New Routine

I am ruled by routine.  Throwing something new into the mix, like a class two days a week, has rocked my world a bit, but I’m starting to settle in.

I’m so glad that I chose to take a class on campus rather than online.  Partially because my limited technical skills are put to the test enough as it is, and I’m actually showing up for the “learning part” in person.  

Being on campus, even though it’s in my own city, is so different from anything else I’ve ever experienced here in Denver, I sometimes feel that I’m in a different country altogether.  As a white person, I’m in the minority.  It’s crowded with people.  The fragrance in the air is cigarette smoke and cherry chapstick.

One of my favorite scenes last week: I saw a guy walking to class.  He was wearing a flat-billed, oversized baseball cap, full-sleeved tattoos, a wife beater and oversized shorts.  He was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it.

The campus that I attend is shared by three different schools, two of them community colleges, so I’m not in the minority in terms of non-traditional students.  I don’t feel out of place, being 34 and a half and going to school for the first time.

I should say that I don’t feel like I look out of place, there are lots of people my age and older that are walking around, but it feels out of place in my own skin, I guess.  I constantly feel like I’m too old to be starting this.  It’s funny to talk about this class and have people say, “Oh, you’re going back to school?”  Nope.  I’m going to school.  First time (not going “back”).  I never did this before.  I went to beauty school.  

I wondered, as I walked to my class this week, how many of the other students had spent the beginning of their day, you know, as “class prep”, in therapy (because they’re widowed), then hassling with the contractors on their bathroom renovation, then making confirmation calls for their full-time job, then leaving a heated message with the bank because they still haven’t sent the checks for the business account that were ordered over a month ago, then loading their service dog onto the light rail and waltzing into class?  

First Day of School

I have a clear memory from my childhood of playing beauty shop with my big sister. 

She must have wanted to be the client (as the older sister, it was her right to assign the rolls), which meant I got to be the stylist, and I was thrilled.  I remember it so well.  We set up one of our child-sized chairs from our kitchen set; I shook out a baby blanket and wrapped it around her neck for a cape.  I remember trying to rock the chair on its back legs like it was a hydraulic chair that I was trying to pump up.  I grabbed my safety scissors (remember when they were still made out of metal, not plastic, and they had the rounded, blunted end?) in one hand, and a hunk of the hair from the back of her head in the other.  I twisted the hunk of hair and was just about to put the scissors to it when my mom walked in.  We got in huge trouble.  I tell my mom all the time that this is actually a texturizing technique that we do as hairstylists, and really I was a child prodigy (She’ll reply, dryly, “Think how far you could have gone if you had had family support.”).

My point is this:  Even as a small child, it was obvious that I had watched carefully what went on at the beauty salon, what the stylists did, and I was dying to be one of them.  I pretty much always knew that I wanted to be a hairstylist.  As a result of this, I never went to college.  There was no need for it; it would be a waste of time and money.

As I think about my life now, though, and the fact that I wanted to be a wife and mom in addition to being a hairstylist, and those dreams were sort of ripped from me, beyond my control, what will life possibly look like in the next 20-30 years?  In the areas that I do have some control, what can I do to make a change?  I don’t want it to look exactly like it looks now.  I’m bored.

And so, I’ve decided that I should think about college.

I’m a little concerned about my brain, PTSD has done a number on my short-term memory, and I wonder if I maybe have a little ADD, as well, since I have so much difficulty concentrating. I’m trying to get to the bottom of these things, but I’m certainly not going to let them win, so I’ve decided to start with one class at a community college (creative non-fiction), just to see how it goes.

So, today is my first “first day of school” since my senior year of high school in 1996.  I’m excited and nervous.  Wish me luck.