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5.10.08
Driving
Overnight's a Bad Idea We decided to drive overnight to Myrtle Beach, which was a bad idea. The first five hours from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. (even the first six hours) were not terrible. I had brewed coffee before we left, and got another 24 oz. at a Speedway, and another 24 oz. (don’t worry it was half decaf that time) at another Speedway. I was so hopped up on caffeine and my senses were alert. I could’ve driven without headlights because my eyes were vibrating at high speeds. I could see through the mountains as we made it through Tennessee. We drove through mountain fog as well, one of the true highlights of the vacation, and semis and trucks were speeding by. Some tried to turn on their brights, shining high beams into milk-thick air. At some point, after we entered the mountains, we were stopped by an officer waving his tiny-lighted traffic cone-light. We were forced to watch un-needed construction on the side of the road. “Oh no! The rail isn’t right. Stop traffic! We need to fix it now!” I felt my caffeine dissipate and my bladder fill during those twenty minutes. By the time a hazy Sunday morning started to brew, we were nauseous from staying alert through the night. After we stopped for a quick breakfast we both weren’t really hungry for, we got McDonald’s iced coffees. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but after having 72 ounces of coffee in about six to nine hours, the idea of pumping even more caffeine into my body turned my stomach. Luckily, we didn’t stop at too many rest stops, but the ones we did stop at… Pardon the tangent… Can someone please tell me why it’s so hard to flush a urinal? I know we’re all spoiled these days when we walk away from the potty and it automatically flushes (as well as no-touch faucets and no-touch paper towel dispensers). I just want to remind my fellow penis-bearers that when a urinal has a metal stick poking out of the side, you pull that down. It takes your stale-smelling urine away. Don’t leave it there to dissolve the pink urinal cake, that’s gross. And while I’m at it, flick it in the bowl, will you? People wear flip flops during warm weather, and it’s sick to stand in your puddle of pee residue. Okay. I’m off my urinal cake box. Back to the mountain range: As we entered South Carolina, long before we were at our destination on the other side of the state, I was already stressed out about the return home later in the week. I just knew we were going to drive through the night all over again on Thursday after spending time at the beach (sea air makes you drowsy). My tongue was already wagging and my left eye started to twitch. Later, when we finally arrived at Myrtle Beach, we drove around, unpacked our things, sat on the beach for a little while – I couldn’t fully enjoy myself because we had another non-stop trip to make back home. The waves crashed in and receded out, but the relaxing beauty of the ocean was nothing compared to the screaming death inside my head about driving overnight all over again. Then my dad called us while we were on the beach and we told him the drive in was such hell that we would definitely be stopping Thursday night at a hotel. He, then, offered us his Holiday Inn Express points so we wouldn’t have to lift a credit card. At that moment, the voices in my head stopped and the ocean glowed. I could finally enjoy my time away from home, regardless of another drive, since that drive was going to be split into two. Come Thursday night, after the beach, we didn’t have to drive all night. Instead, we slept in a king-sized bed, washed our sun burnt skin in a Jacuzzi tub that was in the middle of the living room space and slept eighth hours, but before we fell asleep, Steph whispered outloud: “Bless your dad.” 4.17.08 They Could Have Seen Me On Vacation So, Steph turned to me one cold February Saturday and said, “How about Myrtle Beach for spring break?” And I thought, hell, why not? “Is it warm there during the first full week of April?” We looked up one of those “Please vacation in South Carolina, you won’t be disappointed” tourism websites and to our glory it said the averages were in the mid-70s. I was blogging, probably, as Steph was secretly looking up condos in the Myrtle Beach area. It never occurred to me to actually look something up for a vacation during spring break because we don’t normally go anywhere for spring break. The usual excuse is “we don’t have the money.” Things on the money side are changing a little and so we went ahead and booked four nights at a condo, priced by the vacation gods who were granting us passage to the south, and all we had to do was get excited for April to come. Finally, as students were planning their trips to Key West and the Galapagos Islands (or wherever it is that's expensive where they go), as they asked me if I was going somewhere for break, I could reply, “yes, indeed, I am.” And to be even cooler among the middle school crowd, some of them were going to be in Myrtle Beach, too. And thank God, I haven’t seen any of them at the beach. There’s always tomorrow, which is our last day for the beach, and that’s usually my luck…I’ll be sitting there crab red, which I am right now, and they’ll come prancing up looking uncomfortably older than eighth graders and they’ll be all, “hi, Mr. Williams!” And there I’ll be, wearing Mary’s sunglasses (Steph’s bridesmaid who’s a missionary and left her big diva sunglasses in the Beetle, so I wear them because they’re pretty asexual) wishing for them to not see me…perhaps it’s another Mr. Williams, a man they met during their own trip to Myrtle Beach. That’s a good reason to avoid Florida as a destination spot for spring break. Lucky enough, as a middle school teacher, the college spring breaks were over a month ago, so I can miss out on all that drunken porn on the beach and all that College Men and Women Gone Wild garbage. The trouble is, I teach in a school district that is well-off enough to afford vacations and so goes the dodging and running from the students and the “I hope they don’t see me” thinking, which can be more stressful. It would be there, in a popular Florida destination that I would be having a large Margherita, feeling a little buzzed, when they stop by and say hi. Remember, teachers don’t have lives…and to be seen living one, by those curious eyes of your students, can make you begin to feel a tad bit guilty. Like, will that big-as-my-head Margarita haunt me back in the classroom? There is always one student who likes to cross the line and ask inappropriate questions and put you on the spot: “Did you drive somewhere after you had that really large drink? It looked like it put you over the legal limit…” There is never a correct way to respond to those awkward questions, which I tend to ignore anyway. So, instead, I’m on a balcony, away from being seen, except by retirees who are down by the pool enjoying the evening sunlight and constant hammering as a new set of condos are built less than a block away. It’s nice to know those older folks won’t judge you, and I’m sure a few of them have had many more wilder days than I ever will. And the only question I plan to return to is “did you have fun, wherever it was that you went?”
4.1.08 Salmonella Brings Me to My Knees Cutting raw chicken isn’t so bad when it’s frozen. Cutting raw chicken that has thawed, while it’s as flimsy and slimy as a slug, is like gutting an alien. I can and will do it, but the minute I am done with that cutting board and knife, I will throw it into the deep sink awash with suds. I, armed with sponge, attack that cutting board, scouring its surface with antibacterial goodness, killing off what’s left of the jelly chicken guts to rid myself of that dreaded salmonella. Or as I call it, the dreaded (phonetically) sal-lah-moh-nil-lah. Salmonella brings me to my knees, just like a good back injury. It’s presence in life is to kill. The bloody mixture of raw chicken juice swirls and pools in the plastic and Styrofoam container from the grocery. When I cut the plastic wrap off the chicken, drops dribble onto the surface and I have to stop right away and clean that one spot before I begin again. These little groupings of bacteria, even though microscopic, probably clump together like bad cottage cheese. And even though 40,000 people per year come down with the illness (severe diarrhea), commercials are always making it sound like skin eating bacteria. “I spray my counters with Clorox and let it sit for hours because of the dreaded salmonellosis yuck that pours forth from the thawed Tyson packaging.” Before I became more comfortable cutting raw chicken, I would get pee-chills up and down my body as I was cutting, which isn’t very safe – because I opt for the largest knife we have when I go a-cuttin’. Here’s the contradiction, though. As much as I fear dying from salmonella poisoning, I am a sucker for brownie batter and raw cookie dough. The bacteria are probably still there, but it just looks prettier. The runny, saliva-like juice that comes from the chicken packaging is not something I would drip into a shot glass and choke down. Cookie dough, however, chocked full with chocolate chips, is a much better presentation. And these days, it’s all about the presentation. I will take about five spoonfuls as I’m dropping the cookie dough onto the no-stick sheet, just enjoying the gooey mess as its sweetness makes my mouth water. Brownie batter is a little runnier, so I just lick off the spatula, but it’s chocolate and chocolate doesn’t kill (only dogs and in high doses). Steph reminds me that there’s raw egg in the dough and batter, and sometimes she seems confused that I’ll shove raw-egg materials down my throat, but I’ll scream like a girl when I handle raw chicken. I don’t really thinks it’s the chicken that gets me…it’s really the juice…the raw, infected juice. It almost makes me queasy. And now that I think about it, if you want to kill me dead, just drizzle a bunch of raw chicken juice over someone’s open-back surgery.
3.16.08 I Shouldn't Have Opened My Mouth (But Neither Should You) Many things can be a turn-off, but bad breath is unforgivable. I can handle someone’s funky breath when it was because they ate something that was soaked in garlic and anchovies because that will go away…eventually. The breath that’s unforgivable is the type that lodges itself in the back of someone’s throat and it reeks of sickness. Or it reeks because that person hasn’t eaten anything yet and it’s that dryness that causes the stench. Or the person doesn’t brush his tongue. Or it reeks because they have a poop fetish. During lunch one day, the discussion focused on halitosis. We talked about how certain staff members we work with have terrible breath. We eat in the eighth grade lounge, so usually there’s only two of us, so we can be loud and obnoxious and have fun doing it. So, I just go off: “Have you ever smelled Frank’s* breath? It’s terrible! I mean, come on! He opens his mouth and dead moths tumble out. It’s absolutely fetid!” And she agreed with me. Then Frank comes out of the bathroom. He goes and makes copies, and I continue to talk about some new topic. Then, my friend starts pointing behind me and mouths and points at her ear. I have no clue what she’s trying to tell me, but when the light bulb turned on, I felt my face turn a deep red. He sat down and started looking at copies he’s made. I don’t know if he heard me, but it felt like a giant elephant just sat down in the room. I felt terribly uncomfortable, I started to sweat and I didn’t want to say anything like, “Did you, by any chance, hear what we were talking about while you were in the bathroom?” Because, what if he hadn’t? Then I would have spiked his interest. If he had heard what I said, then I would’ve needed to own up to it, and I was so embarrassed already, the only words that would’ve come out were: “My bad, Frank.” One of the stories I exchanged, before I realized Frank was pinching the loaf in the bathroom, was a college teacher I had for one of my journalism writing classes. We were housed in a small computer lab. There were about twenty computers in the room, each one had a student at it, but there was a group of us in the back row (and we all became friends by the end of the semester), but the teacher’s breath was so horrendous; it could be smelled throughout the entire room. The best part was, he would put a copy of our stories up on the overhead and then rip them apart with no mercy. As grammatical blood was spilt, we couldn’t take him seriously, even if it was one of our stories, because the minute he opened his mouth the room smelled like a musty closet. We decided his breath was so bad, vaporous green skeletons moaned out and danced around the room. If he came near to hand back a paper, or if we needed to go to the front of the room, we put gas masks on and fought the skeletons to make it there. I am not a fan of bad breath up close, but how on earth can it fill a room? I shared this story with my friend, before I mentioned Frank’s breath, and we laughed and laughed. After Frank left the room, I was done laughing (sort of) and although I wasn’t going to say anything to his face, I decided that if he had heard me, maybe he would’ve been so embarrassed he would do something about it. Because I was no concerned whether he heard me or not, I went into the woman’s bathroom (because I wasn’t going to go into the men’s bathroom after Frank) and told my friend to speak at the volume I was speaking. She went on: “Evan’s breath is so horrible…” and I opened the door and said I could hear her. Frank has since been in the lounge and partakes in our “American Idol” conversations, so whether he heard me and holds it against me…I have yet to find out. *Names changed in order to save the identity of the breath perpetrator.
1.14.08 The Dalmatian-Mix Suffers From Autism I know there are services out there for autistic children where dogs are assigned to them and the dogs help keep them calm in social settings, but is there a service available for a dog with autism? Perhaps a small child to care for the dog to keep it calm… I’ve Googled and Googled (and since I’m the modern researcher, I haven’t gone to the library to look it up), and I swear Fauna Leena, our Dalmatian mix, has autism. Now, Dalmatians usually have high energy, or even pent-up energy. She can go for a run with me and last longer than I can, especially on a hot day. While trapped in a giant plastic bag. I run and run her outside, but nothing seems to tire her out. Her only kryptonite is an icy day. Since she is short-haired, her little feet and legs begin a-quivering and she just doesn’t have fun anymore. She is very loyal, as well. She must be with us at all times, and is jealous of the other two dogs. She not only responds to her name, but comes when Nigra and Raible are called. Those traits (which can be tiring) are nice, and she is a beautiful animal. She is a mixture of black and liver spots. It looks like someone took her coat and smeared the colors when she was a puppy. The spots aren’t as defined as a true Dalmation. She is very lean. She has large chocolate-brown eyes that can make you melt, which we call “puppy eyes.” She will kiss you to death, if you let her, and she snuggles at night. But there are times we cannot get through to her. And there are actions she has that are a mystery to us. She can never be seen without a toy. Ever since we got her, she is seen with a large stuffed animal in her mouth at all times. If you take the toy away from her, she begins to freak out and reach for it, using all her force and energy to get it, even clawing you to death if she needs to. She needs that toy. Just like an Autistic child, she has a preoccupation with objects. Her favorites are the stuffed animals we buy at Kohl’s. We have Grinch, Sam I Am from “Green Eggs and Ham”, a Sneetch from “The Sneetches and Other Stories”, and Blue Fish from “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.” Her other two favorites are a large stuffed chicken and a rhino with a bow tie. I have repaired numerous toys because they get so worn out. We have a shoebox stuffed with animals waiting to be fixed. Her other autistic preoccupation are ice cubes. She will wait until you are comfortable on the couch when she will sit down, look at you and bark only once. She’ll grab her toy, jump on the couch and start walking all over you, before she gets back down on the floor and barks once more. This is her way of telling you she wants ice cubes. Water isn’t enough anymore, and she wasn’t always like this, but now…now she will demand ice cubes. I will put a full bowl of ice down and she will pick one cube out at a time and bring it into the living room and munch on it. I can pull the ice out of the freezer and just hand it to her like it’s a treat and she will walk away with a bounce in her step, happy to drip water all over the floor. Because of this, we can’t walk around the house in our socks anymore. I must always wear my Crocs, or my galoshes. And wear my high-water mom jeans. Another trait of her doggy Autism is her extensive moaning. She severely lacks verbal skills. She does not bark, except for the above rare occasions, but she will have that Sneetch in her mouth and moan, groan and erupt with guttural noises while staring at you. She will moan when she’s hungry. She will moan when she’s tired. She will moan when she needs to go outside. She will moan when she wants to get up in the morning. She will moan when she wants to play. And she will moan when she wants water. All the moans are of the same caliber, and so we never know what she wants. Her verbal skills are not where they need to be, and so, again, I chalk it up as another characteristic of autism. Even though her chocolate-brown eyes will make you ooze with love, often they are not filled with emotion, but a disturbing blankness. She stares off into space while holding Grinch in her mouth. She violently shakes her tail, wagging it back and forth so hard, her tiny waste bends like Gumby (or more appropriately, his animal friend Pokey). She will climb up on my lap with her two front paws, shaking her butt with violent speeds and, instead of looking at you, she stares past you, and with that stuffed animal in her mouth, she will also moan. Those blank eyes lend us to believe her brain has flat lined making the sound of a broken heart monitor. When she finally looks at us with eyes filled with emotion, we exclaim that she’s actually looking at us with “puppy eyes!” "Oh, Fauna, we lost you. Where were you?” The dog cannot sit still. As we vegetate on the couch, she will pace back and forth on us, walking all over our legs and stomachs, wagging her tail, hitting us in the faces, shoving her large paws in our crotches and stepping on Nigra and Raible. She knows no personal space. After she has walked a mile across our stomachs, she will lie down and push her paw down on Steph’s chest, which usually makes her yell, “quick pushing my boob!” This is said at least twice a night. When Fauna is really excited, she will mount us like a mountain lion, wag her tail from side to side, and moan. We’ll push her off, but she’ll climb right back on. Also, she will get so close, that Steph’s convinced Fauna doesn’t just want to be near her, but to be inside her. As of now, like any night close to 10 p.m., she balls up on the couch and takes up only one-tenth. It’s like that nursery rhyme about the girl with the curl: when she is good, she is really, really good, but when she is bad she is wicked, evil and will torture you to death! 11.25.07 These Magazines Are Made for Douches I used to read magazines for douches. Actually, I still do, but come March 2008 I will be done learning how to be a douche...and I will become one? Hardly. I don’t have the money to, say, douche it up. I have been, for years, subscribing to Details and GQ magazines. The mainstay for me has been the design, but the luster has started to fade. I got fed up with GQ because there was nothing in there I benefited from, sans the sangria recipe from one issue. I decided I would continue to get only one, and so I decided on Details. Now, issues and issues of Details have landed in my mailbox and I’ve been reading about… …an article about presidential candidate Fred Thompson and his wife. The article is nothing about politics, but how we need a hot first lady. So basically, he’s the crypt-keeper and she’s some twenty-something that loves rotted bones. …how I need some three-piece Ralph Lauren suit for $1,295. And the ass-wipe smirk to go with. …to please look at marcjacobs.com where the cologne is shoved right in front of a naked woman’s hoo-hah. And remember, they sell clothes, too – much like Abercrombie. Invisible clothes. …how I need to please put my collar back in my jacket, because I’m not Elvis. Not that I do that, but I better not if want to live. …and to stop wearing my Converse shoes with dress clothes. …and I need to stop wearing square-toed shoes. …and, my gawd, could I please stop wearing t-shirts with writing on them. …I’m learning how video games are the new cocaine (which I guess I could semi-agree with). …which steakhouses cost no less than $80 for a steak (and that’s the cheaper end of the spectrum). …and that pointy, ugly leather shoes for $1,400 that make feet bleed are stylish in Anderson, Ind. At least, they should be. I don’t put it down and feel a creative rush like I do with Entertainment Weekly, and I don’t find one thing I can actually use in my classroom like Wired magazine. Instead, I learn about fashion where all the male models in the magazines look like young, teenage girls wearing their daddy’s clothes. The captions have the cost for each article of clothing and only the people who are fed liquid money through an IV can afford it. Any article is about people made of plastic with mommy-issues that go back to how they were raised. It’s a social mess. The minute I get an issue in my mailbox, I just groan. I specifically remember one article called “are you a douche?” I held that issue of Details up to a mirror and asked it , “So, Details magazine, are you a douche?” The light just reflected off it’s shiny paper. I used to enjoy the man-smut, but then little “games” like Broadway face or O-face started getting published. Are they a singer or are they screaming in a porn? Then I realized my self esteem went down as I read the articles and looked at all the ads and photo spreads. They were all beautiful people. I was not. I think the breaking point was when they published an article about men called Mandingos: big, black men who are hired for parties to sexually “please” married women, while their husbands watch. Might I add, the people who hire them are white. It’s nice that people are doing that, but how is it going to help me learn how to calm down my hyperactive dog? Plus, the magazine has stopped originality. They publish the same men on the covers over and over. We have Brad Pitt on February, June and November. Then there is Vin Diesel on January and September (because he’s not been in any movies, and he's not with Angelina Jolie). After that, all the other months are left over to Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck and Sean Penn. They play pinochle to duke it out and they call each other “man-bitch” while doing it. Tom Cruise watches in the corner and cries, knowing he won’t ever be on the cover again. I open the magazine, well, actually I unwrap it from its plastic cover because only pretentious magazines can’t get wet. I mean, it’ll ruin the cologne samples inside. In the past, the free samples of $200-an-ounce-cologne was the best part, but even they are beginning to smell bad… …like vinegar.
08.18.07 Back Injuries Make Me Faint I am currently kicked out of my house for the time being. Steph and I really got into it. “You will leave so I can set up for your birthday party,” she screamed. It’s time for the annual “what does Evan hate most” birthday party. It’s a surprise party of sorts. People will freak if I ask them if their coming, “you know about it? You’re not supposed to know about it!” Oh, but I do. I pick the menu. I just don’t know who’s coming, and when I arrive, I don’t know what the theme will be. Yes, they are themed. I find themed parties some of the best. As a teenager, you just want to go to houses and be a defiant little shit, play drinking games, make-out, wear your jeans, drop acid and so on. Once you hit adulthood, going to peoples’ houses is a great way to hang out, but on certain occasions, coming with a costume can be more fun. How else am I supposed to fill up my Flickr.com account? (Note to self, sign up for a Flickr.com account) I think this started during one summer while Steph was working on her Masters. Plans were made for me to meet up with her and a couple of friends who drove down from Muncie. I cleaned up nice and off I went. As I walked up to the porch of her first-story apartment, they all sat there in what I despised: sweat pants with elastic on the bottom and tacky t-shirts. Why did I even bother showering? They greeted with me my own pair of white (the worst color) sweat pants and a large yellow t-shirt. To make the evening worse, we went to the Wal-mart (a place I abhor) and we had to walk around in public. I felt like white trash. I wanted to yell to people that “I don’t really dress like this. This…is…not…me!” But once the embarrassment wore off, I got into it and started hiking up the sweat pants and dancing around in them. Going out to eat later wasn’t a big deal, plus it was a drive-in and we stayed in the car. Pictures were taken later that evening and my friend Eric pulled up his pants so high, he had a camel toe. Steph and I got married and our first summer together was a chance for Steph to pull together another plan, to theme an event over something I disgusted. I was forced to leave the afternoon of the party and returned to people all dressed up. In jumpers. In apples. In denim. With shirts tucked in. I’m a teacher, yes, but I do not enjoy the iconography that goes along with the profession: #1 Teacher, World’s Best Teacher, apples, etc. To me, all that goes along with elementary school teachers – and from time to time, during college, people would hear me complain about elementary school education majors. “Let’s make a bulletin board,” and how they were all sorority girls and the like. It just annoyed me. All the gifts that year were apples and baskets and mugs with “#1 Teacher” all over them. Most went back to the Goodwill. Then, the theme became more complicated the next summer. Again, after cleaning and getting ready, I had to leave. It took them forever to call me, so as I waited, drove around, I found myself at the park swinging. Once I could finally come home, I opened the door and there they all were, in vests (even Nigra had a vest on) with their nametags: “Wal-mart. Always.” Hanging all over the place were yellow balloons with smiley faces, signs on different parts of the house that spoke of falling prices and then it was time for gifts: everything Equate and Sam’s Choice and Best Value, not to forget the ugly plaid shirt by Faded Glory. Some of the gifts are beneficial, like the generic Tylenol and picture frames, I even used the petroleum jelly on my dry hands over the winter time so they wouldn’t crack and bleed, but the Faded Glory shirt hung in my closet. I wanted to take it back to get the money (because you can take back anything to the Wal-mart, even if you didn’t buy it there), but I never got around to it. I am currently sitting at a Starbucks. I hoped it would have wireless Internet, but you have to pay for it. Doesn’t Starbucks make enough money as the conglomerate coffee shop for free Internet? Alas, it is like bottled water. You. Must. Pay. Last year I kept guessing what the theme of the party could be. I told Steph it could be Wal-mart, but she said that would be too difficult. So, I kept thinking of other things. When I walked in, I was right – but not completely surprised. This year, I decided to not even think about it. I do know costumes are in the plan (why do I bother putting on nice clothes when I leave the house, I should’ve thrown sweat pants on) and so I continue to wait at the Starbucks, buzzed from my caramel Frappuccino, waiting to go home to my surprise party. To the friends I love. To the wife I love. To the food I chose. To the theme I hate.
07.29.07 Back Injuries Make Me Faint During the fourth grade, when growth spurts (mainly for the girls) began to erupt and heights of students teetered across the line for the bathrooms, we all were sat down in the darkened classroom and in they wheeled the TV/VCR unit. The teacher-in-charge stuck in a video cassette and we all had to sit and watch. “We are going to learn about scoliosis,” the fake doctor said. “It’s a disease of the back that makes your spine bend in ways that make it impossible for you to live a happy life. The surgery to correct it is painful as mortal sin and since you’re pre-teens hitting the time of your life where the body is changing, you will soon begin growing at rates your parents can’t keep up with. “You will be stuck wearing pants that are far too short and you’ll start wearing sneakers that are too long.” God, man. Whatever. Get on with it. But, seriously, I wish he hadn’t. Standing in a sterile, gray room the “I’m not a real doctor, but I play one on TV” stood there and in walked a girl in her bathing suit. She was asked to touch her toes. She did so, gracefully, and…nothing. She looked like a normal person bending over. She was sent away and in walked another girl in a similar blue bathing suit. “Bend over you disgusting mess,” the doctor commanded her. She did, and growing out of her back was this large, unnatural hump. During the video, my face was white – I could feel the floor falling away from me and I wanted to fall with it. The teacher saw me and asked if I was OK. I can’t remember responding, but since I wasn’t unconscious or puking, she walked away unconcerned. The teacher turned off the video and informed us that we were all going to hit our growth spurts soon, and if we didn’t grow straight, we would grow crooked like that girl, and there would be a bend in the spine and that bend is called scoliosis. I went home that night and cried. Hard. “I don’t want to grow crooked!” Worry consumed me. Didn’t you grow while you slept? How was I not going to be cock-eyed if I slept in strange positions? I was going to get it, I knew. Scoliosis was mine to have. The name was scary in itself, and I cried and cried because that name of the back disease-injury-problem-thing was so damn scary. Granted, the Quasimodo shown on the video didn’t help. It never helps to have a visual representation: “Hey Jenny, before you get your painful spinal surgery, could you put this bathing suit on in front of the camera and bend over?” The next day at school, we were called down, one by one, to the nurses’ office. She stood there and told us to take off our shirts and to bend over. I remember that we had to do this a couple of times throughout our elementary and middle school experience. I could just feel my spine bending the wrong way. Now that I do yoga, my spine bends the wrong way all the time and it’s normal. But having watched that video, it made me sensitive to such topics as spines. They are this tremendous part of the human body, part of the central nervous system, can bend all crazy, it’s made of different vertebra and they can also break. The fact they can break makes my legs week. It’s just gross. Pour blood all over me, that’s fine. I’ll watch a dog surgery any day, I’ll get over it. Talk about breaking spines – I’ll pass out, and you’ll have to catch me and drag me home. Year by year, I begin getting more pale at different health defects. This is one of the reasons I am glad my cable provider doesn’t give us Discovery Health. I had my own Discovery Health moment at school this past year. An art teacher was gone for a couple of weeks because she had back surgery. During lunch, the band teachers asked how she was doing, and she replied how she felt so much better after the surgery. She must’ve been in much pain prior, and she looked well and acted fine, but then she started to go into detail. I wanted to say, “please, I’m eating.” “And then they cut through my skin and onto my spine. A blade came in contact with my spine (I’m getting white writing this) and as my spine was exposed to the air, the doctor looked at my spine, they touched and looked at it! Can you believe it! And they cut out a part of the herniated disc. They cut it. Cut. Cut. Cut. Spine. Cut. Blade. Spinal chord. Cutting spinal chord. Blood.” They didn’t see me fall out of my chair and eat carpet, which is fine. I didn’t want to take the attention away from her. I mean, that’s so impolite. I could’ve been a spinal surgeon. I could’ve been the one that surgitized, or whatever, on the art teacher. I could be the one that takes the pain away from so many who suffer from back pain, but damn that video. Damn it. Because of it, I will continue to be worthless to the human race, doing what I wasn’t really supposed to be doing.
07.18.07 My Birthday German Style I think my motion-sickness came about when I started a paper route my junior year of high school. My mother would drive and I would twist and shout while I threw papers into yards, or stuffed them into holders. Moving forwards, stopping, going from left to right, stopping, going, turning, it was no wonder I got “sea sick” on a river. The money raised from the newspaper route funded my trip to Nürnburg, Germany the summer I turned 17. I was so nervous to be in a new country, it took me a week before I could eat normally without getting nauseous from an anxious stomach. So, it made sense I got sick while riding a boat down the Rhine River. It wasn’t stopping and going. I wasn’t throwing papers covered in an orange baggy. There were castles on the riverside and I couldn’t watch. We finally stopped off at some tourist-trap town, a city full of Americans acting like Germans, and I can’t remember anything but sitting down in the street wanting to die. It was like being stuck at Epcot Center, but with a harsher dialect of German. The trip home on the bus was hell. I was lying down in the back of the bus with friends, feeling sorry for myself because the next day was my birthday, but the teachers made me move to the front, upstraight and not reclining. One of the German teachers was a foul terd idiot and was like, “look at the grass…at it blows…just watch it…” I vomited a couple of times in a trashcan after that. I should’ve projected it at her. This was the day before the best birthday I ever had. I got to my host family’s house, rushed upstairs to bed and my host mom pulled back the rug and gave me a trashcan. My host family consisted of mom and dad (whose names escape me) and three brothers. My host brother, whom I was similar in age to, was Fabian (all Fabio jokes aside, please). Early morning on my birthday, I crept downstairs and no one was up. I was still feeling a little woozy, but having slept a million hours, I didn’t want to lie around anymore. But since I was in a foreign house, I didn’t feel like staying downstairs in the dark either. I came down a couple hours later to the hustle-bustle of the family. A Happy Birthday sign hung over the table, the table was set and my space had a bunch of gummy bears sprinkled all over the place (Harabo, only the best for my birthday, thank you). Fresh rolls were placed in a basket, and I was afraid to eat anything heavy, so I reached for a croissant and had tea. My host mom presented me with a package, which I tore open enthusiastically, I mean, they really didn’t have to do this, and it was Faber-Castell pastels and a drawing tablet. They knew I enjoyed drawing cartoons and they told me I should draw a “comic.” I tried to draw for them on the spot, but it came out horrible. They probably see all that money as wasted to this day. German “Bill Cosby” comes on, and they just look at each other, rolling their eyes. “Remember that stupid American boy? Who couldn’t draw shit for comics?” Fabian told me we were going to meet friends, so we went to the bus stop and waited for about twenty minutes. I was annoyed they didn’t have the gull to show up, so we went back to the house and there were my high school friends and their German partners in the dining room waiting for me. My host-mom presented me with a homemade cheesecake, which I love, and I received presents. One being this stuffed pumpkin. I’m not sure what was up with that, but since I was in a foreign country, I received it with joy and named it Smashing Pumpkin. Pictures taken at the party were later put into a small binder for me to keep and take home. Everyone left and I went upstairs to take a nap. I still hadn’t recuperated from the idiot German teacher’s comments about swaying grass that make me puke. Oh, I forgot to mention what Fabian got me. He bought me a ticket for the Schaumparty that was taking place that night at a disco downtown. I’ll explain this party later. For dinner that night, my host-dad made Chinese food (the only time I ate typical German cuisine was when went out to eat…we had Italian, Chinese, American the rest of the time I was there…). After dinner we got ready to go and went to the disco. The Schaumparty was outside. It was an area by the disco which had a machine that spewed out suds, and the parking lot area designated for this was covered waist high with bubbles. God knows how many people were having Tide sex. We danced, met up with friends (who some of them got in trouble for talking about it. One of the German host-teachers forbid us to go…that the Americans are too young…and I thought Hitler was dead). My friend Jessie got trapped dancing dirty with some nasty German man, so I had to rescue her. Who knew these people who only knew me for two weeks would take me in and celebrate my birthday in such a way it can never be topped?
07.07.07 Emo Will One Day Rule the Earth One morning I was asking my students if anyone listened to Fall Out Boy. I just started listening to the album “Infinity Is High” and they had a pop-rock feel to them, a sound I figured most eighth graders would enjoy. Since I want to try and connect with my eighth graders, I try to pick up certain types of music they would listen to. It gives us something to talk about and it lets me see them as more human than the hemorrhoid-ravaged monsters they can be – I mean hormone-ravaged, sorry, hormone ravaged! I asked, “Does anyone listen to Fall Out Boy?” And groans released in the air like farts: “Fall Out Boy is soooo Emo!” “They’re terrible!” “God wants them destroyed!” “They’re the reason democracy is dying!” I got the point, quick. But I tried to defend them like they were a solid belief I had, “No, they’re not Emo! They’re more of a pop-rock!” Then it resonated in me the rest of the day. I was listening to a band that every student thought was Emo. This word, this phrase, has been thrown around by middle school students for some time. To get under another each other’s skin, they’ll insult each other: “You’re such an Emo!” “No, I’m not!” “You are!” And so forth. One day, frustrated with all this talk of being “Emo” and not truly knowing what it meant in middle-school-speak, I looked it up. To be Emo, you need an over abundance of angst and pain. According to Wikipedia, the new, large, generic place to get information (almost as bad as Google – teenagers are so lazy when it comes to information on the Internet. When I walk past them in the media center at school, it’s always Google, always Wikipedia), Emo is supposedly punk and goth’s retarded baby where cutting wrists is accepted (just hugging the blade with angry love, really) and terrible poetry is law. To look the part, one must wear tight, ugly pants (for boys, they call them “girl pants” and I wouldn’t be surprised if one day a kid turned around and there it was on the butt, Limited Too), eye liner (and for the gents, “guyliner”), shaggy neo-punk hair and tons of whiney music. They must be outcasts, and since there’s always a group of them, they’re never really individuals, just another group of people who look and speak the same. To be honest, I’m not truly ignorant when it comes to the term Emo. In my day, Emo was just a basic description of a new trend in rock. The lyrics were “emotional” and usually about break-ups and being treated wrongly in relationships. They were usually sung by men, showing a more vulnerable side in the rock genre (granted, isn’t that what Journey did?). The voices could be a little higher than the average range of male singer (again, Journey comes to mind…), and sometimes it came off as an angry, whiney sound. Now, how it became this un-trendy thing where people are like, “ugh…that is so Emo,” I don’t understand. These students say things like that, when they, themselves, fit the heinous description. These labels kids give themselves have been around for eons. Emo is just the new Goth for their generation. It’s funny when an adult will be like, “I thought you as a kind of preppy,” and the student responds, “Oh, I thought preppy was when people wore pleated pants and sweatervests…” “Um…that’s 90’s dork, not preppy…” Even Spiderman 3 has an “Emo Spiderman” and an “Emo Peter Parker.” But then, during a blog exercise my sixth graders work on toward the end of the grading period, one student turned it in with all kinds of “yay, I’m Emo” all over it. The blog assignment consists of creating an online journal (on paper, because kids + Internet = hostile takeover) and writing descriptions about themselves, writing four entries that other students in class can comment on. It’s a very interactive assignment, and I thought it did a nice job simulating how a blog functions. I read each one to make sure they’re appropriate (one kid actually wrote four entries about Michael Jackson, one being a bad dream where a naked King of Pop chased the student). One of them, a girl who just moved from Florida, had “I Y Fall Out Boy” all over it. She also wrote how “I am so Emo!” She didn’t have the bad fashion and ugly hair, though. Go figure. Florida Emo must be different than Indiana Emo.
06.30.07 The Man With Half A Soul I think every person has a few high school experiences that are tagged as interesting, but can you claim that you’ve met a person with only half a soul? I was such a Goth-wannabe in high school. I loved their attitudes, how they were outcasts and liked it. They didn’t want to fit in. After being made fun of for four years in middle school, I didn’t know how to fit in. I wasn’t ever allowed to. So meeting people who chose to be social outcasts (who were always very nice people) was amazing. “Wow, you can choose not to fit in?” I asked the Goth as he put on Alice Cooper eye make-up and fluffed his velvet, black pirate shirt. I wanted that, too, but I wasn’t rebellious enough, nor did I own the attire. I came from a Catholic school and my closet was full of navy blue pants and white polo shirts. Instead, since it was mid-nineties, I was caught wearing the flannel over the “whatever” t-shirt with my ratty jeans. I admired the Goths, but I never hung out with them en masse. If I did, I would’ve looked like Marilyn from “The Munsters.” The friends I did have, also admired Goths, I think. Goths also played a game called “Vampire: The Masquerade.” I had the book to learn how to play the game, but it was about 300+ pages. No game should have a rule book that is more than five pages. The game seemed interesting, but I couldn’t find the time to read an instruction manual when I had novels to read for English class. The game, which was a role playing game, was also titled a storytelling game. The object of such a game wasn’t to win, but to create a story with a group of friends (or blood fetished weirdos). You created a fictional character with a sheet describing all the traits this character would have (that being a vampire) and then you sat around with a bunch of “friends” and take those characters through stories. Since it was called a storytelling game, and I’ve always enjoyed a good story, a game like that sounded fun, even if I didn’t want to read the book. That was before I realized people dressed in their black trench coats and played this game, live action, in the Kmart parking lot in Castleton across from the Perkins. It couldn’t have been a Wal-mart parking lot because some hill-jack would’ve pulled out a gun and shot the freak. Then the Kmart turned into an electronics store and the “vampires” lost their deathscape, or whatever. I think it was on the news. I was invited to play “Vampire” at a friend’s apartment. Maria, was the friend’s name, and although she was really a “friend of a friend,” I found out later in life she had gotten pregnant and then sold her baby. But this was Pre-Baby-Selling Maria. So we sat in a circle and never really started to play, at this I am still angry. Actually, I think I’m angrier at the turn of events that evening than playing the game. I was either a freshman or a sophomore in high school and my slate was very clean. Call me naïve if you want. But the following events scarred me: We started play, but something interrupted us. What exactly, I can’t remember, but my two friends, Beth and Jessie, ended up in the bathroom with Maria’s boyfriend, Jeremy. Jeremy was a fit chap with long light brown hair, tight black jeans, a couple earrings, and I think he walked around without a shirt that evening. I’m not surprised they both got up and went to the bathroom with him when he beckoned. As they were in the bathroom with Jeremy, for about an hour or longer, I was stuck in the living room with Maria and her minions. She was the type that wore velvet, homemade capes, no bras, weird eye make-up and loved the spirits. I can’t remember if she was wearing a cape or not that night. Someone asked me if I wanted a cigarette, but I declined, because I didn’t trust the self-rolled type. He cracked the window open and started smoking it, and boy, it didn’t smell like a regular cigarette. I dare say that he smoked the marijuana. We all sat in silence, in the dark, me praying that the cops wouldn’t come, because they were all engaged in the act of underage drinking, along with the possession and usage of an illegal substance. Then Maria started doing tequila shots, sucking on lime and licking the salt off her arm. I don’t know if she was trying to rapture me the way Jeremy did the other two. She did this with a fan aimed at her, looking in the mirror at herself while she flipped back her cape, lime juice squirting everywhere. I was ready and waiting with my wood stake to take on Maria and her minions, when Beth, Jessie and Jeremy finally came out of the bathroom. I was sweating profusely, ready to get the hell out, but we had to be polite and chat for a bit, since the boyfriend of the Caped Tequila was in the bathroom for over an hour with two other girls and it’d just be plain rude if we left abruptly. I mean what would Maria think? It wasn’t until we left the apartment when I found out why they had been in the bathroom with Jeremy. “Evan, Jeremy only has half a soul!” After spending the majority of my evening with the Darkness, I, too, had half a soul. 06.19.07 Gay Jay Junior year of college I had a roommate. He was a freshman. So I vicariously relived my freshman year. I had met him the previous summer through a friend. They were best friends from high school and so, we, too, would be best friends. Or so I thought: My friend, Tom, and I piled into my black Stratus and we drove up to a suburb outside of Chicago. It was high-July and the skies were cloudless, making the heat so fierce it killed. The elderly without fans weren’t going to make it that week. Although I love the city life, I hate driving in Chicago traffic, but since it’s too practical to find another way around northern Illinois, it was through the Chicago midday traffic. At one point in the drive, it got so hot, Satan came out and did a little dance in a tight-red leotard. “Did you know when the dew point reaches our body temperature, we’ll suffocate,” Tom said, always bringing a touch of pessimism. With that said (whether or not, it’s true…), I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe. I felt the dew point reach my 98.6 degree body temperature. My pores were getting larger and larger. The stand still traffic made me feel like Medusa – just one look, and everything was stone! Oh the humanity? Why would Tom tell me that we were going to die? This is it, isn’t it? The Stratus’ paint was already blistering, popping paint bubbles all over the Chicago freeway. Plus, I was stupid and didn’t have the air circulating itself while the air was on, so the car didn’t exactly cool off. After six hours in the car – a four hour trip gone to hell – we arrived at Jay’s house. I literally climbed to the front door, screaming, “we’re finally here!” And so started Tom and I’s visit with my future roommate. We went to Six Flags Great America and Gurnee Mills. We spent an entire day downtown, because our car was towed and we walked miles to the pound. One afternoon, right before Tom and I’s schedule departure, Jay announced to his family and us that “I’m going to take a relaxing bath!” We were just about to leave for pizza. A bath? Who takes baths? We left for home. August came and went, school started and I learned more about Jay. He was a theater major – the scorn of my existence, only because they have no limits or personal space. I, too, have few limits, but I guard my personal space with an air of paranoia. After his showers, he would stand around in his boxer briefs and amass handfuls of Lubriderm lotion and slather it all over his body until he was greasier than McDonald’s fries and he reflected in the fluorescent light. His desk was right by the window, which annoyed him to no end because the sunlight always glared all over his computer, so he shut the blinds. That annoyed me to no end because the oriental rug we had on the floor over the tile already made the room dark, and everybody hates living in fluorescent lights, except for Jay who always had it on in the room since it was over his desk, so it was an unnatural green all the time, and all I had were a couple of dim lamps so I could see around desk. I’ve always enjoyed having a roommate through college – the company was nice. Free time was immense. It was a thick tropical forest of free time and conversation was a good machete to cut through that free time. But Jay was never around. I got to know the other guys on my floor pretty well instead. With all the theater events, he was never in the room. As his presence became less and less, questions about his sexual orientation began to pop up The bath he took while Tom and I were visiting should have been a sign, and I can’t remember if it was a bubble bath or not, but during the year more questionable behaviors started to show up at the door. I don’t remember his name, but he came loaded with CDs. One afternoon while I was in the room, I asked if I could look through his two massive binders. I asked what he listened to, and as I started flipping through: “Cats”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Jekyll and Hyde”, “Ragtime”, “The Pajama Game”, “My Fair Lady”, etc. I started to see a trend. “These are all musicals. What else do you listen to?” “Musicals are the only thing worth listening to,” he scoffed. And for a week in January, Mr. Musical Theater would come and take Jay away, “to some girl’s house” his BFF from high school later told me, and I was supposed to believe that… Sure he would say how “hot” Sarah Michelle Gellar was while I watched “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but I wasn’t convinced since MTV’s the “Real World” was the best show ever. And he would, like, totally talk on the phone and speak like this, and oh my God, I know, and talk about how one of the characters on “The Real World” was being a complete and total beyotch, but how, oh my God, I know, how he would just looove another character. So, I would call Steph and tell her my recent observations and whether or not we thought Jay was gay. He came armed with his Lubriderm and lathered up right after he showered. Okay, so he had good skin care. He watched the “Real World” with thwarted passion – so he had poor taste in television. After all the different pieces were thrown around… Lightbulb. Later that summer, when I lived on campus, I met our mutual friend for lunch (Jay’s BFF). Over Subway, she finally told me that Jay was gay. I said I figured that out. I also said it would have been easier if he had just told me. She said Jay was afraid I’d be uncomfortable with it. Strangely, I was more uncomfortable with not really knowing. 2.13.07 The Handicapped Mime When I go to bed at night I look like a handicapped mime. Before I lay me down to sleep and after I rub Vaseline all over my hands, I place them into my gloves…granted, as “Silence of the Lambs” as that sounds, it’s true…the gloves were a gift from a student. Instead of the Starbuck’s card that I’m accustomed to, I received a bag with coffee, soap, tea and moisture gloves. These are the type of gloves you put on overnight, with hands covered with Vaseline, to keep the skin lubricated and soft. It was a day spa in a bag, minus the dermabrasion. When I wake up from nightmares, I honor Marcel Marceau, and silently, with cunning conviction, act out the zombie wedding I witnessed during my R.E.M. sleep. The only thing I’m missing is the white pancake make-up all over my face. (This brings me to an odd story about my junior year college roommate. After every shower, he would stand in front of the mirror in his underwear and lather himself with Lubriderm. He pumped it out using quick, thrusting, um, pumps. Supposedly it was unscented, but the room smelled like lotion. God-awful, greasy lotion. This was the type of guy who would come home after long breaks with an economy-size bottle, ready to lube up some more. Sure his skin was healthy, but my innocence was not.) Then, once the gloves are on, I strap on my carpel tunnel bands. Long ago my hands used to fall asleep constantly. I would wake up with a pins and needles sensation, and since I thought I had really poor circulation, I figured it was just something I would get over eventually, perhaps take some aspirin to thin my blood and make it flow faster (making sure I avoided sharp glass and knife blades). In the end, I went to the doctor and he handed me nude colored bands that thrust my palms up. I look like I’m ready to give high fives with both of my hands. The bands stop the wearer from driving, eating, making out, heavy petting – unless you’re kinky like that. The upside is the bands resemble a skater’s wrist guard. Nude Wrist Guards. I Fake people out by falling in the midst of a sweet 250 plant, land on my wrists, scream bloody murder, etc. The wrist guards help deter the return of my pins-and-needles-work-related-injury. Or they help me when I fall down, protecting my wrists. Or when I fall out of bed. So, all this pain adds to my beauty. I’m a skater in my sleep and a mime on very cold days. Why would I want to be a mime-wannabe with the gloves? I have gnarly, cracked, alligator skin. The skin on my knuckles breaks and bleeds, so when antibacterial hand gel and lotion come in contact with my hands, it stings the like an ocean of lemon juice on a paper cut. Dry skin runs in my family. My dad’s thumbs are so dried out, if he picked up a Nintendo controller, he’d scratch up the buttons. If I want to have a snow fight, I need to wear gloves; otherwise people are bound to get hit in the face with a bloody snowball. So that tube of petroleum jelly I got for my birthday really pays off. That sounds gross, doesn’t it? 10.20.06 Spending Time At Your Local BMV It’s happened to most of us. Regardless of updating a new address on the driver’s license, updating it before it expires, renewing plates on the automobiles, etc. people have suffered those damned plastic chairs in BMV’s across the country, and probably all the way back to when Rome was an empire (at that point they were registering chariots, horses and the such). Overall the worst is going on your birthday. What’s better than celebrating a birthday by sitting in plastic chairs created by Marilyn Manson, surrounded by angry, pissed off, blue-shirt wearing workers. Last week I sat down in the eroded plastic chair – and I digress here, people say that toilet seats don’t accumulate germs, per say, but I think the chairs at the BMV are magnets to any nasty germ attached to the seat of anybody’s pants. I leaned back in the black eroded chair and bumped into a woman’s arm. Her long jean jacket arm took up three chairs, so bumping into her arm was written in the stars. I quietly said, “’scuse me,” and all she could do was muster up a nice attitude-filled, “um-hm,” and moved her extra-long arm. So I turned to her and said, “You’re a pleasant dear, aren’t you.” She looked at me in disbelief. “You ain’t mindin’ your elders boy,” she said. “I said ‘excuse me,’ my sista-elder, because your monster arm was all up in my business.” “You wouldn’t know if something was all up in your business if it was all up in your business,” she retorted and left it at that as her name was called and she dragged her five-foot arm off all fifteen chairs, putting it in her extra-large purse, and headed to one of the Blue Shirts. If only Dr. Seuss wrote a story telling all of us, both young and old, how to deal with the insanity that is called the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Of All the Peoples You Peep! Each and every one’s a creep, And if your snarfles won’t let you be nice Oh the pays you will pay for that price! But we don’t know exactly how to act when it comes to the BMV. We know to wait in line and then get angry because we haven’t secured all 29 documents we needed for the address change. So we go back to the car, shuffle around all the Chik-Fil-A boxes and wrappers in our Dodge Torpedo, and hope that the ketchup won’t ruin the most important document you need proving that you are, indeed, a U.S. citizen. And once we’ve been strip searched, we get to sit our behinds in those black plastic chairs again, awaiting the glorious hour when one of the Blue Shirts will call our name. And we glance at our watches and cell phones as time creeps by slower than that old man getting up to get his vision checked so he can continue maneuvering his Cadillac the size of a boat. Of All the Peoples You Peep That old man don’t drive no Jeep His car is larger than a mobile home Rusted and dented with no trace of chrome! So we wait with our book or magazine. Waiting for our number to be called, looking up at 38 and then looking at our little ticket that says 94. They offer the suggestion, “oh, go get some lunch, since you’re so far back, you can have a martini lunch, go see a show, come back and still have twenty minutes to catch up on your Smithsonian magazine.” But do we dare trust that Blue Shirt? God forbid we leave, because the minute we step foot outside the door, the Blue Shirts will fly past the 40’s through the 80’s and by the time we come back, the Blue Shirts will be on antsy customer 192. So we sit and wait. Glaciers melt. Global warming heats up and cools back down. Evolution brings about a new species of Reptile People. Our faces and legs itch from lack of shaving. But gosh darn it, we will hold out and wait, because we will not be passed up. Of All The Peoples You Peep! Don’t you realize you’re just a sheep? Waiting the waits that no one can wait Working that patience for heaven’s gate. And an hour later we’re finally called. We’re older. We’re grouchy. We’re sitting next to Sista’ Elder with her 15-foot-long arm. We sit across from the Blue Shirt, relieved that we can finally get our business done, when she smiles meekly and excuses herself to go relieve herself in the bathroom. And we’re stuck waiting again. 10.10.06 RBS I went from yoga and three-plus days at the gym, to not working out at all. That was a year ago. Then we got a phone call: “Come tour the Anderson YMCA and get two weeks free!” When we got there on our scheduled day, we signed in and awaited the hyper-active man who passed us back and forth, causing a breeze, wearing a path into the tile floor. And so we walked through the almost-but-not-really dilapidated building that contained free weights, weight machines, a pool, bikes, a couple of TVs to watch while working out, a skank-filled hot tup and tons of old naked men wandering around with their sagging chodes in the men’s dressing room. But the most glorious place of all was the two racquetball courts side-by-side. After the hyper-active man, hired by the Anderson YMCA to heighten enrollment, sat us down and gave us the “inside scoop” about how they were offering a great deal to those participants who got the phone call. Obviously he was telling everyone the “inside scoop” so they’d come back and join. I felt cool, like he really was telling us something that he wasn’t telling others who sat down with him, as he did the math on the back of a scrap piece of paper, explaining how much it would cost to join with this grand deal. That we were the only couple told this valuable information in order to bring us back in a week to officially sign up? This coming from the kid that sat on a firecracker just because his older brother said so. Luckily the hyper-active man wasn’t really “burning” us with some fake deal. After some discussion, the fact that I missed my YMCA experiences back when I lived in Fishers (where membership was half your soul), and a place to go that wasn’t the typical over-crowded gym, we did sign up. But before we officially signed up, we took the Y up on its freeness and decided that we’d play a game of racquetball. Neither of us are pros, but the idea seemed fun. After we joined, it turned into RBS – Racquetball Saturday. We go, rent out the gear, and begin to whack that blue ball all around the enclosed room. I studied up on the rules and how to play, score points, etc. but none of the diagrams made any sense and so we went convinced that it’d be more fun to just hit it back and forth against the wall. It couldn’t be that hard. Well, there’s a reason they give you those plastic goggles when you rent the equipment – that blue ball comes at you with a vengeance. It’s like the anti-smiley face from Wal-mart, not coming to slash prices, but your face. I am part of the hand-eye coordination generation – Nintendo and Genesis were created with my brain cells in mind. Super Mario engrained a specific ability in me at an early age – watching the screen without looking at my hands. Hand-eye coordination for a video game like Pong is a far cry from watching that little blue ball bounce with an inertia that’s out to kill with its velocity. Watching the ball go to-and-fro with a racquet in hand isn’t like playing Pong. Because even though the wall doesn’t move like the classic Atari game, you do, and as the soles of your sneakers screech against the floor, with your eye is on the blue ball, and your racquet ready, you’re not paying attention. That’s when the wall jumps out in front of you and hits your whole body, reminding you that you’re not playing correctly. “You passed the line with your foot,” it says. “Your serve is awful and you don’t even know how to perform a proper backhand.” The first time we played racquetball we played three 20-minute games. The goal for the first ever RBS was to just hit the ball against the wall to the other player and hit it back again, without stopping, hitting the other player in the shins or nailing them in the eye. We weren’t wearing the protective eye-gear. As safe-conscious as we are, we didn’t want claustrophobic goggles that had been pink-eyed on. The second RBS, after we officially joined, was a little more effective. The blue ball was green this time and less angry. We didn’t hit it against the parallel wall as hard and we were able to get the “to-and-fro” part down. Still, we did not score, but the wall was much kinder to me, as it allowed my knee to miss it entirely every time I tried to go after the ball when it was over my head. Until the introduction of Dance Dance Revolution, there was no jumping in video games – physical jumping, that is. Mario could jump all he wanted, but I just sat on the floor. Hand-eye coordination, with racquet in hand and ball in air never went Wimbledon-smooth as I tried to jump for the ball and hit it. Instead, I missed it entirely, allowing it to bounce against the plexi-glass and pop its way toward my butt cheeks, goosing me. We laugh because we’re so horrible, but as we’re trying to speak to each other in the vacuum that is the racquetball court, the echoes swoosh through the air like banshees, making it impossible to have a conversation. The only time we can talk is when we whisper to each other, standing still, like it’s a secret we’re trying to keep from the blue ball. As we continue our journeys at the Y during RBS, we learn that playing slower allows us to play smarter, and by playing smarter, we actually hit the ball back and forth. Also, I played a game of tennis with my tennis team and RBS definitely helped. The kids were impressed with my hits. But they weren’t as impressed as I was. 09.10.06 A Tennis Coach's Secret Part One They came to me in a rush. I was talking summer job opportunities with a fellow co-worker, when the athletic director and the head girls’ coach caught me off guard. “We’ve been looking for you,” the athletic director said. This had me worried. This past winter the PTO thought it funny to buy a plastic Trojan outfit (our mascot) so a teacher could wear it at different basketball games. I adorned the outfit numerous times, but when I turned around to face them I said, “If this is about the Trojan costume, I am not wearing it. It is made of plastic and it is too hot out.” I wasn’t going to rake the long jump pit as an assistant track coach while wearing molded plastic armor, a red cape and my black Teva sandals. They assured me that wasn’t it. Of all things, they asked if I would fill in as a head boys’ coach for a season. They said to think about it, but I went ahead and jumped at the chance – not because I knew the game, but because a little extra in the paycheck always helps. Now that the season has started, I realize now why they asked me to think about it. I can’t decide if the pros outweigh the cons. For one, I teach in one of the richest counties in the U.S. And when you say “rich”, what’s the first sport that comes to mind? No, not golf…although this sport is almost as boring. With no formal training, except one summer as a young adolescent, I accepted the head boys’ tennis coach position. Yes, this kid who went to one tennis match his senior year to cheer, without any clue there was such a thing as “tennis etiquette.” I cheered so loud that my friend got distracted and lost. Parents gave me “the eye” and I sat down, quickly learning what the etiquette was. Be quiet. Get bored. Watch the ball go back and forth. And as my athletic director says, “There’s no better place to learn than middle school athletics.” I still need to check out my copy of “Tennis for Dummies.” Part Two This is my third year at the middle school and parents do not intimidate me anymore. I know exactly what I’m doing, therefore all that anxiety has worn off. The minute they have a question about something, they are on my turf. Now I’m on their turf. Every time something happens I want to turn to one of the kids and ask, “what just happened?” Then I stop myself. I can’t give myself away. They already buy into my elaborate lie. I needed a good story to tell them when they asked the dreadful question: “Do you play?” “I did when I was your age.” “How long did you play for?” “Well, I didn’t make it on the tennis team in high school, so I started cross country, instead. I’m more of a runner.” “Did you see that double fault?” Or is it vault? Walt? Volley? What? “No, I just missed it.” “You were looking at the court.” “I have a cold.” “That doesn’t affect your vision.” “My glasses are bad. I need a new prescription.” “Don’t you wear contacts? I can see better out of my contacts.” “My contacts are broken. Oh look, it’s time for you to play. Run along now.” Then I shout at them while they play: Great overhand! Great underhand! Great volley! Look at that double Walt! 08.11.06 School Supplies More Expensive Than Useful It's August, and you know what that means - it's time to buy school supplies and books. And I had the pleasure recently listening to parents gripe about how much they pay for registration, and why can’t they just write one large check and drop it off, and why it can’t just come from their taxes like they do in Georgia, and why there isn’t enough wood to build another Ark and is it true that the law of gravity can be debunked? I want to tell those middle school parents, “lucky it’s not college…” Not only are they forking out money for book rental, but they still haven’t made that trip to Target to get all those school supplies, and not just notebooks, mind you… Regardless of the education system implanted here in the U.S., it seems that our lives are reliant on modern school supplies - mostly consisting of technology. School supplies these days aren't like our grandparents’ school supplies. "Back in the day when I walked uphill both ways to school in 100 inches of snow with rabid wildebeests chasing me, all I needed for school was my slate and chalk, one pencil that I used until it was a nub and a single sheet of paper." Pencil nubs and slate boards just don't cut it anymore for Generation X and Y. Turbulent minds are pounding out new technology daily for consumers to devour, and while the cost of college continues to rise (making it available for only Prince William), school stays expensive because of the "new" list of school supplies. Stab vampires with your pencils, use your notebooks as toilet paper and grind up all your chalk and sell it on the drug market because you're going to need the money. Here’s why: These days, before we start school, we need to get our lives prioritized. Schools are beginning to demand incoming undergrads to come prepared with laptop computers. It can be the fancy MacBooks that are ready to work out of the box with all that podcasting, blogging, music downloading, you-mean-I-actually-have-to-use-this-for-work?, or they’re on their way to CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. looking around for that Toshiba laptop that requires the user to scan their finger prints before logging on for security purposes. What’s next? The iPod that requires a retina scan? The FlashDrive that won’t work unless we squeeze a pin-drop of blood on it for it to recognize our DNA? School supply shopping has become Mission: Impossible. This shopping supply list will detonate in 3.5 seconds…3…2…1… And modern students must e-mail their papers to their teachers and professors because paper is just so yesterday. Modern students need DVD players, mp3 players and Internet gaming to help them procrastinate; also, a student of psychology needs to counsel their friends by talking online. Modern students need Roller Coaster Tycoon, Halo 2, the Nintendo Revolution. Students need to purchase books for studies (each book costing that of our first born child), and recent books come with CD-ROMs that have most of the information on them - since the publishers know we don't read. It will go down to the youngsters who aren’t corrupted by all the technology, too. Soon, the book "Everybody Poops" will come handy with its own CD to plug in and play. “Jimmy, click the orifice where the pooh comes from…” And although book publishers print out handy books to write our assignments down - nobody uses them, because we're all smart enough to recite the alphabet, feed and dress ourselves and of course, remember all our assignments without writing them down. But wait! We can't live in this world without a pocket PC or a personal organizer (digital of course) because our memories don't function without the latest Intel processor. And guess what? All of these handy new devices come with instruction epics written in fifteen languages because of the phenom called Global World Community Networking Virtual Media Outreach Integration - or something like that. We don’t have time to do homework, we have to push aside all of our studies to learn how to work our required gadgets. Who cares how to organize our files alphabetically? We want to know how Pong and Tetris work on our personal pocket gizmos and how to update our Myspaces during class. At least we're keeping our parents and Oompa Loompas in the tech industry with jobs. We can't sacrifice our stumbling economy to the evils of being frugal. Plus, who's going to pay for all of this junk? We need our parents. Remember, as students, we've maxed out about three credit cards by now. 08.05.06 School Is Different When Not A Student School started and a friend said “that sucks, I’m sorry, man.” He’s a sports reporter/photographer for a TV station in Evansville, Ind. and I said how awful it was that football season was starting. He laughed. Of course it wasn’t going to suck – he enjoys sports, even high school games, so regardless of the assignment, he’s going to enjoy it, especially now that he just left a dead end TV job in a town aptly named Hazard. He’s ready for his Friday Night Lights, while I prepare for the shortening days to the point of Monday Morning Brights. People often apologize for school starting: “But I’m not on the receiving end,” I say, “remember, I assign the homework.” Sadly, I also grade it – that is my paperwork and my own version of homework. I’m in a profession that allows jealousy – sometimes. It depends if I will have to take a job during the summers, or (in the future) jam-pack a Masters Degree on top of paper grading and lesson planning and teaching and coffee binging. The two-months off, even if I have a job, is nice. It was either that, or working for a small town newspaper with limited vacation days. Years ago when I brought the notion up about changing from a news-ed. major (that of reporting fires, drunk-driving accidents, selling my soul to an editor, becoming addicted to cigarettes, drinking too much booze, over-stimulating myself with espresso shots and Red Bull, etc.) to a life of education, my dad worried that there was no money in education. And as a current teacher, we continue to worry about that… While waiting for a seat at one of those common steakhouses with the peanut-shell carpet, I realized one of those jean-totin’ waiters was a future version of me – working a second job. Reporter by day and then I would moonlight as a waiter. After the waiter passed me, I looked at my dad with pleading eyes. He was afraid I wouldn’t make much as an educator, but I reassured him when I told him the beginning salary for a reporter: $19,000. I changed my decision based on many factors, but when I did find out the starting pay of a reporter, I quickly applied for my PRAXIS test so I could apply to the Teachers’ College. I didn’t want to strip on the side for gas money. Although, since gas prices are reaching $3+, I may have to start stripping on the side nonetheless. I better call Bob for that bikini wax, although they do have Nair for men now. I had no clue what I was doing, however, and I needed to find direction. So I went to the guru of journalism education at the end of my sophomore year in college and talked to him about changing my major. I was going from something I had been doing for years: coming up with story ideas, asking people questions, writing down their answers, writing a story, then starting all over again. It was frightening to think that I would be doing something different. I met with Bob. Bob wasn’t too convinced that I was a good candidate for the major. Bob tried to talk me out of switching my major because I wasn’t sure of myself and what I was getting into. Bob didn’t have a degree in Journalism, or Journalism Education for that matter, I mean, really, he was an English teacher. Plus, Bob had a saggy face, yellowed teeth and a personality that made prunes vicious, and I didn’t have the personality to be a teacher? Luckily, he quit and I worked with someone entirely different. But Bob told the new guy about me and how I wasn’t teacher material. I guess I sorta proved Bob wrong. I was accepted into a mentor program with only 2½ years experience. I’m going to be the guiding light for new teachers! I…uh…is this a good thing? I don’t want to ruin them. New teachers are fragile. Alas, school is almost in session for plenty of grade-school kids, college students and those pursuing educations higher than a master’s degree. It’s a groan. It’s a sigh. The pool’s closing. The book bags are aggravating scoliosis. The dress code is broken. The detentions are doled out. Now that school has started, it sucks for a lot of people. But not me. &n | ||||||
