I think epiphany is the best word to describe what happened to me. Let me explain.

It all started with a dream I had last night. It was about the woman getting arrested (of
course, what else would I dream about, it was all anyone was talking about yesterday),
except that I actually got to see what happened because I was there, just like how I was
thinking when I was sitting on that bench the other day, how I wanted to see what
happened because I thought it was important for whatever reason. And what happened
was that the woman started crying and talking about how that law shouldnt be enforced
anyway, because suddenly it wasnt the woman, it was Marisa. I remember thinking in
the dream (dream logic here) that Mr. Crosby had better do something about this, and
as soon as I thought it there he was telling the officer that it was OK, there was no need
to arrest Marissa, he would just write her a discipline referral and make her go to the
nurse.
Thats the last thing I remember in the dream before I woke up. I dont have a clock in
my room except my phone and my computer, so I logged onto MeNet from the chip real
quick to check the time. It was 11:54 p.m.
I could remember the dream really clearly. Which wasnt all that big of a deal for me--Im
one of those people who tends to remember my dreams fairly well on a regular basis--
but it isnt that often that I wake up in the middle of the night, sleep-deprived, thinking
about a dream that I remember really vividly, let alone one that has relevance to real
life.
Well, of course I was going to think about it some more. Except that I was sleep-
deprived, like I said, so I didnt have a whole lot of coherent or constructive thoughts. I
just sort of thought about how Marisa crying as the woman who got arrested and Marisa
talking in class about the woman who got arrested and there being that threat of her
crying were sort of the same thing, like maybe that was how my brain had connected
them together...
I ran that same thought back through my brain-box a couple more times before I finally
fell asleep. When I woke up again, it was nine or ten in the morning (I didnt check this
time, but I remember thinking it was pretty early for a Saturday--the sky was even a bit
white). But it still wasnt like I was ready to get out of bed, so instead I picked up on my
thoughts where Id left off, thinking about the dream.
That was when I had my epiphany.
I dont remember exactly what it was I was thinking, specifically, that made me have the
epiphany. All I remember is suddenly sitting up in bed, my eyes wide, like whoa, that
just happened.
See, now Ive built it all up. I know now that I actually go to describe the epiphany
theres no way that I can describe it accurately to make it seem as important or
significant as it actually was, but Ill try. What happened was that I realized, just like Id
thought, that the thing with Kathleen MacKenzie and the thing with Marisa were
connected. Handing out religious materials and crying in class, not being allowed to
hand out religious materials and not being allowed to cry in class...They were all sort of
connected, werent they? Emotion, religion, restrictions on the expression of one or the
other, repression of ideals because of legalities, etiquette, whatever social reason, they
were all part of the same thing, the same main idea, the same...construct, maybe I can
call it.
Please dont misunderstand. Im not saying all these things are exactly the same.
Because, I mean, its not like a person who wants to be religious is always a person
who wants to be emotional. Im more or less religious myself but Im not the least bit
emotional, so its not like the parallels are perfect. But theyre there. Theyre definitely
there.
All these thoughts running around in my head served to wake me up so well that I got
out of bed, showered, and went to go eat breakfast where I normally would have just
lain in bed for a good while longer. When I got to the living room, Dad had already left
for work but Mom was still there shuffling papers and files in her expanding file folder,
just getting ready to walk out the door.
She looked up at me and she looked kind of confused, but then her confusion changed
to a smile, like she didnt care that it was unusual for me to be up early because getting
to see me at a time when she normally didnt was good anyway. She said, Im headed
out now. Take care of yourself.
Like I needed to be told twice. Id only been doing this pretty much my whole life. I will.
I love you. She gave me a quick, tight hug and then headed out the door.
Eating breakfast and watching cartoons gave some time to take the edge off the whole
epiphany thing, if that makes sense. What I mean is that it didnt seem as urgent as it
had before. But by the time I finished eating breakfast and brushing my teeth, I still
remembered what Id been thinking about and that it was terribly important for some
reason.
So I decided to handle it by doing what I do best: research. Understand, by research I
just mean searching random junk on MeNet and learning that way. And in this case, I
wanted to learn about the history of laws governing what one can and cannot distribute
on public property. And if I came across any information about the etiquette of crying
and other similar displays, so much the better.
So that was how I ended up sprawled on the couch with my computer, a bag of potato
chips at my side, doing hours of research.
What I found out was pretty neat. I mean, you get so used to having certain laws that
you dont really think about how they got there. But as it turned out, laws about
materials that you can distribute came about because of something very specific. Back
in the 70s there was this huge riot in Washington D.C. with a group called the Traditional
Values Coalition on one side (presumably since disbanded or operating under another
name out of shame) and some righteously indignant locals who basically cobbled
themselves together on the other side. It started out as a peaceful demonstration and
stayed that way for about twenty-four, thirty-six hours, but then it got ugly. Figures with
that many people disagreeing about something in comparatively close quarters.
Anyway, there were people beating on each other in the streets, vandalism,
looting...The police had to come and get everyone under control and they actually killed
like five people, so that was this whole other can of worms.
Everyone was spooked by that. Terrorized, you might say. So the government called
together this special meeting and came up with a whole bunch of new laws, mostly
pertaining to demonstrations. For instance, thats where we get the law that no more
than 20 people can get together at once in support of any potentially contentious
cause. Very interesting. And they cracked down especially hard on stuff youre allowed
to hand out on the streets, which I guess makes sense because even if you have one
person (read: less than 20) distributing flyers or whatever, they can reach a whole lot of
people that way. Its not just religious material, its political material and pretty much
anything that takes an ideological stance. I read about one woman in Pennsylvania who
was put in jail for three days for handing out flyers about getting your pets fixed. Luckily,
that was pretty much agreed to be a stupid misunderstanding, and the police chief even
issued a formal apology. Still, that was back in the 90s, which makes it scary that it was
so recent. Thats the decade that I was born.
Anyway, not only was this stuff majorly controversial when it first got passed--something
about people letting themselves be scared into giving up their rights--but its still pretty
controversial today, making at least occasional appearances on the fringes of political
debate. That explains why the media latched onto this story even though they were kind
of slow on the uptake to begin with.
Speaking of which, I did find out a little more about that whole affair. The police
department apparently thought it was prudent, in the wake of the whole media scandal
(*cynical laughter in the distance*), to release some more of the relevant information
about Miss MacKenzies arrest. Apparently they were information sheets about a
clothing drive being held at the civic center, and someone (maybe not even Miss
Mackenzie, it didnt really specify) thought it would be a good idea to include that one
verse from the Bible that goes For I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave
me drink, naked and you clothed me or however it goes. So pretty much a
misunderstanding, just like the other thing that happened in Pennsylvania. Good thing
they just let her off with a warning or they might have some legit controversy on their
hands.
By the way, I also learned that a lot of people (I dont know who these a lot of people
are--it could actually be nobody at the end of the day) think that the laws about
demonstrations were connected to the repealing of the law about churches and whatnot
being tax exempt. But that actually happened in the 60s, and it was something to do
with churches technically being classified as lobbying groups, with preachers telling
congregations how to vote on certain issues. Which totally makes sense, but I think its
kind of unfortunate that the result was so many churches shutting down if they couldnt
grapple for sponsorship and survive that way. And from my brief nose around on MeNet,
I found that Im far from being the only one who thinks that way. Sacrifices must be
made, I suppose. Youve got to pick your poison.
At that point I had only found one connection with emotional expression, but it was a big
one: the riot. What is a riot if not a shameful display of emotions that ought to be locked
away, or at least released in some more healthy way? Thats sort of like what happened
to Marisa (Its weird to be thinking about her so much. We dont even know each other.),
except of course crying in class is pretty harmless. Sure, it inconveniences people, but
its nowhere near as bad as starting a riot.
Then I thought about the thoughts Id had during the psychology experiment
questionnaire...and then I got distracted into thinking about the experiment in general.
UPDATE: I had to go away for a second there because I just heard Dad come in from
work and that reminded me that I hadnt had dinner yet and Id better do that before it
got to be much later or before I just plain forgot. See, I was thinking that because not
much had happened today, I might be able to just to my journaling, eat, and then work
on homework a little before getting to bed at a decent hour. I didnt think it would take
nearly this long. I guess I really wanted to talk about all that stuff I learned, just lay it out.
But like I was saying, between the time that I was looking up all that historical legal stuff
and the time I started shifting my thinking to being more about the emotional stuff, I
spent a little time thinking about the psychology experiment with the journaling. How did
that fit into all of this, if it did at all?
What I knew for sure about the experiment was that we were supposed to write about
ourselves and the things we did each day--theyd been pretty unspecific about that,
actually, which explains why Im writing a dissertation here, cant be bothered--and that
we had to answer a questionnaire once a week pertaining to our feelings about
emotions and our actual feelings of actual emotions in general. And no one was reading
the journals--they only thumbed through them once a week to make sure we were doing
them. There was definitely no reading involved. So it wasnt about what we were writing
but the fact that we were writing. So, correlation or causation between writing and
emotion.
I had another look around on MeNet and found that there actually is some scientific
basis for such a connection. Specifically, that writing can be therapeutic. Not writing
about anything except just yourself and the things you go through, the way weve been
doing. But what did that have to do with a girl having a nervous breakdown in
Government class?
I had no idea where to start and I didnt know what Id find. But I started looking into sort
of what social expectations are about crying and being hot-blooded in general. As I
expected, I didnt find much. Just some stuff about how emotional restraint started to
become valued as a trait about the middle of the twenty-first century, and it wasnt a far
jump from that to it being a just plain accepted cultural norm. I did not find out when
teachers started writing discipline referrals for students who cried in class.
Once MeNet had pretty much coughed up everything it knew, I started sorting through
all this information. I especially wanted to get the timeline straight in my head. People
quit wearing their hearts on their sleeves around the 50s, then the riot was in the 70s,
the pet-fixing episode (sounds weird to say it that way, but anyway) was in the 90s...and
now, in the year 2117:
1. The daughter of a prominent businessman is arrested for distributing apparently
innocent information sheets containing a Bible verse
2. An unpopular fourth year student cries after watching an ancient video about starving
poor people
3. An advanced high school psychology class decides to conduct an experiment testing
the relationship between journaling in a real journal and feelings about feelings
4. A participant in the experiment, one Yance Underwood, spends an entire Saturday
trying to figure out what is the point of all this
If I have any more epiphanies, Ill be sure to write them down.