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The Newsletter >
The Ugly Wallpaper Dance
October 15, 2008
Hello, Except if you’re “The Man,”
I have gone back to school and that makes me a fifty-year old coed—that makes me a fifty-year old coed with a lot of homework. Modern day homework often takes the format of something known as “group projects.” Group projects are assignments that require the cooperation and participation of multiple students, as many as one hundred students, well, it can feel like one hundred. None of the students in your “group” project will be as old as you are or as cynical. Fifty percent will be complete slackers.
The majority of the students in the “group” will have very grand ideas about what is possible for a “group” project. In the initial planning phases for the project, suggestions will range from write, produce, and film a feature length movie and/or burn George Bush in effigy. The planning meeting will be held in the alcove next to the men’s bathroom. Before the meeting is over mature students (like myself) will feel compelled to reign in the grand ambitions of “the group” and make some reasonable assignments.
And so went my group project for the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. If you have not read The Yellow Wallpaper, let me summarize. Once upon a time, men were dogs who kept their women in rooms with ugly wallpaper. Eventually the wallpaper makes the women go nuts. It’s a classic, and so we were assigned The Yellow Wallpaper for our group project.
Explaining the project to my youngest daughter I said, “So, to start, we’ve got this guy who’s going to show a YouTube video that makes you see hallucinations. His name is Marcus. You know, because the woman in the story sees stuff creeping around in the wallpaper.”
“Riiight,” Maren said. I could tell that she was skeptical.
“Then I’m making fake “wallpaper” out of poster board, and then I’m going to make everyone move their chairs so they have to stare at the ugly wallpaper during the whole presentation. Josef is happy about that, because he doesn’t want anyone looking at him while he’s giving his oral report on symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper.”
“Oh my,” she said.
“I know. Cool right? But then for the big finish we’re going to do an interpretive dance under a yellow sheet.”
“Fitted or flat?”
“Flat of course, who would bring a fitted sheet? Anyway we’re going to take turns running around under the sheet like the crazy people behind that butt ugly wallpaper.” She frowned and started to say something else, but I kept going. “Then I’m going to dance last, and after I run around, I’m going to faint and they’re going to cover me with the sheet in a solemn, artist, interpretive way.”
She sighed and said, “Mom, have you ever thought about just trying to blend in—for once?”
“Gosh no, because then “The Man” would win!” I pumped my clenched fist at the ceiling. Everyone at school talks about “The Man” like they know him personally.
Mike, the guy responsible for bringing the sheet brought a fitted sheet for the interpretive dance. It never occurred to me to tell Mike to bring a flat sheet.
And that’s modern education—group projects, interpretive dancing, and sticking it to “The Man,” whoever he is. Maybe he’s the guy that stuck his wife in the room with the ugly wallpaper, except he’s dead, and all the men in my life would just tell me that if I didn’t like the wallpaper that I would be welcome to strip off the old paper, paint the wall a nice neutral, and then stencil the whole mess. Sigh.
Linda (Sheet Dancer) Zern
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