but it was just a paper bag

i think the title is going to be sticking around for a while. i like it.

i don't usually forget that i live life in a new york city / socially liberal / education-valuing bubble. i try to remember that there are a lot of other people in this country, and some of them really do think that gay people are going to hell, or that bush is a really cool guy, or that we can detain arabs at airports based on their brownness and that's okay because they might blow us up if we don't. even if i don't agree, i remind myself that these beliefs exist, and the people who hold them aren't monsters (just maybe a bit misguided). i can't really expect to work in a government-related setting unless i at the very least do that. but there are some things that always catch me by surprise.

before lsat class yesterday, i stood outside eating my corner-stand hot dog and chatting with one of my classmates (whose name i don't remember). he comes into nyc from long island to take this class twice a week on his days off from work because they didn't offer it in his town. he graduated from university in queens in 2001 in criminal justice. since then, he's been working retail and bartending. i guess recently he realized that his job wasn't going anywhere, and he decided to take the lsat and maybe go to law school (in queens, again, since he thinks that's the only place he'll get in). he mentioned that he got a 710 on the SAT (i didn't know that was possible). he's a bad test taker, so he needs to take the class for as much preparation as he can get. he has also applied to the police academies in long island and nyc. but apparently that's a really competitive process, so he's not sure how he'll do. really, though, he just wants to move to tahiti, sell surfboards, and sleep in a hammock.

he was a fairly nice guy, though a bit of a meathead, and i got a kick out of listening to him talk about himself. (i like his tahiti idea, though i'd probably stick to one of the greek islands with all the kooky australians and kiwis.) it made me so thankful that i had a family that thought it was absolutely essential to get a good education, and to not only continue after high school but to pursue an advanced degree as well. most of my friends are at least as smart as me, and many are way, way brighter. some of them, i'm sure, will go on to do great things. the ability and/or the ambition to be better is something that i've taken for granted in myself and my friends for pretty much my whole life. maybe that makes me an elitist. but if it does, that's okay with me.

talking to this guy, and then walking home from the subway, made me think about relationships that cross class lines. [i know that "class" is a floating term that means different things when you talk to different people. i'm not going to bother to try to find the words to define it, and instead i'll take the easy way out and say that i know it when i see it.] inter-class relationships have always struck me as completely strange in a way that inter-racial relationships, for instance, haven't so much. take, for instance, one of the men in my neighborhood that routinely mutters things to me in the street. what kind of relationship could i possibly have with that person? or with a drug dealer? or with a high-school dropout working at the supermarket? or even with someone who didn't have any desire, and didn't see any reason, to ever leave the country? and if the day-to-day "what the hell do we talk about" problems wouldn't be enough to send me running for the hills, i would still be weirded out by spending significant amounts of time with someone whose value system was so different from mine.

my thoughts on this are a bit muddled and the words aren't coming very easily. also, i have to go back to work.

easterns this weekend! and, i bowled 3 out of my 3 games on monday over 100!