Under a Rock

I was spent Friday afternoon following class at USM. The long week of trying to write marketing collateral, hitting an article deadline, a return to tutoring, and then, sitting through my nearly three-hour-long history class, pushed me past my energy tipping point.

Back home, waiting for Mary to arrive from work and thinking about what to make for dinner, I flicked on the television. Five minutes of politics was enough. For whatever reason, I changed the channel to a music station and on my screen was a young woman who could easily have been one of the students I’ve been spending time with tutoring and subbing. Except that she was in a “strange” video; blood was dripping from her nose and she appeared in outfits ranging from a white uniform, to yellow sweat suit, all the while commencing to sing about “bad guys and tough guys.” The video was jarring enough to keep me there, watching the song called, “Bad Guy.”

Saturday, sitting in the Lee’s Tire waiting room while getting my snow tires swapped-out for summer treads, I happened to be paging through the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times: Who was looking back at me from page 17? The face of Billie Eilish, the young woman from Friday’s video, which commences with Eilish saying, “I’ve taken out my Invisalgn.”

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