Teen Wisdom and Other Oxymorons

By Zoe Harness

An anthology of real life stories and 27 surprising truths you will not learn in school. After over 1,000 volunteer hours, visits
to all 50 states, and explorations behind the closed doors of many religions, Seventeen-year–old Zoe Rose Harness has a lot of tales to tell; the best of these accounts are in Teen Wisdom and Other Oxymorons. Gallop through an abandoned house on a runaway horse, attend a polygamist church, or party with a parking lot full of Elvis impersonators at Graceland--these adventures and more await you when you travel around the country with Zoe on her all-American journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Harness
• Release date: Oct 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781937528102

Zoe Harness

Zoe Rose Harness is one busy teen; she is Public Relations Vice President of her school’s Associated Student Body, she runs track, and has done hundreds of hours of community service through faith-based organizations and National Charity League. Oh, and she writes a bit. Teen Wisdom and Other Oxymorons is Zoe’s third book, but it is the first to be widely published. One, A History of Abigail Adams, she wrote as a 5th grade project, and a second, Santa Can’t Swim, was co-written with another student for an AP Environmental Science class just last year. Both of those were children’s books, but now Zoe is moving on to the Young Adult genre. Zoe lives with her mom, dad, 15-year-old brother Brody, and two border terriers, Hunter and Radar, in her hometown of Riverside, California. She is a committed Christian who has spent considerable time studying major world religions and cults. Her room is a wreck, she texts thousands of times each month, and she is a truly terrible test taker. In April of 2013 she visited her 49th and 50th of all 50 states. To put it oxymoronically, she is a uniquely typical teen. Contact Zoe via twitter @Zoe_lalaa Follow Zoe on Instagram at zoe_rose14

Book preview

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Teen Wisdom

and Other Oxymorons

by Zoe Rose Harness

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© 2013 by Zoe Rose Harness.

All rights reserved

Published by Mercuria Books

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Editor: Jacob Meiser

Cover photography by Clara Dawson, Riverside, CA

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This book is dedicated to my family for all their guidance and support: to my Nana, Bonnie Rose and Grandma Marie Harness for providing a rich heritage of loving life and loving people; to Dad and my Papa, Ron Rose for demonstrating the art of storytelling (and fish tales) during many family dinners; to Brody Harness, my brother for being my confidant and partner in adventure; and finally to my Mom who taught me the value of having a dream and working to make it come true, then putting up with me throughout the process.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Introductory Conclusions

Culture, Characters, and Adventures

Chapter 2 – Individual Collections

Chapter 3 – Genuine Imposters

Chapter 4 – Hollywood Ethics

Chapter 5 – Now, then . . .

Chapter 6 – Real Magic

Chapter 7 – Small Town Privacy

Chapter 8 – Critical Acclaim

Chapter 9 – Hello Goodbuy

Chapter 10 – Clearly Misunderstood

Chapter 11 – Altogether Independent

Chapter 12 – Persistent Failures

Faith, Hope, and Theology

Chapter 13 – HomeWork

Chapter 14 – Plainly Complicated

Chapter 15 – Simple Calculus

Chapter 16 – Strangely Familiar

Chapter 17 – Indefensible Daggers

Chapter 18 – Stable Rapids

Love, Sacrifice, and Equality

Chapter 19 – Unplanned Appointment

Chapter 20 – Racial Equality

Chapter 21 – Untamed Renaissance

Chapter 22 – Little Man

Chapter 23 – Geriatric Memories

Chapter 24 – True Illusions

Chapter 25 – Volunteer Servant

Chapter 26 – Awfully Motivated

Epilogue – Safe House

Acknowledgments

About the Editor

About the Author

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1

Introductory Conclusions

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad/Roughing It, 1869

Teen Wisdom shares some of the observations and experiences I have gleaned by exploring all fifty states in my short, 17-year lifespan. It is pretty much from an adolescent perspective, idealistic yet cynical, comic yet serious, in other words – this book is all over the map both literally and figuratively.

But the book is not really as much about travel as it is about the avoidance of vegging or living a sedentary lifestyle. I think this point is often missed because Twain’s quote is curtailed after the first sentence about travel, when really the most important sentence is the second, Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

However, I realize there are great advantages to putting down roots also.

For the past two years, we have had a wild, fairly unkempt vegetable garden in our yard. My dad and brother, Brody created it. They reused the weathered support planks from our old wooden swing set and fort to build the garden’s boxed frame; this is a necessary surround because it supports chicken wire netting to keep out the profligate bunnies which migrate to our yard by from nearby orange groves and, through various activities, have created unsightly dead patches that never go away. The garden is often overgrown and tangled, and the first year produced vegetables that were so undersized or mutant that they were inedible. This year, however we have had zucchini, and tomatoes and peppers in waves that inspire often odd, but strangely tasty meals.

Putting down roots, so to speak, can increase our productivity, as in a garden. It can also result in that sense of belonging and security we humans crave. What I am against is becoming mentally root-bound, which I think is Twain’s real point. While growth in one’s own soil is healthy and profitable for coming to a mature state, his metaphor ends there. If we are to become more than a bright shiny piece of nutrition for sauté or salad, we need to be more than vegetables in a pen, or even a hothouse.

The lessons and so-called wisdom in this book are the result of my complete curiosity about people and places. Part of it is taken from experiences volunteering in my community; part is from intentional encounters with people of various faiths. Much of it is due my parents who, in 2004, set our family upon a quest to visit every one of the United States of America.

It took about ten years (more than half my short life) to survey all 50 states. Most was done on RV camping trips, traipsing back and forth across America, often sleeping in Wal-Mart parking lots, and existing on dollar MacDonald’s burgers. But there were grand moments as well and luxurious nights of hospitality from friends and family in every corner of the nation.

Therefore, while I do not claim to have learned all of life’s lessons, some things I have learned in my travels are sprinkled throughout the colorful and regional stories about scores of people I’ve come across in my journey thus far. All of them are characters with a lesson to give, and hopefully you will find each is worthy of the couple minutes it takes to meet them in the pages of this book.

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Individual Collections

2010 – North Carolina

The coffee cup – simple, universal, hospitable, collectable. Memories can start over a coffee cup.

This book is about a fry cook in North Carolina, a naked guy in a nursing home, a runaway horse, and a few hundred people and places that have educated me in ways that school never could. And, this book is about coffee cups.

At 2:00 p.m. we were nearly the only patrons in the Waffle House off Highway 55 in Raleigh, North Carolina. We ordered waffles and, of course, my dad got extra-extra whipped cream. Mom asked if they sold souvenir mugs at Waffle House, and the waiter, Taylor, who was also the Junior Assistant Manager, said no mugs for sale. Taylor was busy totaling out his tickets before his replacement came in for the next shift, and he went in the back. A fry cook named Charles came out and started chatting us up.

Charles was thin and his 50-something skin fit him loosely, his hair was blonde-gone-gray, and the unfashionable one day growth on his chin could not disguise his weak jaw or stained teeth. What he lacked in looks, Charles more than overcame in Southern friendliness. You lookin’ for a coffee cup ma’am?

This began a conversation about Charles and his own coffee mug collection, a collection for which Charles had created a unique display case. He spoke with pride of the criss-cross shelving he had created, five rows high and ten cubbies wide, to showcase his mugs. There was a plywood backing on the shelves, where Charlie had drawn free-hand, and painted the shape of the United States. This glorified dish rack hung on Charles’s living room wall. His description of this piece of personal folk art was so enthusiastic, I almost felt bad for my mom’s collection of cups, hidden neatly in a cupboard, waiting patiently for our home’s infrequent coffee drinking guests. Although the display was just seven years old, Charles started gathering cups almost thirty years earlier, when he left the service and had traveled around the states, working as a trucker and doing odd jobs. Now, he was just a few mugs away from completing his collection, but there were some places he was sure he would never go.

What about our collection? Why did we want a Waffle House mug?

My mom explained our plight, how we really did not specifically want a Waffle House cup – not exactly. We wanted a Duke University mug. Today was the final day of our trip, and we had been to visit the university. She has a special place in heart for Duke because her older brother, Dirk, went there. I never met my uncle because he died of cancer before I was born, but when he was in a wheelchair, in his final months, the school’s inimitable Coach K sent him tickets to watch Duke in the Final Four; the team won the national basketball title that April, and Dirk passed away that summer. Anyway, Mom wanted us to see Duke. She hadn’t returned there since 1976 when she traveled to see Dirk graduate; now, Mom wanted a coffee cup.

My wife died of cancer, nine years ago this June, Charlie responded quietly. The loneliness washed over him and his affability faded to sad empathy." He went to the back and came out drying a Waffle House cup.

Take this one, there’s hardly any stain on it. He smiled generously and handed the cup to Mom.

When we got back to California, my mom drove to a cheap souvenir store somewhere off the Katella exit in Orange County. There she bought a California mug with pictures of the Hollywood sign, and other Golden State scenery on it, and she mailed it to Charlie at the Waffle House for his collection.

This book is about people like Charlie, who in a moment can reveal their humanity, and all others who have taught me more than any textbook could have – through their aspirations, their infirmities, and their mishaps. At seventeen, I am neither old nor wise, but I know a few things, a very few. My collection includes these most precious things, and precious people, remembered in this book.

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3

Genuine Impostors

2007 – Tennessee

With great skill my Dad cranked the wheel of the RV hard and maneuvered its bulk into a narrow parking spot. The long drive from Nashville combined with the 100-degree weather had made us all anxious to escape our little house on wheels. With every mile that passed on the three-hour trip to Graceland, the more Mom talked about Elvis. She told stories and sang songs but I still didn’t know who this long-gone singer was and, frankly, I didn’t care. I was amazed however, at how many people did care about Elvis and even went so far as the attempt to be him.

Little to our knowledge, we had arrived at Graceland during the first annual Elvis Tribute Contest. This meant the city was packed with impersonators, or, as they preferred to be called, tribute artists. They weren’t just from America, either. Some of them had travelled unbelievable distances to compete. We met men from Czechoslovakia, Mexico City, Scotland, and even some who had flown all the way from Japan to try and be the best King. As we played around the RV park that day, and touristed down Beale Street that night, I was surprised at the variety of impersonators; it was like Halloween, but everyone was in the same costume. Being twelve years old at the time, I didn’t know a lot about the King, but I quickly learned about the many stages in his life by observing the impersonators’ outfits and performances.

First, there was young