Intrinsic Good in Practice

My annual turkey nap was cut short this year. “Meredith,” said my brother Stephen, “get up. We’re playing Bananagrams.”

[A brief and entirely unnecessary analysis of Stephen’s motives: my mother had told us that we were going to play a family game, and we were going to do it before he could go over to his girlfriend’s house. I hold no animosity towards him. Madison is wonderful.]

So we played Bananagrams. (def. Bananagrams – a game that’s like scrabble but doesn’t take as long). And it was good.

After Stephen left, I stayed at the kitchen table and fooled around with tiles. My dad came back and sat with me. And I’m not really sure how this happened, but we started playing “Hobbit Scrabble,” which wasn’t actually Scrabble. It was Banagrams, but it was better, because we were making up Hobbit words.

We read our creations, and defined them, and laughed. According to me, “Telpsy” is a feminine Hobbit name. My dad thinks it sounds like a Hobbit disease. He came up with “Bopsak” (a Hobbit’s backpack), “Pogwig” (a sort of mushroom that grows in the Shire), and my personal favorite, “Farquarzone.” That word doesn’t mean anything at all.

I’m thankful for my dad.

Good

Prompted: Use own words to define intrinsic good, list 20 things that are intrinsically good, talk about a time you experienced something that was intrinsically good.

Definition:

Intrinsically good things can be seen as good without having to look at the results. The means justify themselves.

Intrinsic goodies:

-Reading out loud

-Splatter painting

-Baking

-Running

-Gardening

-Taking walks

-Sending letters

-Looking at old photographs

-Laughing

-Hugging

-Helping people

-Listening to music

-Creating music

-Listening to other people create music

-Backpacking

-Reading books you aren’t required to read

-Enjoying books you are required to read

-Sabbath-ing

-Surprising somebody

-Waiting for a long time (if something is worth waiting for, then the wait is worth something)

Storytime:

When I was in third or fourth grade, I spent a whole evening dancing on my deck to the Dragonheart soundtrack. I dragged the boom box out there and plugged it into an old socket on the outside of the house. The trees in the backyard were green, the wind was brisk, and my feet were bare. My mother told me to watch out for splinters. And I just danced. It was only artistic by the standards of not giving a rip about standards. I waved my arms around and pointed my toes. It wasn’t for anybody or because of anybody. But my dad did stand on the deck and watch for a while. I only pretended I didn’t see him.

CHA - CHING

An excuse:

J-me, this is way over 250 words. I skipped the edit because I wanted to rant.

 A prompt:

Write about a time where you felt “banked” in a classroom setting. Describe your experience. No names.

A definition:

Banking – A process in which teachers deposit their information into the brains of the students. If the students store the deposited information correctly, they will have success when the teachers come to make withdrawals. Banks that return what was deposited upon demand of withdrawal are given high scores, and banks that fail to do so are given low marks. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that the only information that will need to be regurgitated by the little brain banks is the information the teachers have placed there. Anything else would be unjust. The students are only responsible for the information the teacher has deposited in their heads (as evidence: everyday conversation in schools across the nation – Student speaking to other student or parent or teacher or anyone else on the planet: “I can’t believe that was on the test, we didn’t even go over it in class, this is so unfair, I hate that teacher”).

A tangent:

I want to start riots. But I am not lost. I will not be lost. Just because I have been a willing product of this system does not mean that this system is everywhere. It is not inside me always, it just has been before, and will be again, but that does not mean that I have to be lost.

A story:

Once upon a time in the class of an unnamed teacher at an unnamed high school, I answered a question correctly. We were reading the T.S. Eliot poem, “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock.” My teacher had asked, “What is the significance of the repeated phrase: ‘In the room the women come and go/Talking of Michelangelo’?”

Silence in the classroom. I raised my hand. I can’t remember what I said (although, just now, I did try to recreate something impressive). Something about idealized figures and how the speaker feels greater insignificance because he cannot match up to/feels great disdain for the ideals of his society. All I remember is my teacher beaming at me like a person who had received a large amount of interest on a deposit.

An example:

I’m in a classroom (well, an English classroom, this example doesn’t exactly work with math), a teacher asks a question. Students offer various answers, to all of which the teacher says, “Yes, what else?” The yes sounds painful. Finally, a student brings up the correct answer [in this case, “correct answer” is interchangeable with “the answer the teacher was thinking about”]. The teacher changes the tone of his “Yes,” and the teacher no longer feels the need to repeat, “what else?” because the original question has been answered. The teacher is satisfied.

[WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE (to the girl who defines herself by her GPA) BETWEEN TEACHER SATISFACTION AND TRUTH?]

I have always been good at satisfying teachers. It got me into college.

Back to the story:

Looking back on it, that situation was banking. The correctness of my answer hinged (almost entirely) on the satisfaction of the teacher. I had assimilated enough information about him and the way he treated literature into my bank to produce good withdrawals more often than the rest of the class.

The same teacher once asked me, “Don’t you think that most questions are really statements in disguise?”

[I’ll let you enjoy the irony of that one without hindering it with an explanation]

OF COURSE I DO. I think that because YOU think that. I’ll argue with you if you want me to.