R.E.S.P.E.C.T

The summer I turned fifteen, I packed up my bags and dragged them out to the car. Dad let me drive once we hit the highway, and I jumped into the driver's seat. I was excited until I realized he was going to make me stop at every stop sign, even though the car was a standard... and one of those stop signs was at the top of a hill. We finally pulled into the driveway of Camp Chestermere, where I'd spend the next three weeks as a 'Counsellor in Training'. I wasn't there so much for the training, more for the three weeks of horseback riding and water-skiing, but of course that's not what I wrote on the application. I wonder if God is concerned with teenagers lying on their applications for Christian Camp. I also lied and said I went to Church every week. Although I must say that when I consider the group of people that I met at the camp that summer, I was surrounded by liars. Perhaps He'll accept my publicly coming clean as a confession and we can skip the whole booth thing. I didn't realize when I drove through that gate how much those three weeks were going to impact me. Not in any sort of spiritual sense, nor in maturity, really. More because I met my first two boyfriends within that three week period at that camp. Dave and Jon were widely known through my high school years as my 'on and off' boyfriends, although in reality this was true only of Dave. And in reality it lasted beyond high school. Jon was more of a reoccurring fling. With that summer ended the girly giggling about this boy or that, because something changed. Up until then, I could fight and tease a cute boy, but the concept of a date would never have occurred to me. I didn't think that far ahead. I never thought much past the punch in the arm.

But with that summer, everything changed. Starting that summer, I began to have songs associated with Dave and Jon. Everything became complicated, and as it turns out, would remain complicated until... well, it's still complicated. When we're kids, we pass by milestones and barely give them a second thought. I was excited about my first kiss, but didn't realize that it would haunt me years and years later. At the time it didn't even seem particularly memorable... for more reasons than one. When I moved out of my parents house, leaving behind all my toys, all my stuffed animals, report cards, treasures- I failed to see the symbolism in this act. Leaving behind childhood. Moving from my childhood bedroom with pink wallpaper to an empty apartment with white, white walls.

When I moved out of my parents' house at 18, I never stopped to consider what I might be sacrificing in favour of this Independence. I didn't think about the responsibility that would come with that decision. Not that I wasn't ready for it. I was disgustingly organized about paying all the bills the day they arrived in the mailbox. The fridge was always full... although granted the dishes often took a few hours when we finally got around to them. Point is, I failed to consider that when I signed the lease, I was leaving childhood behind. I had entered the world of bills, credit ratings and budgeting. It snuck up on me and I never realized it.

We never realize when we hit our milestones until after the fact. When I auditioned for Concordia, and found out I had been accepted, I returned to Calgary, packed my things and left a month later. No drawn out good-byes. I had been ready to leave Calgary for longer than I had realized. But I didn't consider that things would never again be the same. I wasn't just leaving behind the city that had grown too small. I was leaving my family, and twelve years worth of friends. Friends that I saw in and out of everyday would all be relegated to two weeks a year. That an after work beer with the IMAX crowd was out of the question. That when Thelma came back from Australia, she'd have fallen in love, and would eventually move there- putting us not only on opposite sides of the country, but on opposite sides of the world. Somehow it seemed that our four hour phone calls and nights at the Night Gallery would be impossible. And they are, unless we start dating a la Coree and accept blind dates only with doctors and members of the Samsung family. Our generation moves. And not from Calgary to Edmonton. We don't even consider that a move. You could easily spend three hours on Calgary transit, so the drive to Edmonton doesn't seem so bad. The reality of our generation is that we will travel the world to see our friends. Sometimes we find ourselves closer geographically when we're travelling than when we're home. Alex, my very first roommate who experienced with me the fear of dishes and the pains of our first apartment, moved to Vancouver while I was in Montreal. And now she lives in Japan. We'll see each other for the first time in five years here, in Korea.

If a rush to the suburbs and the sexual revolution characterized our parents generation, we will be the generation to see the world. Having grown up as we did, far from the memories of the Great Depression and the stories that our parents would have been subject to, we've been spoiled. It's been said that we will be the first generation to have a lower quality of life than our parents. And people think it's a shame, but I wonder what is meant by that. If anything, we're taking more care in our career choices, our love lives, our priorities. We don't want the white picket fence, we want six weeks vacation and a job that lets us travel. We are putting ourselves before our jobs, because we saw our parents live unhappily. Having grown up as we did though, in a country where few wanted for the necessities and most of us grew up with TV, CD players and at some point saw the introduction of the computer into our homes, it's easy for us to have a sense of entitlement. We have yet to fight our battles. Our parents saw the big revolution in our schools and work places. Women were no longer restricted to three career choices. Our mothers balanced a full work week and children. I grew up working hard in school and getting good marks. I knew one day I would go to University, the question was what would I do? I overheard an argument between Canadian and American students last year after the Student Strike that followed the 100 million dollars cuts to student loans by the provincial government. The American student didn't see a problem- he said education was a privilege. But this is simply not how we think in Canada. And that is what sets us apart. Education? Yes. Gay Marriage? Yes. Legalization of Pot? Yes. (Pre- Harper, anyway). I spent my years at Concordia frustrated that I was dealing with student loans. Frustrated that the government continued to screw me out of money and I had to work all the way through school while most of the theatre department had parents that gave them drinking money. Frustrated that as I ran off to work after class, my classmates treated me as though I wasn't taking school seriously. They complained about how it wasn't fair that students had to live 'like this'. They weren't referring to my situation, but rather to their own. Unfair that they had to budget their drinking money from their high rise apartments downtown, failing to understand that others weren't so lucky. It disgusted me. But here I am in Korea, and all of a sudden I'm the lucky one. The spoiled one. I earn twice as much as my Korean co-workers. My apartment is paid, and on top of it I don't have to subscribe to the rules of Korean hierarchy. I can challenge my boss, but they can't. I can refuse to attend a meeting or some work that he's delegated. I can decide, and do, that the catered lunch he provides is too cheap to be edible, while the Korean teachers have no choice but to eat it- because what would the kids think? In the end, he's older, he must be respected. I felt stuck during my years at Concordia. Reliant on student loans, that would come two months late, if at all. And it would be less than they promised. I took on extra shifts, and lost my student loans. Eight thousand dollars apparently is not only enough to live on, but enough to put five thousand aside for school, just in case you were wondering. As frustrated as I was, thankfully the situation was temporary. I look at the intelligent Korean women that surround me at work, and I can't help but feel like a spoiled brat. I was flown in and put up in a nice apartment (after fighting for it), only to be paid twice as much and treated like a queen in comparison. I've recently discovered that if you listen closely, you can actually hear the lonely marble rolling back and forth inside my boss's enormous football head. You have to listen closely though, it is after all, just a marble. As dim-witted as he is, it seems that he is smart enough to realize that if he ever spoke to me the way he does them, my bags would be packed and I'd be on the way to the airport. At the end of this year, I'll leave, return to Canada and tell everyone I had a fantastic experience in Korea. But these women are stuck in the hierarchy. And they're at the bottom. In the west, respect has to be earned. If an employer disrespects his employees, he'll see the consequences. But in Korea it seems unthinkable for the employer to be respectful. He demands it, but refuses to give it. The fact that my co-workers acknowledge the difference between our relationship to him and their own is a start. A full out revolution can't be far behind.