This is part two of a three-part-series on ideas I explored in the short story collection Shelf Life, now available on Amazon. 

Satire is always dangerous to write, mainly because not everyone will get it, usually because the piece is taken literally or discarded as a brute attack. That’s not an indictment on the reader, necessarily, just my own observation of why satire is so often misread or misunderstood. Often, satire IS an attack—one intended to expose things often hard to confront or even examine up close. At its best, it makes us laugh AND wince. Sometimes, it just plain makes us mad.

The two stories that have the most potential to make you mad in Shelf Life are both satires on modern day social problems and anxieties. Just who am I ridiculing? Myself.

Let me tell you a little story about a time we had a lockdown drill when I was an elementary school librarian. Did you know we have lockdown drills in school? Oh yes, along with fire drills, earthquake drills, tornado drills, bad-test-score-release-date drills…(just kidding about that last one. Maybe.) Well on this particular day I had Mr. R’s first and second grade class who had quite a bit of personality and a heavy dose of trouble. (I hear you, “Sue, aren’t they little? How can they already be that much trouble? Maybe you’re not doing this teaching thing right.” Noted. I will try to do better. Meanwhile, please go substitute teach for a week in kindergarten and then come back and I will gladly hear your wise counsel.) This particular lockdown was before 9/11, before Sandy Hook, before Columbine, so while we knew lockdowns meant anything from unauthorized person on campus to active shooter, we hadn’t seen these types of mass shootings. Well, they called a lockdown and in the library, and the designated “safe” place was my tiny office. I crammed twenty-plus kids in there on the floor and we waited. I won’t pretend it was quiet. These kids were far too creative for that. There were giggles in small ripples until one roly-poly blond haired boy began a harrowing tale of what he would do when the ax-murderer he was SURE was on campus busted through the library doors and hacked through the glass window above us. I suddenly had a pile of kids under me, several crying. My little blonde friend ran down a list of things he would do to neutralize the situation, including carve a machete out of the paper cutter blade on the counter (what?) and ending with how he would pick up the desk chair as a shield while he fought the bad guy, and  everyone should stop being pansies about the whole thing. He was equal parts terrifying and heroic. It was the longest lockdown I have ever been in, and after the class left, I’m pretty sure I closed the library for the day and had a personal lockdown in a dark room.

The idea for “Distractions” came to me after watching a new kind of active-shooter response for classrooms that suggested spreading out the kids and having them throw ping pong balls at an active shooter to distract. I understand what the video was saying: don’t bunch kids up in the corner (or in the library office) where they can all be targeted easily. Help them be proactive (assuming ping-pong balls can be considered proactive). “Distractions” asks how we prepare for the worst and keep our sanity in tact. I’m not sure it’s possible.

For the record, I don’t have ping pong balls in my room, but I have several strategically placed Shakespeare anthologies, weighing about ten pounds each which are all fair game in an emergency.

“The Perils of Reading” is a satire on addiction, which is never funny. Addiction usually begins as a faulty answer to a life issue, whether it is numbing pain or grief, masking boredom, or feigning control. I have long been interested in how our society tends to treat addiction only when it crosses into chemical dependency. While treating chemical dependency is absolutely necessary, I think we fall painfully short in helping each other manage pain, boredom, change, grief, and crisis. This story is about a woman who can’t see that she is still struggling with an isolating addiction despite her sobriety.

I tend to feel most alone when I focus on controlling variables in my life at the expense of relationships; much like Barb does in the story. I’m trying to remember that “All things are permissible for me, but not all things are beneficial” (1 Corinthians 10:23), especially when those things isolate me from real community or are simply self-serving. The only way to complete freedom is in Christ; Freedom requires a small step forward in faith— a step that always feels awkward and uncomfortable because it rubs against my habits.

Whether we are trying to control our lives through food or exercise, numbing pain or grief with alcohol or binge-watching Netflix, or sleeping through pain—my prayer is that we wake up and see ourselves clearly in Christ. I pray we would know we are completely and fully loved already and that we might rest in that peace as we walk forward fully present in our lives.