about welfare, Obama, or healthcare that I was going to find myself in that day.

Watching the 2008 Inauguration in School

I want to preface this by saying that I did not sign up to be an Obama defender, but it was a duty I felt I had to take on, a prophecy that I needed to fulfill. Obama’s blackness, partial blackness, seemed to leave a bad taste in many of my friends’ mouths, and they never failed to let me know.

The day of the 2008 Inauguration, I remember my 6th grade English and Math teachers forcing our classes to sit in one classroom and watch the inauguration reflected on the smartboard. When I heard grumbles coming from my classmates as we sat on the floor, in the dark, with the smartboard gleaming, I remember feeling confused. A reason to not be learning was usually met with joy from my classmates, but everyone seemed visibly irked that we were watching this and not learning…English. The audience reaction that day left a lasting impression on me. It was a foreshadowing of the reception Obama and his policies would receive my entire public-school career.

Model UN Frenemies

I did Model UN in high school. For those of you who do not know what it is, Model UN is a simulation of the actual United Nations. The simulation takes the form of a club which has chapters spanning middle school to college. Starting from middle school, you can dress up in a suit and pretend that you are a diplomat from some country defending your country’s honor against other countries. My initial reasons for joining were that I liked to argue, I liked to read the news, and some of my academic competitors were in Model UN, so naturally I felt the need to challenge them. I soon found out that Model UN was a game of syntax and networking rather than knowledge, and it soon began to annoy me that I was in that club.

 I soon became acquainted with this girl in Model UN. I had been aware of this girl since my middle school days, but we were never really friends. My “friendship” with her started in high school.

She was half Chinese and half White, and this was only unique to me in the sense that she shattered any misguided illusion I had about racial unity among minorities. We will call my friend Vienna. Vienna, as I said before, came from a biracial household. She was a gun shooting, NRA advocating, ABC libertarian, and she was NOT a fan of Obama, and she made that clear daily.

We were on the Model UN team together. She prided herself on having political arguments with herself in the shower and it being “so weird,” watching Dr. Who, and carrying a roller backpack. I don’t really know what the origins of our friendship were, but we eventually became friends, not sleepover and lunch friends, more like wave when we see each other in the hallway friends, make half- hearted promises to “hang out sometime” friends, and chat on google plus occasionally “friends.” I don’t want to speculate about what Vienna’s parents were like, but it’s my educated guess that the apple did not fall far from the tree. I mean what kid comes out of the womb saying they hate socialism and Obama? Perhaps it was their shared hatred of Obama and anything remotely liberal that bonded Vienna’s parents. Maybe they met at an NRA meeting, and the rest was history. However Vienna’s parents’ union played out, I knew that knowing Vienna would forever leave a mark on me.

Looking back on this phase of my life, it kind of irks me that I spent so much free time listening to other 15- year-olds debate the rationality of the Affordable Care Act and feeling sooooo different from other teenagers, when I should have been acting like other teenagers. I should have been partying and smoking weed, sneaking out, etc. I probably would not have so many issues today if I just had let myself experience life as a normal carefree teenager.

Getting Unfriended by a Neighbor who Frequently Gifted us Potato Salad

Once upon a time, there lived an older woman in my neighborhood. Well, as of today, she still lives. I would accompany her on walks with her friend group one teenage summer when I was directionless, overweight, and had no friends. That woman, who I will call Marilyn, had more of a friend squad than I ever did. I remember walking up at 7:30 AM every morning to meet three old women and power walk around our neighborhood while judging everyone’s lawns, that’s the kind of teenager I was.

After a few years had passed, our walks had stopped, and I was a senior in high school. Marilyn had invited us over her house to pick up some food she had for us, and my mom said that Marilyn wanted to see me and congratulate me on graduating. We were discussing a lot of things that day, the news, food, the past, and some current events.

We then started talking about my school. Marilyn had attended my high school, so she was reminiscing, naturally.

For some reason, the topic of race put its little head into my mind. For some reason or another, I started talking about the disparities of the education system and how my high school was set up to favor a certain demographic over another. When I said this, our neighbor lady started shaking her head, her face started getting red. Well, we were all heated at this moment, my heart was beating rapidly. I looked at her, and then she did it.

She started crying.

She then said, I’m not racist. I never have been. You know me, how could you say that? She was enraged, her face was red, and tears were welling up in her eyes. As I tried to process the situation, I tried to remember when I had ever accused her of racism in my soliloquy. I couldn’t remember one instance. Now, I’m not trying to paint myself as a saint, maybe I could have softened the delivery of the racist education system, seeing as I was speaking to an older woman, but honestly, I figured she was more than familiar with racist education systems being that she grew up in 1960s America.

She told me she had attended the same school I did, and there was never any racism at all. I had to hold back reminding her that when she attended my school it was an all-white school, so of course race was a non-issue then.

Anyways, there were tears and maybe a little bit of regret about that time. That woman had been very kind to my family, giving us her leftovers, sometimes expired, but most of the time not, letting us into her home and into her life, but all those years seemed to have been forgotten in that 30 -minute showdown. I tried to convince her that me talking about race was not an accusation of racism, but simply a discussion on race and how it affects me at my school, but she did not take it that way. We haven’t spoken since that day, and a part of me feels bad about it, but another part of me doesn’t.

___________________________________________________

Chapter 4: The Devil in My Deluxe Cheeseburger Combo…….