Lately I’ve thinking a lot about jumping in front of oncoming traffic. Part of that feeling stems a general anxiety associated with the end of the school year. The finals and papers, like this one, that I’ve ignored until now are looming. At the same time though it’s something wholly different stirring in me…

…

When I was six, the road my mother took to get me to Saturday morning swim practice was being widened. I’d amuse myself on the way by counting the trees. I was convinced every tree in the world belonged to me. Saturdays I’d check to make sure all my property was still in order.

It was my job to protect them, the trees. I generously loaned them out, not just due to the lack of space in my backyard and a climate that was unable to sustain certain arboreal species, but so everyone else could partake in the same joy I got from them. It was a silly, childish idea and maybe on some level I understood it was impossible for me to own even a single tree, let alone all of them. But my fascination with their myriad species overpowered any rational notion I had of ownership.

Soon, the trees I counted every weekend had hazard cone orange ribbons tied around their trunks. In my naiveté I thought it was for some preparation for some sort of parade, though I knew of no holidays requiring orange ribbons in February…

Within a couple of weeks the ribbons were replaced by large spray painted X’s. They looked less celebratory and more like the blindfolds around prisoners awaiting some rebel firing squad. Large machines showed up. Then the ribbons and the X’s and the trees they adorned were gone.

According to my mother, I cried every Saturday on the way to and from practice for the rest of the season. I was incensed, or at least, I was the six year-old equivalent. No one had asked me if I was ok with all of this. Those trees were only on loan. Eventually my anger gave way to confusion. They weren’t diseased. They posed no threat to anything but supposed progress.

…

When I was in the 8th grade I was a communist. I was convinced a system of ownership under the proletariat was the only way to conquer the gross inequalities present in the worldwide distribution of wealth. I read insatiably about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico and the imprisoned monks in Tibet. I wrote my congressmen regularly, asking that a moratorium be placed on the death penalty until injustices in the state’s legal system could be resolved. I argued with my Civics teacher on a daily basis. I wore my affiliation on my sleeve. Literally. I had an armband.

I wanted to be the spokesperson for every unknown, underprivileged minority. I annoyed friends and strangers alike with my statistics on the amount of farmland lost to major corporations, the rate of ozone depletion and how rapidly we were losing acres of rainforest to Starbucks’ coffee plantations. I only shopped at stores that could prove all of their clothing was made in legal factories. I only drank shade-grown coffee. I quoted Karl Marx and Howard Zinn.

I knew I didn’t have the power to fix the situation alone, but if I couldn’t do anything else, I’d make sure other people were aware.

…

When I was sixteen, a friend of mine and I were bored one summer evening and everything was closing for the night. After about 10 pm in the suburbs you’re forced to make your own fun. On top of that we were broke. Broke, but imaginative. We scoured her basement for amusement and found an unopened package of sidewalk chalk, the huge kind that comes in pails bigger than my head.

The plan started out mundane enough: we’d attack our friends’ driveways with kaleidoscopic renderings of flowers and stars. They were all ill proportioned. It was dark; we couldn’t see quite what we were doing. But the more we honed our draw-and-run skills, the more neighbors just weren’t enough…

It was simple really, almost stupid, but not so much so that we wouldn’t do it. All our sign said was “CLOSED FOR REFORMATION.” The Catholic church near my house was being renovated. It was too easy. Like holy sitting duck. We taped our sign over another in front of the church and stood back to admire our cleverness.

That night, over celebratory Slurpees, we entertained the idea of becoming sidewalk chalk vandals. Exposing the repression of middle class living, a caste system that says you are what you own. We wanted to be Che Guevera, and Martin Luther and Bart Simpson…only with breasts. We wanted local reporters to theorize as to who these chalk-wielding vigilantes might be and draw Unabomber-esque sketches of us. We wanted conspiracy theorists and cult followings. We planned future stunts: replacing all the American flags in a given neighborhood with British ones; putting “For Sale” signs on cop cars asking any interested buyers to contact us at 911 for more information.

Mostly it was boredom that motivated us. But part of me wanted people to see the signs or the chalk or the flags and realize they could deviate too. Ideally, I wanted to spark a wave of independent thought.

…

I used to want to be doctor. I wanted to work in a clinic that catered to the poor. Then I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to immerse myself in pro bono cases. I wanted to be an inner-city teacher. A journalist like Nellie Bly. I wanted to grow to be the kind of woman I grew up admiring...

Now, I think I’ll be an author. Not to save anyone else though. I find myself writing stories where the villain wins and the gallant hero never notices any distressed damsels because he’s too busy running himself. I can relate to that.

…

As graduation nears, more and more people ask me about my plans for next year: what school I’ll be attending, my major, the career path I’m pursuing, the names of my first two children. They tell me I’ll be famous. That somehow I’ll change the world. I’ll be the editor in chief of The Washington Post. I’ll star on Broadway. I’ll be a Senator. If I’m not, they’ll be severely disappointed. I’m the first kid in my family to go to college. I was hoping that’d be enough.

Fame is too easy. You all but sign up for it. Andy Warhol said everyone is famous for fifteen minutes…

A friend of mine, another writer, he can’t decide whether to join the Peace Corps or join the Army. He’s getting out of college a year early and people keep asking him what he’s doing next. People tell him the same thing. That he’ll be famous. His dilemma makes sense to me now...

If everyone has the spotlight for at least fifteen minutes it just becomes a matter of how… You can be famous like John F. Kennedy or you can be famous like Lee Harvey Oswald. You can try and change the world or you can blow it all up and start again. It’s the Peace Corps or the Army. Trees or new roads…

When I tell people I’m majoring in English with a double minor in dance and philosophy, they want to know how I’m going to make money. They want to know how my completely useless specializations are going to help me change the world. Get famous.

I’ve been trying since I was six to change the world. I loaned out trees. I wrote representatives I couldn’t even vote for yet. I vandalized cleverly. Now I just want to escape it. That’s why I write, I think. Because I’ve been trying since I was six to fix it all and now I know I never can really, not the way I want to.

Running into oncoming traffic isn’t something I’d ever really try. Not seriously. Granted, I could make the news if I jumped in front of the right street or car. “Local girl commits suicide on major highway— Are rising school standards to blame?” The evening news might devote 15 minutes to my motives… But fame is too easy. I write because I can’t run into oncoming traffic. It’s just too easy…

I showed my older brother the first draft of this and he told me only kids are ignorant enough to think they can change the world. Only a child can be so inherently dumb as to believe they have a say. As much as I don’t want to admit it, he’s right. I can’t save anything from itself…

…

When I was 18, I realized I’d never be anyone’s savior. I don’t have the qualifications. But I’m getting to where I don’t really want to be… it isn’t about the rest of the world anymore.

I write because it’s the best way I’ve found to blow everything up and start me over again.