As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t go to a lot of movies. They’re too expensive. People are too annoying. It’s too hard to get a babysitter.

Still, some films are compelling enough to make me shell out a bunch of money, get a sitter and brave the jerk next to me talking throughout the movie. So far this summer, I’ve gone to three films, which is a lot for me. Here are my reviews if you’re interested.

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End - As a former Disney cast member and devout Johnny Depp fan, it hurts me to say this film disappointed me. Great special effects and wonderful music, but the plot is downright silly. The first third of the film is fun, the second third is confusing, and the final third is a real downer. Whereas the previous two films were energizing, I walked out of this one almost depressed. My sister leaned over to me at one point and whispered, “Is it possible for a movie to ‘jump the shark?’” If it is possible, then this one did. Maybe my expectations were too high; I saw the midnight showing with my sister on opening week in May, and I’d planned to take my husband and son that weekend. They still haven’t seen it, and it’s July.

2. Ratatouille - My two-year-old daughter drove us nuts for a month, making us play the trailers over and over on the Internet. I thought this movie would be cute. It was much better than that. The animation is beautiful! I’ve been to Paris several times, and I would never have dreamed that animation could do it justice. Pixar’s rendering of the city was spot-on. Admittedly, I’m a Disney freak, a Francophile, and a gourmet, so the film probably had an unfair advantage with me. But it was engaging and lovely and kept my toddler and six-year-old son still for an hour and a half. Any movie that can do that has to be doing something right!

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - I’ve read all 6 books multiple times, so unless this movie sucked, I was going to like it. It did not suck, so I loved it. The special effects are fabulous. The film moves very quickly, and you get to see some parts of Hogwarts and some areas of Harry’s life that have heretofore been neglected. The sets are magnificent, especially the Ministry of Magic. The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is just what I expected, although I was disappointed that Sirius’s mother was left out. I will definitely see the film again. All that being said, though, I have to admit, of the 5 Harry Potter films, this is the only one where you could get lost if you haven’t read the book. If you’ve seen the other films, you’ll probably be alright, but you may want to consult your friends who’ve read the book just to clarify some things. It doesn’t stand on its own feet as steadily as the previous four. Still, it is exciting and gorgeous, and watching these characters grow up before our eyes is a treat. They are amazing kids, and they’re becoming great actors too. I’m taking my husband and son this weekend.

I’m not planning to see any other movies this summer unless my husband, a longtime Simpsons fan, really wants to see that one in the theater. The trailer for Disney’s “Enchanted” is hilarious, though. It comes out at Thanksgiving. November looks promising!

I’m an English teacher, so it’s no surprise that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about language. This summer, however, has been peppered with moments that have heightened my awareness of the many roles language plays in our lives. I’m still trying to make sense of all of them, so here’s just a rough sketch of these events.

During the first session of summer school, I had the pleasure of working with a custodian named Raul who has been coming to our Writing Center to improve his English. He’s not a student, but our policy is that we offer language services to all staff of the university, which is great because he’s the nicest person I worked with all summer. His main goal in coming EVERY DAY is to be able to read to his three young children, so he brings in children’s books and reads them out loud to his tutor who provides pronunciations or definitions if he needs them. I’d rather have an entire country full of conscientious, hard-working family men like Raul than the spoiled, entitled white kids who come late to appointments and then expect me to write their paper for them so they can get an A in their Psych class.

Don’t tell me the official English movement is not racist. Perhaps a few English-only proponents are truly not racist, but they are the exception to the rule. Bring the subject up with someone who supports making English our one official language and see what their first supporting argument is. I’ll bet you it involves Spanish-speaking immigrants or Mexican immigrants. They don’t seem to mind other languages or cultures, though. One day at the Writing Center, I worked back-to-back appointments with Raul, our Hispanic custodian, and a Norwegian girl named Astra. A third American student was working at a table behind us. When Raul left, the student sitting behind me said snidely, “I didn’t know you guys helped teach janitors to read.” I took a deep breath and replied in my most Disneyfied voice, “Yes, we help all students, teachers and staff at the university.” The young man shrugged and went back to his work. When Astra, my Norwegian student, came over to work with me, however, the young man tried to flirt with her. Raul and Astra are the same age. They are both immigrants learning English. Raul may be “just” a custodian, but Astra is unemployed. Why did Raul’s learning English bother this kid whereas Astra did not? Hmm…

A few days ago, a student brought in her term paper. Her thesis was that we must make English the official language of the U.S.. Now I enjoy tutoring papers with which I completely disagree. They are exercises in self-control for me, and I’m pretty sure my student had no idea I disagreed with every point she tried to make. Of her four arguments, only one was reasonably supported. I pointed out some major gaps in two of the others, then spent the rest of our tutorial focusing on her poor paragraph organization. Her arguments: we must preserve American history; multiple languages cost too much; we must protect English; and multilingual education programs are ineffective. The fourth point she proved pretty well, but the others relied on faulty logic. First, the preservation of American history does not rely on the English language. I suppose if American history began in 1776, you’d have a decent argument. If we’re going to go the history route, we should all be learning the Native American languages which are in serious danger of going extinct. Or Hawaiian or Aleutian. Second, multiple languages cost too much. Tell Europe that. Some of those countries, including Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Monaco, have several official languages, and they’re doing quite well. Besides, spending all the time and money to make English an official language will cost more than leaving it as is. We already teach English - to immigrants and native English speakers. What’s the difference? Finally, “protecting” English is a nonsensical notion. English is just fine, thanks. It’ll continue to do well if we don’t try to preserve it like a relic in a museum. (See Latin - a dead language - or French - dying language.) Most people who contend that we must make English the United States’ official language speak only English. Because the language is so bound up in their identity, they are terrified when “experts” suggest that our language is in danger from non-English-speaking immigrants who are going to kill it. Immigrant families’ native languages rarely survive past the second generation; in other words, if a Mexican couple comes to the US and has children here, those children will likely learn both Spanish and English, but the couple’s grandchildren will probably learn just English. Anyway, I’d contend that English is in more danger from native English speakers who butcher it on a daily basis than from immigrants who make conscientious efforts to speak it properly.

Which English are we going to accept? Just American? What about British, French or Canadian English? Do we accept only certain terms? Am I still allowed to call all soda “Coke” as we tend to do in Indiana? Or do I have to call it “pop?” My husband’s from New England, and he gets bent out of shape when I call a body of water a “lake.” Evidently, they have specific rules about what constitutes a lake up there. Will the entire country have to adopt the New England definition? Or will we force the Easterners to conform?
Can I still speak French to my children at home? I speak three languages, and I wanted to give my children the advantage of being bilingual. If English is the official language, can I still speak French or Russian when I’m out in public? I usually only do it when I don’t want people to know what I’m saying. After all, most Americans can’t speak a foreign language, so I can say whatever I want if I’m not speaking English. Maybe that’s what upsets so many people. The idea that others are talking about them in a language they can’t understand. Here’s a thought - learn a foreign language so you can understand! You might also broaden your mind, make yourself more interesting and more marketable. If it’s so easy for immigrants to learn English, it should be no problem for us to learn Spanish, Chinese, or Russian. Then when you go visit those places, you won’t have to hear people say, “You’re in our country now, speak our language!” Not that they will. Most of them already speak English.

I was honored to be nominated and accepted for a weekend-long seminar for associate faculty a few weeks ago. We had a great time, and on the last day, we got together to talk about what we had gotten out of the weekend. The discussion was very positive until the last person spoke. He said he was happy to have made so many contacts in other departments because they could help him with a “project” he was working on. His theory is that our intro composition class does not prepare students to write in other schools because we do not concentrate on “the basics” - grammar, style and classic essay form. He wanted to use the cross-discipline contacts he’d made to gather assignments from other schools to prove that we need to change the structure of the course. Having worked in the Writing Center for five years now, I felt more than qualified to refute his argument. After looking at countless assignment sheets from every school, I know for a fact that most instructors, regardless of discipline, are more concerned with content and thought process than grammar. This was not the appropriate forum for me to challenge him, though, so I’ve been stewing over it ever since.

I love grammar, and I was raised by an English-teacher mom who loves it too. I know it better than most people. But you don’t have to know grammar rules to be a great writer or speaker. You certainly don’t have to know them to be a powerful or successful person. I guarantee you George Bush does not know what a dangling participle is; I know Donald Trump can’t diagram a sentence. Shakespeare probably couldn’t either since he had very little formal education.

Bringing up Shakespeare reminds me of something else. Language changes. If Shakespeare did learn grammar, he would not have learned the rules we learn now. His English included thee, thy, and thou forms of the word “you.” His English included words that are foreign to us now. Heck, I learned rules just 25 years ago that no longer apply. You know that comma rule about items in a list? Do you put a comma before the “and?” Not anymore. Why bother learning a bunch of “rules” that have many exceptions and are likely to change anyway? If students haven’t learned grammar by the time they graduate from high school, it’s not going to happen. I know dozens of college professors, including many in my English department, who do not know grammar and they have PhDs.

Personally, I love language. It can be empowering, but it can also be a weapon of tyranny. When I was 18 I went to France with my family. A bum on the streets of Paris came up to my parents and started asking them for money. Not being able to speak French, my parents were at a loss. The vagrant got angry with them and started berating them and “les Americains stupide.” I was a fairly sheltered teenager, and I was just as frightened as my parents until the guy started talking about how American tourists were invading his country and couldn’t even speak the language. At that point, I got mad. And I realized I could speak his language, and I could use it to berate him just as he was berating us. So I did. I told him off, not with a swear word, but by using the informal French “you,” a usage that I knew would linguistically reduce him to an animal. And this big, street-wise, intoxicated jerk gave up and took off. In the face of a size 6, 18-year-old girl. I know language, and I know how to use it. And when I hear people insisting on immigrants speaking English or making students learn grammar rules, I know what those people are really doing. They’re asserting their superiority. I know because I’ve done it. Whenever someone makes me mad, I use words like daggers. I start pulling out every multi-syllabic vocabulary word, every convoluted sentence structure I can think of, and I’ll correct every split infinitive and every improper verb form my opponent uses. I don’t do it often, though, because it’s rude. I never correct my friends’ e-mails to me; I don’t often correct my husband or my kids’ speech. Language should bring us together, not enforce some kind of linguistic caste system.

Making English the “official” language of the U.S. won’t keep smart companies from offering their websites, marketing materials and forms in other common languages. Just as making homosexual marriage unconstitutional hasn’t stopped companies from offering same-sex partner benefits, outlawing Spanish, French, or any other language will not stop corporations from doing whatever they need to do to make money.

This is rambling, I know. Like I said, I think about language a lot. And it is important. After all, no matter what they say on the playground, words can hurt just as badly as sticks and stones.

Some people tell me I shouldn’t get so worked up about what the federal government’s up to. After all, most of that stuff doesn’t really matter in our everyday lives. Hmm…

I lost my wallet last year. Luckily, I only kept a few things in it – frequent shopper cards, a little cash, pictures of my kids. Unfortunately, I also had my and my baby girl’s Social Security cards in it.  Since I don’t often need our cards, though, I didn’t worry too much about it.

Then my husband decided to refinance our house, and because of the Patriot Act, I have to show my Social Security card to close on the refi.

So I went to my “local” Social Security office. It’s a 30-minute drive to a neighborhood that I wouldn’t exactly call safe. I had to have my kids with me since the office closes at 4pm. I knew right away it’d be a disaster. There were big signs posted on the front door – no food, no cell phones, no guns. So I left the McDonald’s Happy Meals I had gotten to keep my children quiet in the car; I turned off my cell phone, and I tried to reassure my 6-year-old that he need not worry about guns. (He saw the picture on the door and freaked out a bit.)

Once inside, things just got worse. There were about 60 people packed into a 200-square-foot room. I took a number – A31 – and we sat down. That’s when I noticed yet another sign: Keep your children quiet and under control so we can conduct business privately and without interruption. Right. I’ll explain that to my 2-year-old who is already running around checking things out.

I started filling out my application only to discover that I needed my parents’ Social Security numbers. I have no idea what those are, and my parents are on vacation in the Cascades. Besides I can’t use my cell phone to try to get hold of them anyway, remember?

After ten minutes, the irritable clerk finally called a number – A26. Hurray, there were only five people in front of us. Another fifteen minutes and they called A27. By now, my son is whining about the wait and bouncing up and down in his chair, annoying the very large man next to him with lots of rather graphic tattoos and a bolt in his nose. I was trying to keep my daughter entertained, but she was not having it.  She kept wiggling out of my lap and taking off. Every time I would catch her, she’d shriek, and I’d get dirty looks from the clerk. So after waiting about thirty minutes, I gave up.

I bid farewell to the pictures of George W. and Dick Cheney that were looming over our chairs and walked out the door. I heard them call A28 just before the door swung shut. I’ll have to find a time to go back after we return from vacation and before we close on our mortgage. Needless to say, I won’t be taking the kids.

Who says federal government doesn’t affect our daily lives? It just helped ruin a day for me.

I have come to a cosmic understanding. Phones stink. All phones stink, but cell phones are the worst.

I resisted the cell phone craze for quite a long time, but when my son was born, my parents insisted on putting me on their network for “safety.” It was a very nice gesture on their part; although I never had an emergency situation in which I desperately needed the phone, knowing I had it made them feel better.

Eventually, my husband and I decided to get our own phones. He likes technology. He likes being able to talk to his best friend all the time. I, on the other hand, have never liked talking on the phone. I was one of those bizarre teenagers who avoided calls even from my closest friends. My mother used to make me order pizza, and I would break into a cold sweat. Phone conversation just doesn’t work to my strengths. I’m not a glib conversationalist; I don’t think in quick sound bites, plus I’m pretty sarcastic and rather terse. Over the phone, I come off as rude.

A few months ago, we decided to cancel our landline. We were spending over $100 on phones each month, and we needed to streamline our budget. Now we spend about $60 a month on technology that allows people to reach me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Lucky me.

So here are my questions.

1. Why do people need to reach me at all hours of the day or night, no matter where I am or what I’m doing? I’m not the president of the United States; I’m not even a doctor. Good heavens! How on earth did human beings survive before phones?
2. Why should I pay money for people to call me at their convenience? Usually, when I answer, the person on the other end inevitably wants to give me bad news, ask me for something or chastise me for not answering the phone when they called earlier. I pay the bill; I answer when I have time.
3. Why is it okay for someone to interrupt me when they call on the phone? No one ever says, “Hi! Do you have time to talk?” No, they just assume that since I answered, they can launch into a 20-minute discussion. If I don’t answer, they get mad and leave me nasty messages. If someone just walked into my home while I was in middle of changing a diaper or taking a shower, that would be considered rude. Because they call instead of coming over, it’s acceptable?
4. How am I supposed to remember to keep my phone charged, keep it with me at all times and keep the ringer on or off depending on my location and activity? Do other people really spend that much time and energy thinking about such things? I have so many objects to keep track of; the phone is not even in the top ten things I’m worried about. I have my keys, my asthma medication, my wallet, my lunchbox, my school bag, my son’s school bag and all its contents, my daughter’s diaper bag and its contents. I can’t be expected to know where my phone is, what the status of its battery is, and how loud the ringer is set. I’m upstairs, downstairs, out in the yard, in the car, tutoring, teaching, at the store, at the park, at preschool, at the baseball field, at the movies. I really don’t have time.
5. If cell phones are supposed to keep us “safe,” as so many people insist, why do they cause so many dangers on the road? So often when I witness someone driving badly, they’re on the phone.
6. Weren’t cell phones supposed to connect us? I remember a time when I could walk down the street, see a friend or acquaintance and actually strike up a conversation. Not anymore. Nine times out of ten, when I see an acquaintance, they’re walking along, head down, ear to the phone. They might look up and smile or wave, but a conversation is right out. They’re already having one with someone more important than I am.

So that is my rant. I know my position is unpopular, and I accept that. I recently read an article about a couple that had decided to get rid of their televisions. I wonder if I could convince my husband to try a similar experiment with the phones. Probably not.

When did depression become a crime? At what point did the world lose patience with any and all people who made the mistake of admitting they weren’t happy at the moment?

I have been battling depression periodically through much of my life. The first time I had a major bout, I was only about 11 years old. It was written off as adolescence, and I was allowed to muddle through it until I got over it. The second time, I was a junior in high school. As an honors student who was very involved in multiple extracurricular activities, I was assumed to be under too much stress. My parents and friends encouraged me to drop a couple of my more difficult classes and lighten my activity schedule. I did, and I got over it. The third time, I was in college, struggling to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life and heartbroken over a guy. This bout was more serious, and I was put into therapy and given antidepressants. Neither was terribly helpful; I got much better when I got out of town and went to work at Disney World for the summer, though.

Now I’m 35, and I’ve been battling another round of depression for almost two years. In the fifteen years that have passed since my last episode, though, a remarkable shift has taken place. No one has considered that maybe my lifestyle or activities could problems. No one has made any helpful suggestions. No one has really given my situation any thought whatsoever because they no longer feel the need to be burdened by such unpleasantness. I tell people I’m depressed, and everyone comes back with one word: DRUGS.

These days, you tell someone you’re depressed, and they immediately reply, “Have you tried Prozac/Zoloft/Lexapro/insert prescription here? I’ve been on it for ages! It’s great!”

My doctor put me on Lexapro. My husband says it makes me behave better. I admit it seems to improve my outward symptoms. But I still don’t sleep. I still wake up wondering how in the world I’m going to make it through the day. I still feel my heart start racing at the thought of all the things I have to do. I just don’t feel like I have to talk about it. And I guess that’s what most people around me prefer.

My friends and family are used to Little Miss Sunshine. Jennifer, the peppy, happy, smiling and efficient. It disturbs them to think I might be unhappy, and they’re very busy people. They don’t really have time to worry about it. Besides, I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not a teenager. My life is great, right? I shouldn’t be depressed.

True, life is pretty good. I have two beautiful, healthy, sweet, smart children. I’m glad I know that because not many people tell me. Lots of people tell me what I should be doing to make them better, though. I get tons of advice from teachers, doctors, dentists, friends who have lots of ideas for more things I should do to improve my kids. Unfortunately, I just don’t have any more time, energy or money to put them in more activities, read more stories, make more crafts, take more walks, play more games.

I have a very nice husband. He’s a terrific dad who makes a good living at a job he doesn’t like much so I can stay home with our children most of the time. He’s a discontented personality, though. Nothing is ever okay. He’s always tired, always ill, always annoyed with something. We never have enough money, enough stuff, enough time. Nothing we buy is ever quite what he wanted. Nothing I cook is ever quite what he wanted.

I have a nice house. It’s always a mess, though, despite my constant efforts to clean it.

I have a great job. I love what I do. But it’s a lot of work for not much money.

I have great friends and family. They are always willing to come to any party I throw, always send me funny e-mails, always invite me to dinner or a movie. I’m sure they would be willing to listen to my worries if they didn’t have so many of their own that I feel too guilty to burden them with mine.

So I take the pills my doctor prescribed so I can be more pleasant to be around. I’ve tried to go off them a few times, but people get frustrated with me almost immediately. Still, I can’t help but feel that I have a right to be depressed without being accused of a chemical imbalance or hormonal problem. I work too much and get nowhere. I get very little encouragement. In fact, most of the folks around me just toss more complications, more tasks, more “constructive criticism” at me, rather than take anything away. The first couple times I went through this, people encouraged me to let some things go. Nowadays, it’s much more a “take-a-pill-shut-up-and-work-harder” attitude.

I blame Tom Cruise. If the moron hadn’t bashed anti-depressants and made it a cause celebre for lunatics like himself, I wouldn’t get accused of being a Scientologist every time I say I don’t like Prozac.