When My Levees Broke

Bell 1 Brian Bell Mr. Cebulski ENGL 1102/22 7 October 2008 When My Levees Broke As I sat in a booth in On The Border, running my eyes across the script written before me, something in “Dragon Slayers” caught me like a right hook and left me in a daze, “Less time needs to be spent on the dragons…and more on our ability to forge swords for battle, and the skill with which we’ve used them.”(187). Sitting in that restaurant, half-dressed in my uniform, I looked around, letting my eyes wander across the earth-toned, living script in front of me. I watched my co-workers on the job…the disdain in their eyes, the mumblings under their breath reaching a bright fervor of perversion and malevolence before snapping to forced smiles, wearing them like a mask. I saw them, but I also heard them. Their conversations with each other, rants of a man or woman done wrong by a customer, by an authority, or something as general as life, opened my mind for the words I had been reading to make a settlement. In that moment, I realized just what Mr. Walker was questioning in his writing, what questions he was asking me: why do most people find it both right and just to play the victim in today’s society? Why does the general population always have something to complain about when striking up bland conversation? Why do people feel the need to focus on what wrong has happened in their lives as opposed to what they can do to better it? It’s a simple question, but for some reason most people have no idea how to answer it. Maybe they feel like society will either give them or provide them more in

Bell 2 terms of emotional gain or physical prosperity. Maybe it’s just the way our minds work after watching countless reality programs based around providing the less fortunate with humongous rewards for just being less fortunate. It could even have to do with the fact that every single person in this world demands respect, but the majority of them are not willing to earn it. No matter what benefit one expects from playing this role, the healthy mind has to remember the words of Robert Elias Najemy, “I would like to keep clear in my mind that I cannot create the other’s health, happiness, success or satisfaction.” (Playing the Victim). Just focusing on these people I am in contact with everyday I walk into OTB lets me see how this section of the populous thinks. Through conversation I found that most of these people feel like they should be respected by the customer for doing their job. I work in the same place as these people, and I rarely see a blatantly disrespectful customer taking up space in our booths, not to mention that our location is in the top five of all On The Border locations in terms of hospitality and service. By that knowledge, we should be able to see that our customers do respect us for the most part, but what this community, the server community, sees as a show of respect is what is left on that little line below your total on your credit card receipt. The fact that customers for the most part do not tip well seems to be the seed of which the plant of faux disrespect is born. Now, these principles of playing the victim do not just sync with the staff of a restaurant, they permeate all walks of life. I can guarantee that everyone who has read Mr. Walker’s “Dragon Slayers” has at one time committed the act of playing the victim. We all have done it at one time, I know I have, but the fact remains that if we bathe in our own feelings of self-doubt and repression, we will never see the towel that could remove

Bell 3 all of the liquid hanging just out of reach. The funny thing is that it is still reachable if you only tried to snatch it. When I asked my fellow OTB-ites about why they stay in this situation of what they see as disrespect, “I don’t know”, or, “It’s a job”, were the only responses I received. How can one be so blind to not see why they would stay in a situation they see as bleak and desire to leave? The very fact boggled me for a moment until we started talking about the future, specifically where he or she wanted to be down the road. “We’re going to change the perception of music…I’m only here until my band gets signed…I really don’t know, man”, were the responses of the disrespected. This logic is what has caused them to feel held back; they are holding themselves back from their goals, or at least being happy while trying to reach their goals. They fail to see that by not opening their eyes, or their minds, to different points of view of their situations, they are forced into a horseblinded stare at what they hate about their status. However, instead of taking the blinders off and looking in a three hundred and sixty degree, panoramic view of their lives, described by motivational speaker Marsha Summers as “Self Knowing”, they see what they dislike, and find it rather easy to blame someone else for what they see rather than the real source (Victim). This brings into question what solutions can be provided for people such as these? Education seems to be the most logical answer. By education I do not mean turn to chapter five and read the first three sections on how to overcome the obstacles erected on your life’s path. By education, I mean taking someone, talking, showing them what they cannot see. Providing them with the simple fact that shifting the focus of the mind from

Bell 4 “what I cannot do” to “what I can do” can make their path much more rewarding. After all, one finds it easier to go over or around a wall rather than through it. Mr. Walker uses his race’s history and current situation to get his point across to the reader because it is what he knows. It is what his life was centered around. I use the restaurant and its mortal contents to show you what I believe, but the real question remains: What is it that you know is creating a glass ceiling in your world, and are you content with pressing your face against the window making faces at those inside, or are thinking, “just what will I use to break it?”