My Life as a Mythic Detective

Never an Ordinary Day

My Life as a Mythic Detective

I used to have many ordinary days. I would get up, go to class, eat, study, work, spend time with friends, and then go back to bed to without anything spectacular ever happening to me. I would grow bored with the monotony of life and wish to go out on adventures; backpacking with friends, tubing the Madison, or even just loosing myself in to the alternate realities of novels. I would grow frustrated with myself for focusing on work and school without a clear picture of why I was doing these things and why they were important. I lived a lot of my life on auto pilot, ignoring all the details that now sparkle at me like twinkling stars on a cloudless night.

My Friday began exactly where my Thursday ended; cuddled up in bed dreaming of the snake my 4th grade classroom kept as a pet. Her name was mini-mac and in my dream the whole class had been searching for her until my science teacher found her curled around a broom in the corner of the classroom. Just as he reached out to untangle her coils from the handle my alarm went off. “I met you before the fall of Rome. And I begged you to let me take you home. You were wrong, I was right You said goodbye, I said goodnight! It's all been done...” The Bare Naked Ladies song “Its all been done” startles me from the 4th grade classroom and back to my dorm room. Groaning slightly I get up and start getting ready for the day.

“It's all been done” still stuck in my head I find myself singing along before realizing what I am doing. Smiling, I remember something I once heard; That there is only one reason for being on Earth and that is to sing. Letting my mind wander I go back to the snake in my dream which so resembles the Aesculapius. I never feared snakes as a child regardless of the bad rap they got in my bible study class. I was always fascinated to watch mini-mac shed her skin because it seemed that she left another version of herself behind. It was no surprise to me to find out that in the story of Gilgamesh snakes are believed to be immortal. They leave their dead body behind and just slither away.

Later on that day while walking to my Education class I pass by a woman who was obviously pregnant. Her belly, just beginning to become round, shows evidence of her child. She reminds me suddenly of story of Bacchus's dual births, first from the mortal woman Semele, and second from the thigh of Zeus himself. I try to imagine for a moment what Zeus must have looked like with a baby belly stuck on his thigh. The image is odd for me until I remember how Zeus had impregnated Leda in the form of a swan and produced two eggs. I imagine the look of surprise that would occur on this poor woman's face if she were to birth egg, even if the most beautiful girl in the world were to hatch from it.

Class that day brought about a discussion on the common core standards for education in Montana and standardized testing. I have never been a fan of standardized testing and find it frustrating that funding for schools is liked to success on these tests. Education isn't about the information that must be know to pass these tests; education is about transformation. The point is not to fill your heads with facts but to be changed (as Professor Sexson puts it) in the “twinkling of an eye.” As I listen to the heated debate now brewing I consider my choice to be a teacher. I love English and specifically all of the stories that make up the subject in school, but many of my peers look down on my choice. They say that there isn't a point to having a high school English teacher because by that grade level the students know how to read and write and there isn't anything left to teach. What my peers don't realize is that I won't be trying to teach them anything; I just want to help them remember all of the things they already know. Just like Plato's story of how humanity lost its wings and and fell to the much and mud of Earth, I and my future students have forgotten the very things that will let us fly.

Classes end for the day and I head home, walking around the oval being torn up for the construction of Suite 3 behind North Hedges. The grass is torn up, the dirt exposed, and to the far side the mound of earth lies three trees uprooted. My heart sinks for a moment as I remember sitting underneath one of them in the shade last year with my boyfriend Phil talking about nothing and enjoying spring. Now it lies dead and the transformation of Daphne, undergone to avoid Apollo, is in vain.

After finishing the pile of chemistry homework on my desk, I decide to bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies. While mixing together the flour and brown sugar I remember Ceres the goddess of grain and other home related things. Though not as dramatic of a goddess as many others, her favor was of great importance for growing crops that produced the flour I use to bake my cookies. Waiting for the cookies to bake, I glance up at the fire panel on the wall. The panel reads “Cerberus Productions;” an obvious reference to the three headed dog that guards the underworld in mythologies. Yet another thing in my day that reminds me of Ovid. The timer beeps and I take out the cookies while imagining what it must be like to live in the underworld like Persephone did.

*Knock. Knock. Knock* Three times I hear the sound before I realize Phil is knocking at the kitchen door. The sun is setting behind him in the glass door, like Apollos chariot ridding out of sight. I let him in and we sit down for a couple warm cookies and a glass of cold milk each. “How was your day?” he asks me.

I smile and think about if for a second. I had dreamed, gotten up, went to class, done homework, worked, ate, made a batch of cookies, and these were all normal every day things but somehow my day was anything but ordinary. I noticed the connections between my life and the many stories about what has come before me. I saw the mythologies, the true stories, that precede me. Though I still have many clues left to discover my own mythological story before I end this life and begin a new one, I have taken a step towards being a mythic detective.

Finally, I answer him. “It was anything but ordinary.”