Growing up is funny...

I want to blog everyday. I just...well. I am a procrastinator, and I'm lazy. Not a great combination. But I'm thinking that 1)since summer is here, and I don't have to worry about school now, AND 2)I got a spiffy new laptop so I can blog here there and anywhere, maybe I can bring myself to do it more frequently. Baby steps, people. You might not hear from me every day...but I will do my best. Okay, having said that...

I looked at the home of my blog, and then I changed the title. Funny how swapping out one little 4-letter word can change everything.

I had a home visit with one of the residents in my program yesterday. As much as I despise leaving the office and going into other people's homes to see if they are successfully living independently (Did you do this? That? Did you poo today? Ok, maybe not that extreme but you get the point. Although I do have some stories...) Anyway, this particular resident is in the permanent housing assistance program, which means he is pretty stable and we meet at most once per month. He is an older black gentleman with long dreadlocks, whom I was "warned against" when I began working this job. "He can be nasty" they said, "when he doesn't get what he wants." Later I found that all he wants is for people to stop being ignorant. Hey, me too.

I've noticed recently that each time I speak with this man, I feel a little bit wiser. So I sit with him yesterday, surrounded by National Geographic pictures and newspaper clippings of worldly events and we talk about how in one's early twenties, we feel as though we know everything there is to know in the whole world. I tell him that I am now 30 and I feel like I know nothing about nothing. I tell him I feel like there is so much I want to know, so much I need to learn, that sometimes I feel overwhelmed. He assures me that I am in the "information-gathering age" and once I hit late 30's to early 40's, I will start to know what to do with all the information. He calls this the "information-processing age". He tells me that young people don't know where to to put the information, that once we become older and a little more enlightened, we have many places in which to distribute this knowledge. I smile, partly because I feel like he understands, and partly because according to him one day I will not feel so random. He smiles back and calls me bright.

In the short hour I met with him, we managed to knock out topics such as Buddhism and Imus. He has an interesting perspective regarding the latter. He said that he is writing an article about how he feels that women are to blame for the lyrics in rap and the degradation that happens to women on a daily basis. In my head I'm thinking, -wait, what? But I give him a chance, hear what he has to say to back this up. He asks me if I remember that Smokey Robinson song, "You Better Shop Around". I say, Motown? Of course! But I don't recall the exact lyrics... He recites a few lines, then explains how the mother in the song is telling the son not to just fall for any "dime a dozen" pretty girl. He goes on to say how females, including mothers, routinely talk shit about their other females. He says how it's been going on for years, and as more and more sons grow up without fathers present, they learn their "fox in the henhouse" (read: shady) behaviors from their mothers. And it occurs to me, he's got a point here. I have heard more females talk trash about other females than males do on any given day. Women are bitches. We can be incredibly possessive, dramatic, vindictive...need I go on? Not all of us use our powers for evil. But those who do should be wary of influencing young minds - especially the ones they create.

We went on to talk about America's fucked up materialistic priorities, and then we called it a day. Well, we called it a visit and I went back to the office. But not before I felt (a tiny bit) wiser.