Caustically Optimistic

moon landing

Casey and I have had an adventure in Phoenix every weekend following my escape from bondage in Egypt.

Today we visited where all the clothes taken away from people on What Not To Wear are taken. It was frightening. First, the place is called, “Last Chance,” which sounds like the name for a way station between Phoenix and some other place that was only meant to be a gas station between New York and Los Angeles. When you’ve reached Chicago you really, really have reached the edge of civilization and should turn around. Second, trolls, hobgoblins, and Al Sharpton’s ex-wives infest the place. If you have seen the 1930s version of, “A Christmas Carol,” (Suburban Island knows the version of which I speak), this is where they take Ebenezer’s stuff to sell it after he dies and the same women work there, too. Scary.

Casey is brave or stupid. She took off her shoes and socks and tried on the shoes there. While I wouldn’t file this under, “sex without a condom,” it does go under, “answering the phone when your parents aren’t home.” I would be a little more critical but we know someone from the gym who claims to buy underpants at Goodwill. Last Chance is in the deepest level of shopping hell, beneath Wal Mart and the Dollar Store: this is where the Mullets go for the tube tops. No, I couldn’t get a clean shot of them but we saw it.

After this we went to Old Navy (shopping hell, level three) after this, not as much an adventure, but I did manage to buy a shirt that looked like everything else I already own and another shirt I will wear once (if that) and then pass off to my father in hopes of stealing it back after my mother irons it for him. We also had a nice conversation with another teacher who didn’t get that Casey is Mexican in particular or that we live in Mexico in general before proceeding to trash them. We excused ourselves before they started in on the Jews because Casey is so much nicer than I am.

Casey and I agree on few things that are questioned in politics or history; Casey doesn’t believe anything she reads or sees but I believe it all. One thing we do agree on is the Moon Landing being a hoax. You cannot sell me on the fact that our government, a monument to ineptitude, landed men on the Moon. I know that Buzz Aldrin will punch you in the face if he hears you saying that but being beat up by an astronaut is on my bucket list, so he can bring it on. Casey proved this was a hoax last weekend when we went to Scottsdale and parked where they filmed the moon landing. It is now used as overflow parking.

I wasn’t happy about it because I had just gotten my car back from being fixed but we need my car to sneak into Scottsdale because poor people aren’t allowed in that part of Arizona after dark. Casey wanted to go see a band, but we were too late for that band and instead got to see a cover band. The first thing I am doing after the Revolution is sending all the cover bands to Siberia. I realize that they are ‘talented,’ but if they were talented they would write their own songs. Apparently, we paid a cover charge to watch forty-year-olds play guitar hero and belt out, “Stacey’s Mom.” To move around the club where we were watching the cover band I had constantly recreate Chaos Bean’s parting of the Douche Bag Sea, even saying, “excuse me douche bags,” to get passed people. Contrary to popular myth (and tourist guides) the people of Scottsdale do not answer to Barbie and Ken.

I would go much more medieval on their asses than sending them to Siberia but someone is passing this information on to people without senses of humor so it can be taken out of context. One should note that my mentor teacher’s answer to many questions when was a neophyte was, “Molotov Cocktail,” followed by copious assurances that the string of arsons that preceded her fifteen years in Paris are not connected events – even if they fit the statue of limitations for that crime at that time. I was born eccentric but well trained in being crazy, batshitcrazy.

That in mind, Chaos Bean had better have won the lottery on Saturday because I am leaving Phoenix soon but Louisville might not be far enough from my troubles. I taught the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance – if getting the kids passed the idea that the Renaissance Fair had nothing to do with history let alone the Renaissance wasn’t a Herculean task, nothing is – and this only reinforced my desire to be an expatriate. Emily and Nedenia, of course, are on stand-by for this eventuality. Phoenix needs Casey, she’ll have to stay here. It’d be boring without her.

it ain't a party

or, Pride Cometh

In my age group at work we revere the science teacher on my team of teachers. We believe in the awesome power of Gretchen, we know that she can accomplish any task and deliver any need; if she cannot someone who can owes her a favor. We do anything she tells us and she knows we would follow her wherever she led us. My students are especially keen to the fact that she can convince me to reverse any ruling or modify any assignment.

Naturally, when I had a flat tire she was the first person I thought to call for instructions because my knowledge of automobiles starts and ends with, “if anything is wrong you are too stupid to fix it yourself.”

The first thing we need to do was to put on the spare wheel. This is not a difficult task, we had never done it but the math teacher advised us at lunch to take the hubcap off, jack the car up, switch out the tires and lower the car back to earth. Armed with this knowledge we collected Gretchen’s dog after school and went to fix my car.

When I found the tire flat I couldn’t find the jack or the tools to take the tire off my car. This time we were able to locate the tools – Volkswagen hid the tools three places in the car so a thief couldn’t make off with my tires. This makes sense until you consider that they’d need my keys to find these tools anyway and if they had my keys they’d take the whole car and these tools are sold at any car parts store. All this hide-and-seek did was serve to frustrate our efforts or save me from fixing the tire myself in an ignorant hurry. If anyone is thinking of stealing my tires please rest assured that we have put all the tools in one place so that if I am ever in this situation again you can find them quickly.

Taking the hubcap off the car was the most difficult task because the mighty Germans who built my car or whoever rotated the tires last put the nuts on so tight it was nearly impossible for this girly man to get them off – insert innuendo here – and Gretchen even asked passing children to help us who asked how much we were going to pay them. We decided to do it ourselves after making remarks about, ‘kids these days.’ I found that standing on the tool that takes off the nuts wouldn’t cause them to budge but if I jumped up and down on it would not only hurt like hell, it would budge the nuts. I’m sure I looked ridiculous but we’re starting with an adult man who cannot change a tire so up is the only way to go from there.

Once we had gotten the nuts wound off we had to jack up the car. Figuring out the jack took us forever. It was at this point that I felt like I was on candid camera. Two adults with master’s degrees should be able to figure out a jack. It was like one of those I.Q. puzzles from Cracker Barrel you play with while you’re waiting for your biscuits. After figuring it out we jacked the car up took the flat tire off the car. At this point Gretchen and I were ready to congratulate ourselves because we have taken the tire off the car. The hard part is over, all we have to do is put the new tire on.

Apparently, my car doesn’t have a tube but an extra tire to put on the car and we didn’t jack the car high enough to put a full tire on. We tried to jack the car higher but that didn’t work but Gretchen, being a science teacher, knew that if we had the jack in a different spot it would be high enough to fix. She proceeded to yank the jack out from under my car and drop it onto the ground. Apparently, when my mother or Jesus said, “Pride cometh before the fall,” they weren’t speaking figuratively.

No one was hurt and I remained calm. I wasn’t angry but I’m surprised I didn’t lose my cool or emulate what Chaos Bean calls our mother’s “atomic freak-out.” Sure, untold damage had been done to my car and it could cost a small fortune to fix but it wasn’t a big deal because Gretchen was there and if Gretchen can’t fix a problem she knows someone who can.

She calmly picked up her phone, called a few people and cancelled her bunko date and summoned a friend who runs a car dealership to help us. We collected her dog and went into my apartment to wash our hands and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Gretchen’s bunko partner came to my apartment as well, and we took Cooper on a trip around the neighborhood looking for iced-tea and a place to have dinner after the car was looked at.

Gretchen’s friend arrived after much looking for and not finding iced-tea. He was able to fix the car in five minutes. He changed the tire as if he were brushing his teeth. Granted, he had a jack that could lift William Howard Taft or Carney Phillips and power-tools but he also knew what he was doing. He also fixed whatever was broken when we dropped the car on the group.

Whether it was true or not, he told us the jack was defective and not intended for my car. If we had the right tools (as he did) we wouldn’t have needed his help and could have done it ourselves. He also suggested investing in Triple-A.

To thank Gretchen and her retinue for their help I was to buy them all dinner at a local pizza restaurant – which is the best pizza I have had since I was studying art in Italy. I am a pizza snob, despite being allergic to the core ingredients of pizza, and not only approve of this pizza but said the crust was as good as the crust my father (a chef) makes. This is very chi-chi pizza and I normally would pass on it but it is, ‘that good,’ good enough to be featured on, ‘stuff white people like (dot com).’

The friend who swooped in – canceling the goings-on of his own life to fix my own – paid for our dinner. I tried to pay. Gretchen tried to pay. Gretchen’s bunko friend tried to pay but the car savior paid for dinner; this played into the theme of a week where I get a flat tire on the same day I win a trip to Disneyland and where Gretchen has the incredible power to not only fixing things, but also making them into a party because it ain’t a party until something gets broke.

flat tire

I woke up this morning knowing that today would be a good day. I had made my lunch, ironed my clothes and gotten everything ready for my lesson the night before and I even went to bed early. After taking my time getting ready for the day I wandered down to my car with big plans for the day – big plans being breakfast at McDonalds and Chinese food for lunch – and started to drive to work hearing a funny noise that I decided was bad news so I pulled over.

Now, I am a hypochondriac. Every ache, pain or naturally occurring mass of melanin is cancer; every creak is more arthritis, every pang of sensation in my teeth is some tragic infection that is going to spread through my cranium and infect my brain. This hypochondria extends to my car, my refrigerator and any appliance worth over fifty dollars that doesn’t belong to me. I knew in the back of my head (the one infested with a bacterial infection) that it was nothing; it was probably hearing two dimes bang against a pen cap in the ashtray or a dead hobo in the trunk. I can summon a menace with very little evidence and self-diagnose any number of maladies with all the authority of the people who prepare the national intelligence estimate for the President of the United States. I was sure it was nothing.

It was a flat tire.

I returned to my apartment content in the knowledge that a flat tire is easy to fix. You take out the jack, jack up the car, take the old tire off and put the spare tire on. I am just guessing this – I haven’t changed a tire since a Clinton was president (don’t remember which) – and didn’t get to test this because despite my car coming nicely equipped at a monthly payment that exceeds my rent and utilities I could find the spare but not the jack.

Let’s be honest: I wouldn’t know what to do if the tools were clearly labeled even if I could have found them. Some nice person who happened by offered to help me because I am clearly not a real boy but he couldn’t find the jack either. I realized that it wasn’t the time to read a book and figure out how to change a tire anyway so I used the features on the iPhone that everyone said I would never need and summoned a cab, which arrived in less than three minutes. I would have been remiss to change a tire when there was no one to photograph me making a mess and fool of myself.

While I was waiting the three minutes I made a few frantic phone calls and text messages to the school secretary and my coworkers when a beat up Ford minivan arrived to take me – at great expense – to work this morning. This van had no air-conditioning and was operated by a woman who fulfilled many stereotypes about Kentucky that I loathe and miss. She reminded me of a woman from the town my parents live in, Old Pop’s Wife – which is (of course) what the woman is known as since she is Old Pop’s Wife. No one knows her real name; we only know she is batshitcrazy.

This cabby was batshitcrazy. She would talk to herself and then she would talk to me, and then back to herself, and would tell herself how rude it was for me to interrupt her. Mainly she talked about how it was stupid, curse-word stupid that I lived so far from where I worked and it didn’t matter that I live where I live for next to nothing, it is still stupid.

I had to tell her how to get to my school even though Phoenix is laid out on a grid and everything is easy to find if you know the grid. A cabby, even a batshitcrazy one, should know the grid. She was afraid to get on the freeway and wanted to take another route to school but realized that the grid was perfect but rudely and frequently interrupted by mountains that would have been leveled by now but God put mountains there so rich people could look down on us from them.

She started crying because I didn’t have enough cash and would have to use my debit card and was mortified to realize that the credit slips (I love the 80s) were coffee stained and became flustered all over again.

I gave her a big tip. I had a flat tire; she had a lot more going on than that. She probably isn’t batshitcrazy but smart enough to know the first rule of teaching – if they think you’re crazy they won’t try anything.

Tomorrow the science teacher, her boyfriend and I will unravel the mystery of changing a tire and we’ll complete a little more of my education. Someone who is thirty should know how to change a tire. Hopefully, that is an adventure worth having.

or lunch is free

Once a week we get fast food for lunch – there is one day a week where its so horrible that the benefits of nutrition are outweighed by my need to outweigh most of America and the other teacher’s need for comfort. We only have thirty minutes to get around the drive-through, back to school, and eat. This isn’t as easy as it sounds and we were going to do this as our talent for the school talent show but our idea was cruelly rejected so we boycotted the talent show.

Monday was our fast-food day as we forgot our lunches and that we’re going to a wedding on Saturday, or are in it. We threw caution to the wild, hopped in the car and sped off toward fast food. Well, we sped for the first ten feet out of the school grounds to be impeded by a parade of soft peddling old folks in a caravan to our destination and then were stuck behind the person who professed not knowing what they sold as they hem and hawed in the drive through line.

Having waited we had our order down, “Number six, plain, diet coke, number six, regular, diet coke, value junior cheeseburger deluxe, value fries, chocolate-y dessert that isn’t a shake but will land me on some litigious corporate lawyer’s inquisition Google search.” They got the order down quickly and right – a surprise considering this fast food line is a disaster that these Pavlov’s dogs haven’t unlearned.

We get to the first window, where you pay, to hear, “Could you repeat your order.” Which I repeated and we – knowing our order – knew our bill before he did. Okay, one of us is a Math teacher. Paying was difficult because the person looked at this new and strange thing called a ‘debit card,’ that they’ve taken without question – even on days when the person on it is clearly a forty-year-old Italian woman and I am clearly a thirty-year-old Hebrew. We get to the second window and they tried to scoot us along without our food and finally asked if everything was all right, to which I asked, “Is your corporate motto, ‘we’re retarded or your lunch is free?’”

I would bring my lunch more often and cut this out of my life but it restores my vigor for the day. I don’t need the lunch as much as I need two reminders: I’ve worked fast food, it sucks & I have a lot of work to do to get my students ready to ask if people want fries with that. It isn’t as easy as it looks, apparently.

caustictomologist

I just had a haircut. While I was getting the haircut I realized that the person cutting my hair is always my best friend, therapist and career councilor. This person knows me inside and out and at the same time has a hard time getting my hair right.

I realize that this is a part of the job – they chat you up and get you comfortable so you feel comfortable giving them a tip. This haircut’s exception was the person cutting my hair had a limited idea of what personal space is and kept stopping to whisper things to me, which was really creepy. It wasn’t the whisperings but the personal space issues which was funny considering she was near my head with razors, clippers, scissors and what ended up being enough hair product for a television news anchor.

I appreciated the fact that she was so free with her advice. I have a lot of friends who reserve judgment and try not to give advice; I am also this friend because I really hate saying, “I told you so.” Okay, I enjoy it but I don’t like not being listened to so I try not to say anything. Also, people really hate it when you say, “I told you so.” It’s just so tacky.

I wonder what gives haircutters such varied knowledge of the world to be able to dispense advice on any topic with authority. If they are so knowledgeable on everything why aren’t they doing something else? I refuse to believe that anyone enjoys touching the dirty hair of others, listening to their problems and getting a five-dollar tip. This must be what they learn in cosmetology school because no matter what I tell the person they do the same thing to my head every time.

This makes me wonder about all the people with mullets because if they’re cutting my hair the same way not matter what I ask for, mullets must be a haircutter conspiracy. My uncle has started cutting his own hair in the garage, which strikes me as a bit detritus de blanc but considering he had the beginnings of a mullet in high school I would cut my own hair too.

In then end, getting a therapy session, career advice, and a haircut is a great bargain. I would like more professional help and better looking hair but getting all of those things for under twenty dollars is priceless.

best, worst of times

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I have had so many things to write, but after each triumph or light moment there is a crushing defeat or heartbreak. It’s in the good times that we praise God; it’s in the bad times when we talk to Him.

Last Friday was the last Friday my friend was going to be at work. She had her baby on Monday so she will not be at school until a short eternity has passed. I am crass, shallow, inconsiderate, crude, foul mouthed and crabby but I do really adore all my friends and since I have so few I can’t have them wandering off. To bid her a fond fair-well we took her to lunch, which to teachers means ‘drive-through.’ While we were waiting in line a car pulled up behind us, ‘thumping,’ its music causing me to turn around and glare at the person playing it. This person happened to be a very old white man and not the teenager we expected. However, old or young, I didn’t want or need him to shake the baby out of my friend using Bone Thugs in Harmony. The teacher driving the car asked me what I wanted after this and I rattled off my order ending it with, “and I want you to order that in a German accent. She did it. Bone Thugs in Harmony didn’t shake the baby out of the womb but I think the teacher’s Germanic entreaties for Taco Bell came closer.

Last Friday was also First Friday. It amazes me that everyone I mention that to thinks I was in their town – as if all the hippies in a city gathering on someone else’s property to display their handiwork and politics was an original concept to Phoenix or Pittsburgh. The art is always predictable and the politics are as generic and mass-produced as the culture they counter. No matter my support of Senator Obama or budding progressivism the angry little Archie Bunker who lives in my heart comes out to play every time I see a Caucasian college kid from the suburbs with dreadlocks and without deodorant and they tell me how to live my life. Damn the man? I am the man. Who do you think you’re talking to kid? Oh, that’s right! The person whose hard work underwrites your freedom to be ignorant and whose tax dollars pay for your impertinence.

It doesn’t help that I was walking around listing how exactly we had died and gone to Stuff White People Like (dot com) and at some points telling the artisans and crafters this as well. Apparently, air conditioning is not something that white people like as many of the galleries were warm enough to cook in – just not animals or their by-products – and I did tell one artist that I was leaving because, “its getting hot in here, we have to leave before we take off all our clothes.” Remarkably, he was not one from the demographic that listens to bands that not exist yet before anyone else knew about them and recognized the song lyric that I quoted.

The oddest moment of the night came when, while waiting for part of Casey’s entourage to catch up with us, someone picked me out of the group to ask: “do you know where to buy marijuana.” I thought he was joking at first and was slow to realize that he wanted some marijuana and honestly believed I could procure it. I can only assume that he was already high because no thinking person could look at me and ask that. He actually asked where he could buy ‘herb,’ and I almost told him to go to Safeway or Albertsons.

Then, once Casey’s entourage gathered around her she dispersed them and we went to see live music and to imbibe liquids. Remarkably, that’s what I did later on Saturday when I went to my friend’s church with them at a place I call, “Karaoke for Christ.” Church would have been unremarkable except for the fact that I noticed that I was disciplining my friends eighth grader the whole time, “put your feet down,” “stand up,” “take off the Polish bra,” “sing along.” Then because this boy is so excited by the chance to go to church he nearly wets himself, he asks to use the bathroom – and his parents say, “no” because he wanders to the bathroom and returns when its time to leave. I was fine until I realized that I could not in good taste go to the bathroom either and that is when nature called. Remarkably, nature hung up the phone as soon as worship was over.

My friend from work who takes me to church had her baby on Monday, excusing her from standardized testing – which went off this week. If given the choice between giving birth and administering state tests I would take having the baby. Sure, its been described as squeezing a double-decker bus out of your body but they also drug you to high heaven so it can’t be that bad. I have no explanation as to why administering a test is stressful – its just one of those things you have to do to get. Then crazy things happened: birds infested my classroom, the A/C broke – no small matter in a classroom in Arizona with windows that don’t open, and someone stole my candy.

Cindy and I visited her when he returned home and brought the family dinner, that’s a story for another day. I thank God that her baby was cute and we didn’t have to lie about it. It was also nice that they baby was awake and active when we were visiting. Its always fun to visit a baby that sits there, lethargic or is sleeping.

Through all this, and with no foreseeable results, I have been going to the gym every day. I am off to the gym again.

sending postcards

The best teaching advice I have ever received should have come from my grandfather who, as a fifty-year veteran of the New York City Public Schools, is a treasure trove of information. Most of his information is okay but the best teaching advice I have ever received came from a teacher’s aide who moonlighted as a prison guard. She told me, “they have to think you’re crazy, once they think you’re crazy they’ll stay in line.” Normally, a non-teachers pretension to being educators galls me. But, this woman’s advice was sage.

So, really her advice to me was, “quit hiding it,” she just didn’t know it. Luckily, I teach really great kids who know right off the bat that I am – to extend the metaphor – wandering left field. It helps that I teach summer enrichment classes and our orientation program to get the word out, “He isn’t right.”

This is made more exigent by the fact that I work with great, textbook examples of perfect teaching. Examples of this behavior would include, crawling under a desk to talk face to face with Mr. Too-Cool-For-School (their hyphenated names are out of control) and talking through the space in the brick wall between my classroom and the English teacher classroom next to mine. This prompted one of the French-named girls to comment, you are not in prison – stop talking through the wall and pick up the phone.

People in prison have nicer bathrooms and better lunches.

I am so lucky to work with someone who tolerates what has blown way passed, “Idiosyncrasy,” misses the exit for, “Just-Plain-Weird,” and crashes into the water tower in “Three-Ring-Circus.”

During my first year of teaching one of the kids asked if he was frustrating and instead of saying, “no,” which was polite, or “yes,” which would have been the best way to be honest I said, “yesterday, when I was at the gas station I wanted to douse myself in gasoline and light myself on fire – but its two dollars a gallon and I couldn’t afford it.” Another little girl asked the special education teacher with whom I worked with in the room whom was also my mentor, “Did he just go there?” She said, “Honey, he’s been there. He’s sending postcards back now.”

The English teacher is going on maternity leave soon and we are changing the name of her class to “Scottish,” since that is where he sub comes from. Hopefully this venerable teacher will be able to handle the kids and me because she is all business and I usually end up getting the business from these people and the Scottish are not to be messed with. For people only familiar with Texans it is important to note that all Texans originate from Scotland and Texas would have been named Nova Scotia if it didn’t sound so fruity and hadn’t already been taken. This is born out by history and the fact that Texas love haggis.

Tragically for the teacher going on maternity leave she will miss my daily antics and will literally be receiving post cards describing what is going on as she lives in upper Egypt and has no internet at home.