4.6.2008 entitled

When I was little my mother cleaned hotel rooms and my father pumped gas.

Consequently, I retain a visceral horror of making a mess in rented accommodation, and a profound fondness for hanging out at gas stations.

This week I'm lodging in the Women's Faculty Club at Berkeley. Does this mean I am dining in the breakfast room, lounging around in the swanky parlor, or enjoying the gardens?

No. I am barricaded in my room, hiding from the housekeeping staff.

Regardless of how much my life changes, I feel like I should be working with my hands, not my head. I always feel seasick when I notice that I am no longer entitled to my place in the underclass.

Though I must admit that while I have class anxiety about people cleaning my room, I am wildly amused and gleeful about lodging in the faculty club of a university I was not eligible to attend as a youngster.

The fact that I spent all of my high school years idling in a mix of remedial and vocational classes mattered not one bit in the larger schematic of this life.

A pox on the houses of all the small-minded small-town teachers who tried to convince me I was worthless and stupid as a disabled kid! Curses on the guidance counselors and professors who told me to drop out when I became a teenage mother!

While I am sufficiently contrary that I probably only bothered to accomplish half the shit I've engineered as an adult because nobody wanted me to succeed.... I remain appalled at all the needless trouble I had to wade through to get here.

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