Guest Blogger: Jennifer Brandel
Jennifer Brandel is a tutor and illustrator for 826CHI. In her other incarnations, she is also a script-doctor, a freelance graphic designer, a DIY crafter, and an aspiring claw-hammer banjoist. When she’s not on the hunt for the job to end all part-time jobs, she sings in the shower and discovers new uses for egg cartons.
It hit me (like that car door) while riding my bike today: why I have been procrastinating writing a blog entry for 826CHI – a place I love and respect and want to help out in any way I can. For a couple of weeks now, I couldn’t figure out why I hesitated to contribute my thoughts and experiences about the great days I’ve spent at this truly wonderful establishment. The simple and now quite obvious reason for my inaction is: I’m deathly afraid of children.
Yes – I’ve come to terms with it, about five minutes ago in fact. I am scared of children – what they think, what they say, what their cute and tiny intentions and motivations are. This all makes sense to me now, as I consider my life anew (cue harp playing and wavy computer page)…
I’m the youngest in my family, and for about 14 years, I was the youngest and only girl among my 20 odd cousins (odd here being quantitative, not qualitative). As the whippersnapper, I made it my mission to never act like the “baby” or “a girl” (whatever that means), and to generally be on the same level as the older crowd surrounding me.
In retrospect, this whole philosophy of age transcendence was what really got me through a very, very awkward 12-year period of my youth. By awkward I mean the works: I had glasses, perm, braces, acne, was overweight, wore matching sweat-suits, and was described by my fourth-grade teacher as “avant-garde” – a description that pretty much solidified to my ten year old mind that I was a hopeless outcast. The only way I could endure the teasing, shunning, exclusion and overall discomfort of these years was by telling myself that the other kids were “immature”, “just jealous”, or when they would tell me “You’re so weird” I would retort dramatically, “You’re so…so ordinary” (which never burned quite as intensely as I intended).
To this very day, when I walk into an Elementary, Junior High or High School, my hands sweat uncontrollably and anxiety kicks into overdrive. So why in the world would I ever want to do volunteer work as a tutor for the very same aged kids that nearly destroyed the last shred of my self-esteem? The straightforward answer here is: because I had no choice.
When I moved to Chicago a year ago after spending many months in the fields of lower Tasmania picking grapes and listening to books on tape, I secured a job for a children’s media company. One of my very first assignments was to design, write, and bring to fruition a wholly original children’s magazine that was by kids and for kids. Seeing as how I’d been avoiding anyone under the age or 16 for the past decade of my life, it was quite a daunting task – pretty near impossible if you’d asked me then.
So I did what any actor willing to play her part has to do – I tried to get into the mind of my audience; the problem here being that I was so disconnected from my audience that I might as well have been asked to write the definitive manual for schnorf-blapping on planet Zeltar. Yeah, I know. Finding out through little birdies here and there (mainly seagulls – they’re very much ‘in the know’) that an 826 location was set to open right here in Chicago, I figured that it was a sign….a sign from Dave Eggers himself that this was where I needed to be.
I served my time at 826CHI as a tutor, helping kids with subjects that I had long ago repressed or dragged to the recycle bin of my mind. Math was nerve-wracking enough, but the constant fear was the children themselves. I had a sense that at any given moment when I was imparting on them life-altering wisdom or beginning to connect, that one of them would level me with the type of brutally honest comment that only children and those with no social skills whatsoever are allowed to make…
Me: “Ok – you got it! Now carry the one, add the sev…”
Brutally Honest Child: “Your breath reeks.”
Or
Me: “So that’s why it’s important that we share what we have – because if one person had access to all the markers and refused to give anyone el—“
Brutally Honest Child 2: “Don’t you have a real job?”
Or
Curious Child: “How old are you?”
Curious Me: “How old do you think I am?”
Brutally Honest Child: “42.”
Slayed. Team Brutally Honest Children: 3, Team Scarred-For-Life: 0.
What surprised me the more and more I came into 826CHI to volunteer was that A) these sorts of comments rarely occurred and B) the kids actually looked to me as some sort of authority. (Me? What?) In fact, when I began illustrating for story-making fieldtrips, my self-esteem reflected back at me from the eyes of a child enjoyed marked improvement.
Various Children from story-making fieldtrips:
Child 1: “Wow! You’re an amazing artist!”
Child 2: “Are you a professional drawer?”
Child 3: “You should draw coloring books for a living!”
Child 4: “Will you teach me how to draw like you?”
Child 5: “What is that thing next to the house? Is that supposed to be a rhinoceros or something? You draw weird.”
Ok – so everyone but Child 5 had the opposite effect on me as originally expected. Instead of mildly dreading coming in to 826 for fear of the children finding out I was a fraud and couldn’t understand half of their homework, I began to look forward to it and feel a mutual respect blossoming between me and the collective entity that is all children aged 5-16.
Long story longer, tutoring at 826CHI has allowed me to give back in a way I never thought I was capable of. … and although I’ve left the job with the children’s media company that was my initial impetus to volunteer (I mean what kind of company expects one person to create an entirely original children’s magazine by themselves in 1.5 weeks?), I know I’ll be drawing and re-learning algebra there for as long as I’m in Chicago. My hands have started sweating less at the sight and smell of grade schools, my understanding of mini-people (aka children) has grown exponentially, and I feel a confidence in their presence that I’ve never felt before. This is all not to say that I don’t still obsessively suck on a breath mint before the little rascals arrive.