Determined to Evolve the Species, One Digital Moment at a Time. I Sacrifice My Eyes and My Phalanges.

I've always had theories. They began after I read Whitley Strieber's The Communion Letters, a book about alien abductions that was written when I was in high school. At the time, I worked at Sibley's and sold women's shoes and the Estee Lauder cosmetic saleswoman pulled me aside one day to tell me, "We are here amongst you. We are studying you. We see everywhere. And we are recording."

Her husband was an air traffic controller at Hancock International Airport. I remember talking to her about Whitely Strieber's book and she wanted me to know, "Of course we're here. We're studying you."

Hmmm.

Ever since then, ET took on a new meaning (and I think I saw the film 5 times in the theater as a middle school student). It simply planted the idea that alternative variations of ourselves might one day come back to study how it was they evolved into what they were. My Estee Lauder friend concurred. She said, "Earth is a farm for us to study how it is we came to be." She was in a white, cosmetic lab coat, probably with eye liner and lipstick in the pockets. This freaked me out. She admitted wasn't just selling makeup, but part of a scientific team sent to Earth to study a primitive form of their species. 3rd Rock From the Sun before the sitcom even began.

Why am I sharing this story? Well, I spent all day Saturday and all day Sunday reading student work on a screen. This required my fingers, my mind and my eyes. Each night, I shook my hands because I realized our fingers were not meant to get this much exercise (with typing) and I know my eyes each night simply fog ver after a certain point. They simply were not big enough to record any more digital light. In fact, everything goes blurry. 

I'm an evolving species.

Both nights, I simply had to shut down the screen and think of the ways that I'm not evolutionarily prepared for the work I do. Yes, I do my best, but my thumbs and my eyeballs are not deigned to keep up with the scrolling and meandering of screen-life. I'm simply hoping that I'm actually doing the physical work of creating the human species into alternative, futuristic versions of ourselves. I mean, once upon a time, we were hunters and gatherers looking for berries. Now we are scrolling for real news and research, while trying to make sense of such data for generations still to come. 

I'm at evolution-capacity, however. I simply want to cut off my fingers (they hurt, actually ache from the typing) and tear out my eyes (to give them some rest). At this point in time, I'm physically incapable of keeping up with he demands of my profession, especially with the digital tools (albeit they are AWESOME) we have. 

So, I am finishing this morning's post (it is a snow day for the entire state...well, at least K-12 schools) with a story about a kid named Chris who came screaming at me towards the end of his senior year. “You tricked us. You’re an #$@#$#@. You tricked us.” I was like, “What?” He interrupted a class with freshman and they were looking at him bug-eyed. 

“All these years we thought you were the cool teacher,” he screamed. “We came to your class to have fun and to get away from the stress of the other classes. But you tricked us.” 

I was still scratching my head.

“You really are an #@$@. It just occurred to me as I’m getting ready to graduate. I learned more from you than any of these other #$#@$@ teachers. You tricked us. All this time we thought we were just having fun.” 

Drats. And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those pesky kids. 

See, it turns out that I'm a future version of the human species, too. It's just that I'm a Woody Allen Alien. That is, a self-deprecating creature from the future, and I'm failing here on the Earth with the work I need to do.