"Learning by Osmosis", by Petrel
Summary : Daria unwittingly sends a fellow student down a much different
path in life....
Notes : MTV is a big powerful corporation. I'm just little ol' me,
with nothing to take. They own it all. I was just inspired to
write this, wondering about one of those faceless characters on
Daria I've seen but about whom we know nothing. My inspiration
for writing this was "Camp Concentration" by Thomas Disch.
A really good read.
Hope you like it!
*****************************************
Every high school has its cliques. We pretend not to notice them, even
claim that they don't exist, but since human beings have a tendency to
stereotype, they are there and people are put into cliques justly or
unjustly. There are the brains, and the jocks, and the applepolishers,
and the fashion queens, and the goths, and the goal of most is to make
it out of school alive by 3 PM or so and spend the rest of the day
escaping the reality of the past day and the next.
Annissa Martz was a nobody. It was one of the catch-all cliques, the other
being "weirdo". She was always known as "Ann", whenever anyone bothered
to remember her name. She would have answered to almost anything feminine
if it made someone's life convenient. Weighing over 180 pounds, she certainly
wasn't a jock, and cruised through school on a straight C-minus average.
She participated in no activities and was not asked. Normally, nobodies
were at the bottom of the pecking order, until Ann finally found her niche
and her refuge.
Music.
Ann was never seen without her walkman. It remained at her side, and after
five years and two suspensions, the faculty had finally given up removing
it from her head. She promised to listen to the lectures, and remain
quiet, which she did most of the time. Whenever Barch or DeMartino began
a windup or whenever O'Neill began a long, sleep-inducing inspirational
moment, she pushed the "PLAY" button and for fifteen or twenty seconds
treated herself to The Smiths, Tori Amos, Morrissey, The Cure, Siouxsie,
and briefly escaped the prison that was both her body and Lawndale High
School. Listening to "weird music" ensured her outcast status : no one
would ask to borrow CDs. Except maybe Andrea, who had a habit of forgetting
to return them.
With that, Ann faded into the background. Aside from hating Lawndale,
her body, her life, and everyone in the human race, one might say she
was well adjusted.
A lone thought crossed her mind..."December". Six more months of this
and she was barely passing history. Mr. D. could be counted on for a
bit of amusement, except when he called on her, and he never failed to
do so. "Perhaps you're listening to a TUNE about how to AVOID unemployment
and FAILURE, Ms. Martz, which is what you'll be FACING if you don't PAY
ATTENTION and PULL YOUR GRADES UP!!" Each DeMartino moment was like a
hammer through her eye.
Third period had already began. Five minutes. No DeMartino. The class
began to chatter. Kevin was already goofing off for the benefit of the
other football players. Daria Morgendorffer and her friend Jane were
talking to Jodie, the class brown noser. Andrea was drawing something,
undoubtedly obscene.
Six minutes. Still no "Mr. D." Time to put Tori Amos and the Choirgirl
Hotel on.
Ann clicked the CD on, but instead of Tori whining about a raspberry
swirl, Tori sounded as if she was not quite awake and had developed
an unnatural baritone since she last heard her. Uh oh, she thought.
Batteries are dying.
With practiced precision, she reached into her left jacket pocket for
a new pack of batteries (the batteries shared space with M&Ms or whatever
she brought to snack on). She could open a battery packet, one handed,
without even looking.
There were M&Ms, but no batteries. "Dammit", she thought, "where are my
batteries?" Did someone steal them? It could have happened. They played
jokes on her like that. One time, someone hung a donkey's tail made out
of the wire from a wire-bound notebook onto her belt loop. Stupid stuff
like that, the kind of jokes that Sandi Griffin would play. Immediately,
she created and reviewed a list of suspects -- she was sure she had the
batteries this morning.
The hope that Tori could somehow make it to the end of the album faded away.
The familiar "01" light wasn't on. There was no power, the batteries were
finally and irrevocably dead. Without replacements, she would have to spend
the entire day without her music fix.
What to do? Her left hand almost reached up to take the headphones off,
but she stopped herself. Taking off the headphones would mean that she could
no longer feign ignorance to the comments about her and around her. For her
own protection, she kept her headphones on, and pretended to listen to something
not of the petty Lawndale universe.
Jodie continued her conversation. "I can't see how you can be an atheist."
Ann's ears perked up from behind the headphones. Her mother and father
were always bitching about how she should be going to church. She still liked
God and Jesus and all that, just not *that* much. She wanted to meet Him
on her own terms, not on someone else's. She just wasn't churchy.
"I never said I was," said Daria. "You're jumping to conclusions. I only
said that there is no convincing argument for the existence of God."
Ann thought, *you'll go to Hell for thinking that, Daria*. The thought
of the sourpussed, snotty Daria Morgendorffer burning for an eternity in the
pits of Hell almost caused a smile to cross Ann's face. She hated Daria
for her grades and her pissy attitude, as if she were better than
everybody else.
"What do you think, Jane?", said Jodie. "Do you agree?"
"Don't wanna get involved," said the art chick. "The only God I worship is
'Bob'."
"Praise his bleeding head," added Daria.
*Good*, thought Ann. *Both of them would go to Hell*. She tried not to think
about the fact that she would probably go there herself.
"Seriously, Daria," said Jodie, "look at the world around you. Think about
the brain. Think about the nervous system. Scientists have studied the
organs of the human body for years. Nothing created by man has ever
equaled their complexity. Think about how spectacular and special human
life is."
Daria (and Ann) listened, while Jane busied herself in something, anything
else. Jodie continued. "For example, think about the position of Earth
in the solar system. A little closer to the sun, and we'd burn. A little
further away, and we'd freeze. If you claim that there is no argument
for the existence of God, I say that you just need to look around you.
Can you tell me that all of these parts could work together without some
higher force putting them together. One part out of place, and the whole
thing falls apart. But all the parts are in place. Could they have come
together by chance? Between you and me, Daria, I think someone put them
there. Someone bigger than either of us."
*Right on*, thought Ann, *you tell them*. Daria was quiet for a moment.
Ann was glad that Jodie had finally done the impossible. She had shut
Daria Morgendorffer up. *You shouldn't go messing with God*, thought
Ann, sort of happy her batteries had failed so that she could see this
moment.
"All right, Jodie," answered Daria, "explain the appendix."
"What?", asked Jodie.
"Explain the appendix. Explain tonsils. Tell me what functions *those*
serve in the human body."
"We've evolved beyond them," said Jodie. Ann listened intently, waiting
for Jodie to strike back, clearly taking sides in the argument.
"Explain why the mammoth elephants are dead. Or the sabertooths. Or the
dinosaurs, or the tribolites. If everything is engineered so perfectly,
why did entire species have to die? Explain AIDS. Explain the Black
Death, and the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918. Explain why women die in
childbirth because their hips aren't wide enough. I don't know. You
see a lot of wonder, but all I see is one big mess."
"Hmmph," said Jodie, not impressed.
"If you're making out God to be some great designer of the universe,"
said Daria, "then explain why He's done such a crappy job. There's
no evidence of intelligent creation, *anywhere*." Daria fired her
parting shot. "Look at Kevin Thompson."
The thought that Kevin Thompson could be the result of some intelligently
planned design was what did it. Ann ran the thought through what little
bits of half-assed theology and philosophy she had picked up from
septugenarian Methodist Sunday School teachers and popular TV shows,
but the final answer did not compute. *Wait a minute,* thought Ann,
knowing what the end result of the calculations would be and wondering
if she could say it.
...*there is....no God?*
No God. Ann fought against that proposition with what little weapons she
possessed. But -- wait a minute -- Daria couldn't be -- YES!! It sounded
like a trumpet. Daria Morgendorffer was right. There is *NO GOD*.
No proof. None whatsoever!
It was the first time she had ever thought about such things. Ann's spiritual
life, such as it was, was a house built from rotting, second-hand wood
and one kick against the foundation by the large boot of Daria Morgendorffer
send the whole thing crashing down. It was almost like recovering from
electroshock therapy. A new world, perhaps a frightening world, but one
more in line with her expectations had opened up. Now *everything* was
called into question. Her parents and their lukewarm religiousity every
Sunday. All the moral crap they tried to fill her with in school. All
the fear she had of going to Hell if she did something wrong. All of it
was burning up and the vacuum was rushing in, demanding to be filled.
Jane told Jodie and Daria a story she had heard about Upchuck. The three
forgot all about God and metaphysics. Class would continue, sooner or later.
But Ann couldn't. She had entered the class a half-hearted, defensive
Christian and exited a born-again, full-fledged atheist. It was the
beginning of a long journey.
********
"Reverend?"
The young couple entered Reverend Martz's study. The pastor of
St. Luke's Episcopal was a large, genial woman, always with a smile
on her face, a woman who could tell some interesting stories. She was
the only pastor they knew who had once been a topless dancer, who
was once a full-fledged member of the Revolutionary Workers Party
and had served an eighteen-month prison sentence for trying to blow
up a half-constructed Starbucks. The only pastor they knew who
had returned from prison a reconstructed fundamentalist, who had
married a young evangelist and divorced him six months later. A woman
who had taken a long spiritual and philosophical journey and now
treated herself much less seriously, more at peace with the world and
more able to find humor in its madness.
"Sorry! Come in!" She knew the two. They wanted to be married, but
she refused to marry anyone without evaluating them first. Annissa knew
that some people shouldn't be married, and she took that part of her
vocation very seriously.
The young man said, "Is that the newest Lawndale yearbook?"
"This?", said the Reverend. "Oh, heavens no! This must be twenty years
old! But if you tell anyone about that, I'll be forced to break a
commandment, so mum's the word."
"You went to Lawndale? My dad went there!," said the young woman.
"His name is Jamie White. Do you know him?"
The name didn't register at all. "Sorry, don't know him. What year?"
"I think he graduated in...about 2001 or thereabouts...yes, that would
be right. He got married after he graduated."
"Hmm...sorry, still don't know him. I graduated in 2001 myself, but I
tended to live in my own world then. I've forgotten just about everyone."
*Except maybe Daria Morgendorffer*, Annissa told herself. *Wonder what
she's up to now?*
Summary : Daria unwittingly sends a fellow student down a much different
path in life....
Notes : MTV is a big powerful corporation. I'm just little ol' me,
with nothing to take. They own it all. I was just inspired to
write this, wondering about one of those faceless characters on
Daria I've seen but about whom we know nothing. My inspiration
for writing this was "Camp Concentration" by Thomas Disch.
A really good read.
Hope you like it!
*****************************************
Every high school has its cliques. We pretend not to notice them, even
claim that they don't exist, but since human beings have a tendency to
stereotype, they are there and people are put into cliques justly or
unjustly. There are the brains, and the jocks, and the applepolishers,
and the fashion queens, and the goths, and the goal of most is to make
it out of school alive by 3 PM or so and spend the rest of the day
escaping the reality of the past day and the next.
Annissa Martz was a nobody. It was one of the catch-all cliques, the other
being "weirdo". She was always known as "Ann", whenever anyone bothered
to remember her name. She would have answered to almost anything feminine
if it made someone's life convenient. Weighing over 180 pounds, she certainly
wasn't a jock, and cruised through school on a straight C-minus average.
She participated in no activities and was not asked. Normally, nobodies
were at the bottom of the pecking order, until Ann finally found her niche
and her refuge.
Music.
Ann was never seen without her walkman. It remained at her side, and after
five years and two suspensions, the faculty had finally given up removing
it from her head. She promised to listen to the lectures, and remain
quiet, which she did most of the time. Whenever Barch or DeMartino began
a windup or whenever O'Neill began a long, sleep-inducing inspirational
moment, she pushed the "PLAY" button and for fifteen or twenty seconds
treated herself to The Smiths, Tori Amos, Morrissey, The Cure, Siouxsie,
and briefly escaped the prison that was both her body and Lawndale High
School. Listening to "weird music" ensured her outcast status : no one
would ask to borrow CDs. Except maybe Andrea, who had a habit of forgetting
to return them.
With that, Ann faded into the background. Aside from hating Lawndale,
her body, her life, and everyone in the human race, one might say she
was well adjusted.
A lone thought crossed her mind..."December". Six more months of this
and she was barely passing history. Mr. D. could be counted on for a
bit of amusement, except when he called on her, and he never failed to
do so. "Perhaps you're listening to a TUNE about how to AVOID unemployment
and FAILURE, Ms. Martz, which is what you'll be FACING if you don't PAY
ATTENTION and PULL YOUR GRADES UP!!" Each DeMartino moment was like a
hammer through her eye.
Third period had already began. Five minutes. No DeMartino. The class
began to chatter. Kevin was already goofing off for the benefit of the
other football players. Daria Morgendorffer and her friend Jane were
talking to Jodie, the class brown noser. Andrea was drawing something,
undoubtedly obscene.
Six minutes. Still no "Mr. D." Time to put Tori Amos and the Choirgirl
Hotel on.
Ann clicked the CD on, but instead of Tori whining about a raspberry
swirl, Tori sounded as if she was not quite awake and had developed
an unnatural baritone since she last heard her. Uh oh, she thought.
Batteries are dying.
With practiced precision, she reached into her left jacket pocket for
a new pack of batteries (the batteries shared space with M&Ms or whatever
she brought to snack on). She could open a battery packet, one handed,
without even looking.
There were M&Ms, but no batteries. "Dammit", she thought, "where are my
batteries?" Did someone steal them? It could have happened. They played
jokes on her like that. One time, someone hung a donkey's tail made out
of the wire from a wire-bound notebook onto her belt loop. Stupid stuff
like that, the kind of jokes that Sandi Griffin would play. Immediately,
she created and reviewed a list of suspects -- she was sure she had the
batteries this morning.
The hope that Tori could somehow make it to the end of the album faded away.
The familiar "01" light wasn't on. There was no power, the batteries were
finally and irrevocably dead. Without replacements, she would have to spend
the entire day without her music fix.
What to do? Her left hand almost reached up to take the headphones off,
but she stopped herself. Taking off the headphones would mean that she could
no longer feign ignorance to the comments about her and around her. For her
own protection, she kept her headphones on, and pretended to listen to something
not of the petty Lawndale universe.
Jodie continued her conversation. "I can't see how you can be an atheist."
Ann's ears perked up from behind the headphones. Her mother and father
were always bitching about how she should be going to church. She still liked
God and Jesus and all that, just not *that* much. She wanted to meet Him
on her own terms, not on someone else's. She just wasn't churchy.
"I never said I was," said Daria. "You're jumping to conclusions. I only
said that there is no convincing argument for the existence of God."
Ann thought, *you'll go to Hell for thinking that, Daria*. The thought
of the sourpussed, snotty Daria Morgendorffer burning for an eternity in the
pits of Hell almost caused a smile to cross Ann's face. She hated Daria
for her grades and her pissy attitude, as if she were better than
everybody else.
"What do you think, Jane?", said Jodie. "Do you agree?"
"Don't wanna get involved," said the art chick. "The only God I worship is
'Bob'."
"Praise his bleeding head," added Daria.
*Good*, thought Ann. *Both of them would go to Hell*. She tried not to think
about the fact that she would probably go there herself.
"Seriously, Daria," said Jodie, "look at the world around you. Think about
the brain. Think about the nervous system. Scientists have studied the
organs of the human body for years. Nothing created by man has ever
equaled their complexity. Think about how spectacular and special human
life is."
Daria (and Ann) listened, while Jane busied herself in something, anything
else. Jodie continued. "For example, think about the position of Earth
in the solar system. A little closer to the sun, and we'd burn. A little
further away, and we'd freeze. If you claim that there is no argument
for the existence of God, I say that you just need to look around you.
Can you tell me that all of these parts could work together without some
higher force putting them together. One part out of place, and the whole
thing falls apart. But all the parts are in place. Could they have come
together by chance? Between you and me, Daria, I think someone put them
there. Someone bigger than either of us."
*Right on*, thought Ann, *you tell them*. Daria was quiet for a moment.
Ann was glad that Jodie had finally done the impossible. She had shut
Daria Morgendorffer up. *You shouldn't go messing with God*, thought
Ann, sort of happy her batteries had failed so that she could see this
moment.
"All right, Jodie," answered Daria, "explain the appendix."
"What?", asked Jodie.
"Explain the appendix. Explain tonsils. Tell me what functions *those*
serve in the human body."
"We've evolved beyond them," said Jodie. Ann listened intently, waiting
for Jodie to strike back, clearly taking sides in the argument.
"Explain why the mammoth elephants are dead. Or the sabertooths. Or the
dinosaurs, or the tribolites. If everything is engineered so perfectly,
why did entire species have to die? Explain AIDS. Explain the Black
Death, and the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918. Explain why women die in
childbirth because their hips aren't wide enough. I don't know. You
see a lot of wonder, but all I see is one big mess."
"Hmmph," said Jodie, not impressed.
"If you're making out God to be some great designer of the universe,"
said Daria, "then explain why He's done such a crappy job. There's
no evidence of intelligent creation, *anywhere*." Daria fired her
parting shot. "Look at Kevin Thompson."
The thought that Kevin Thompson could be the result of some intelligently
planned design was what did it. Ann ran the thought through what little
bits of half-assed theology and philosophy she had picked up from
septugenarian Methodist Sunday School teachers and popular TV shows,
but the final answer did not compute. *Wait a minute,* thought Ann,
knowing what the end result of the calculations would be and wondering
if she could say it.
...*there is....no God?*
No God. Ann fought against that proposition with what little weapons she
possessed. But -- wait a minute -- Daria couldn't be -- YES!! It sounded
like a trumpet. Daria Morgendorffer was right. There is *NO GOD*.
No proof. None whatsoever!
It was the first time she had ever thought about such things. Ann's spiritual
life, such as it was, was a house built from rotting, second-hand wood
and one kick against the foundation by the large boot of Daria Morgendorffer
send the whole thing crashing down. It was almost like recovering from
electroshock therapy. A new world, perhaps a frightening world, but one
more in line with her expectations had opened up. Now *everything* was
called into question. Her parents and their lukewarm religiousity every
Sunday. All the moral crap they tried to fill her with in school. All
the fear she had of going to Hell if she did something wrong. All of it
was burning up and the vacuum was rushing in, demanding to be filled.
Jane told Jodie and Daria a story she had heard about Upchuck. The three
forgot all about God and metaphysics. Class would continue, sooner or later.
But Ann couldn't. She had entered the class a half-hearted, defensive
Christian and exited a born-again, full-fledged atheist. It was the
beginning of a long journey.
********
"Reverend?"
The young couple entered Reverend Martz's study. The pastor of
St. Luke's Episcopal was a large, genial woman, always with a smile
on her face, a woman who could tell some interesting stories. She was
the only pastor they knew who had once been a topless dancer, who
was once a full-fledged member of the Revolutionary Workers Party
and had served an eighteen-month prison sentence for trying to blow
up a half-constructed Starbucks. The only pastor they knew who
had returned from prison a reconstructed fundamentalist, who had
married a young evangelist and divorced him six months later. A woman
who had taken a long spiritual and philosophical journey and now
treated herself much less seriously, more at peace with the world and
more able to find humor in its madness.
"Sorry! Come in!" She knew the two. They wanted to be married, but
she refused to marry anyone without evaluating them first. Annissa knew
that some people shouldn't be married, and she took that part of her
vocation very seriously.
The young man said, "Is that the newest Lawndale yearbook?"
"This?", said the Reverend. "Oh, heavens no! This must be twenty years
old! But if you tell anyone about that, I'll be forced to break a
commandment, so mum's the word."
"You went to Lawndale? My dad went there!," said the young woman.
"His name is Jamie White. Do you know him?"
The name didn't register at all. "Sorry, don't know him. What year?"
"I think he graduated in...about 2001 or thereabouts...yes, that would
be right. He got married after he graduated."
"Hmm...sorry, still don't know him. I graduated in 2001 myself, but I
tended to live in my own world then. I've forgotten just about everyone."
*Except maybe Daria Morgendorffer*, Annissa told herself. *Wonder what
she's up to now?*