Caustically Optimistic

Cataclasite, Arizona

Disneyland is ostensibly the happiest place on Earth. I was asked to chaperone a field trip there and I feared that it wouldn’t be the happiest place on earth as a teacher-on-duty. Added to the stresses of standing in long lines in the hot sun while other people’s toddlers fuss and their teenagers grope each other would be the rigors of being a teacher on a field trip. There would be a sick kid, the teenagers groping each other would be ours and there would be the strong possibility that someone would be lost or stolen or would break or steal something. I took the assignment because I knew a good story would come out of it but I didn’t know the story would happen before we even left our own backyard.

We were traveling to California by bus, along Interstate 10 and I knew that something good happen but my karma was forecasting something happening at Disneyland; an incident involving vomit or maybe a sunburn/dehydration combo – even an incident at the contest our students were going to be competing at. I knew the buses could break down but if they did I was pretty confident they wouldn’t break down near a town.

The bus didn’t break down but the driver was a professional - something she iterated many times – and she noted a problem and stopped before it became a disaster. I was not on that bus, I was on another – had I been on that bus the driver would have failed to notice and we would have been in a horrific accident. We did, however, pull into the magical land of Cataclasite, Arizona*.

I knew we were in someplace special when I stepped off the bus at the truck stop and saw a sea of gleaming cars on cinder-blocks – my picture didn’t come out well and I am really disappointed because it was truly, truly beautiful. The cars were older models, mainly from the Seventies but some from the Eighties. There was also a great deal of old metal office furnishings letting me know that I was in Arizona’s Appalachia. I’ve been longing for Kentucky – the blue grass, the rolling hills, trees and the folksy people and I was excited that someone in Arizona had recreated the less inviting parts of home for me.

I got back onto the bus after talking to the teachers whose field trip it was and realized that the children, realizing their predicament had displayed their knowledge of literature to the crisis and had made someone their leader ala Lord of the Flies. I might be getting it wrong but I’m a history teacher and I tried to put Lord of the Flies out of my mind since I was voted, “Most likely to be Piggy.” On of my friend’s children had been made their king and he was sporting a new hairdo to demonstrate his tribal nature and dominance over the tribe.

I started a travelogue using my iPhone to communicate back to his mother the happenings of the trip, in the manner of a diary. Day One – One of the buses broke down, marooning us in Cataclasite, Arizona. Day Two – The Children have Gone all Lord of the Flies on us, and elected Grant their King. Day Three – We’re apparently in Kentucky. I thought this was terribly clever and was met with rave response by Grant’s mother but I didn’t know the half of it. We were at the truck stop of Cataclasite and not in Cataclasite proper. We would be limping into Cataclasite proper to have the bus fixed and the children would wait in their central business district (McDonalds, Burger King, gas station and a smattering of tourist oriented stores).

The kids were great but there was a store there that was flying an American flag – with John Wayne on it, a Canadian Flag, the Mexican Flag and the Confederate Battle Cross.

Now, I knew we were some place special when I saw the Confederate Battle Cross. I know that people view it as a symbol of many things besides racism, intolerance or a shameful period of our history but it reminds me that the Civil War was about States Rights – mainly the state’s right to make its own laws in regard to owning other human beings. I was surprised to see it flying in Arizona since Arizona wasn’t a state at the time. I’m always nervous when I see that flapping in the wind, in the back of your pickup or tattooed to your baby. It was then that I realized that perhaps we’d wandered into a version of West Virginia – since it doesn’t make sense for the Confederate Battle Cross to wave their either and reported, Day Four - We've wandered into the fourth ring of hell, a desert version of West Virginia.

Day Five – We’ve gone searching for food, we’ve found Burger King. Granted, I don’t like to eat at Burger King. I eat McDonalds, Wendy’s if I’m feeling fancy and Taco Bell if I want something exotic. I’m trash but Battle Crosses making me nervous I stayed with the pack. The Burger King was attached to a store so the kids who followed the parade of teachers were wandering in there and found Trucker Hats. Our leader on the trip, a teacher we’ll call Kerstin, bought a trucker hat to keep the sun off. Day Six: Kerstin attempts blending in with the locals to find a mechanic for the bus.

By this time we had gathered the children in an area I was calling, “the village green,” because it was the only place to gather the children and the only place with grass. Children in Arizona have a inborn need to trample green grass when they see it because such a thing is an abomination in their eyes. We found ourselves across the street from the Confederate Canadian Embassy and a few of us decided to cross the street and see what was in it.

Day Seven: We arrive at the Confederate Canadian Embassy in hopes they'll help us. The Confederate Embassy was something special. I am sure it has a proper name and wasn’t actually an embassy or consul for a country that doesn’t exist but it fit well into the story that we had stumbled upon such a thing. Everything in Arizona is dusty but the merchandise in this store had that dust found only on things have been sitting idle near frying bacon for a long time. You could buy underwear, souvenirs of the town and flags of the surrounding countries, the United States with John Wayne on it as well as “Open” and “Welcome” flags. Oh, you could also buy a Confederate Battle Cross – which we passed on. I initially though the flag with John Wayne on it was Willie Nelson – had it been Willie I would have gotten EVERYONE I KNOW a flag. That would have been awesome.

This store however was scary but nicely complimented by the store next to it selling alcohol and tobacco with the wooden Indian. There are times when I can tell I’ve spent a lot of time in Kentucky and others when I know deep down in my heart I’m a Hebrew from the East Coast. This was one of them. Day Eight: The Natives have fixed our bus, and point us out of their town after passing the peace pipe – which we passed on. Seriously, we don’t know where they’ve been.

Regrettably, our buses were in fine working order after only three hours in Cataclasite and we were on our way to the competition and ultimately Disneyland. Back on the bus Kerstin said, prophetically, “that was a blogger’s dream – you probably enjoyed that more than Disneyland.”

*There is no Cataclasite, Arizona but I’m hoping that no one in Quartzite, Arizona – the town this took place in – will find this on a search engine we’ll call, “Google” and become offended.

False Starts

I decided this week to start writing my novel again. My computer has so many versions of this novel that I am ready to title it, “False Starts.” I have written a book before. I have seen it published. I can do this. For some reason it is nerve racking as talking to your crush was in seventh grade. I know I can do it; I just don’t want to do it.

The first step for me when endeavoring to start and finish a new writing project is to get a new notebook. I have been shopping around for the right notebook for sometime. It has to be small enough to fit in my pocket and big enough to be useful. It has to be affordable for a teacher but sufficiently expensive for me to take care of it. I conceit that someday people will study my writing and these notebooks will be windows into my mind. I found the notebook I was looking for at a Borders at the Biltmore Fashion Park this week; I am finally, officially ready to start writing.

The last bit of finding the right notebook is seeing if it will fit into my pocket with all the other things I carry around. In the summer I tend to wear cargo shorts but I spend most of my time in wool dress pants. This means finding a salesperson at the store to watch you stuff it in your pockets with all the other things you can’t live without – a list that grows with each passing year – if you do this unattended they assume you are stealing the notebooks. That might seem like an absurd thing to be accused of stealing, a good notebook starts around ten dollars, which is in and of itself absurd.

Carrying a notebook around is something that I am notorious for in my small circle of family and friends but something I haven’t done in Arizona, as I have not been seriously writing. There was a time when people around me were terrified about the contents of those little notebooks and I will admit to scribbling the Preamble to the Constitution into it when I wanted to strike fear into people’s hearts. My Mother has rules about when, where and how the notebook can appear.

I took the idea from Ernest Hemmingway, who told me to always have something to write in because you never know when an idea is going to come to you. Hemmingway is one of my favorite authors and until recently a role model. Emily has persuaded me to model myself after Mark Twain instead. They, along with Flannery O’Connor, are considered the finest craftsmen of our language. O’Connor is clearly my favorite but she’s awkward on good days and creepy on the bad ones, everyone who knew Hemmingway hated him and he spent so much time where no one spoke English with good reason contrasted against the social adept, respected and funny Mark Twain. I think that I am actually the product of O’Connor and Hemmingway; I might be their love child. It would explain a great deal.

Notebook in hand I am ready to face this book; write it out of me. Now I just need to make sure I don’t launder the Great American Novel (again), lose the Great American Novel (again) or have my ideas stolen when someone pilfers my notebook, reads and interprets the contents incorrectly and then shares the (mis)information with the world.

disambiguation

I have been thinking about my friend in Southern California who is trying to weird his way out of jury duty and stumbled upon my blog in his endeavor for sound advice. I feel like Master Yoda when he had to admit, “Strong am I in the Force, but not that strong.” Getting out of jury duty is something that is not beyond my powers, normally, but I don’t know that I could weird out a Southern Californian. I am not sure that I am willing to go there – if you are counting Orange County – anywhere else in the Union and they wouldn’t even bother calling me in.

Hopefully he is so normal, so Midwestern, that the people who are picking the jury are put off or suspicious. Indeed, that is what I would do! I would act like Jed to be spared my duty as a citizen to sit in judgment of others. Honestly, after the Revolution I was going to rename California, “The People’s Republic of Chaos Bean,” but she insists that we hasten its plummet into the ocean. She would never let me rename it after her. What does one do to get out of jury duty in California? I suppose you have to go all Minnesota on their ass and pray that it works.

I don’t know why people want to get out of jury duty but I will tell you that I forgot how to end that thought because Suburban Island sent me a link to something on the YouTube, which is nearly as distracting as Wikipedia. I can spend days in Wikipedia following link after link to more and more useless information. The rest of this post, which started out as an essay about getting Jed out of jury duty will be one random thing after another.

The kids at school aren’t allowed to use Wikipedia; the Librarian gets all Eva Braun about it and won’t let them near it. Its right up there with tobacco and alcohol – the teachers can have it and in many cases NEED it but they cannot have it because they are not mature enough to handle the stuff – its too strong for their developing minds. I can tell the students have been sneaking sips of it at lunch, as well as before and after school because they’ve asked me to disambiguate things for them that I am talking about. They insist that George Clinton from Parliament and the fourth Vice-President of the United States cannot be the same person. I insist that they not question me or ask for disambiguation; it’s incorrigible and not a little rude.

I guess I was talking about jury duty being a responsibility of citizenship, but that’s what you get for registering to vote. If you didn’t give the government your information they wouldn’t use it. Do you see Jimmy Hoffa serving jury duty? Exactly. We’re talking about the same government who cannot find a six-foot Arab man on dialysis and needed the help of the Mexican Army in cleaning up after a Hurricane because they cannot (and still haven’t). I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near any of their court cases much less have my name tacked onto it.

A clerical collar might get you off in this situation but if you want to be on the jury I’d suggest Mickey Mouse ears, you’d complete the outfit. I wouldn’t admit that all your knowledge of the law came from Law and Order and Wikipedia (as most of mine has) unless you’re looking for a job in the Justice Department and can round out your resume with, “partisan hack.”

Essentially, Sarah and I live by the motto that, “we are not here to help, only to observe and pass judgment.” While jury duty does seem like a great way to do just that I resent the limited parameters to which I must channel my thoughtfully, considered opinions. I could not have sat in judgment of O.J. Simpson and not said something about Marsha Clark. I could not have sat in judgment of Martha Stewart without commenting on the absurdity of the whole trial that to this day continues to upset me. Until I can interrupt the trial with random questions and arbitrary comments (okay: glib, capricious, awkward, and peculiar comments). I want nothing to do with your legal system. Eccentric is just a nice way of saying, “freak show.” If I was on the jury and awake for the trial I would be booted for shouting, “boring,” “weak,” or otherwise heckling the participants or treating it like church and catching up on my sleep.

A jury is to be made up of someone’s peers and I am highly insulted that the government would think that I was a peer to someone so sloppy as to be caught, or conversely that they think I am a peer to a criminal at all – although I can only imagine the feelings of indignity one would feel seeing me on their jury.

I hope I am never in a situation where my fate hangs in the balance to be decided by a jury – much less of my peers, should they be found – and know that these twelve men and women were incapable of finding a reason to get out of jury duty.

I don’t what know you’re looking for

The other day I came home from work and found an email from a friend trying to get out of jury duty, apparently if you Google, “clerical collar,” and “jury duty” this page can be found in the top ten. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that everyday someone is looking for real information or guidance and gets directed here. If you Google a girl I went to college with this is the third hit that comes up (after two pertaining to her real job) and it is my hope for her that she enjoys that job because if her next prospective employer does Google search they will remain a prospective employer. I don’t know what these people do all day, but I have a job. It reminds me of a few classes I took in high school and a lot of classes I teach in junior high: I don’t know what you’re looking for.

Picture it, Fort Knox, 1996; I was standing the parking lot of my high school for a creative writing class I was taking. My high school bestowed upon me the great honor of being in their exclusive class for students who had shown aptitude in language. I, too, find this surprising but there I was. I had just decided that I would forgo a career in law and become an English teacher (summers off, short work day, check minus, check, check plus). I was watching my creative writing teacher while she conducted our class as if I were looking for clairvoyance.

We were supposed to be looking for inspiration for writing so the teacher had taken us outside to be with nature; we were doing this in January in the parking lot. Like the Chaos Bean I am indigenous to New York and the simple act of not having a roof over your head means you are roughing it in nature. The woman picked up snow – off the blacktop – and held it to the sun, letting it fall into her face. I looked at her and saw my future.

I looked over at my friends Tennessee and Dexter who were also mixing their features between suppressing, “LOL,” and, “WTF?” When I get together with Tennessee and we talk about the old days, this always comes up. The creative writing teacher had a heart of gold and was one of the few caring teachers at that school but she was wacky.

“Oh my God. I am going to spend the next forty years of my life making an ass of myself.” If you’re lucky, you’ll find a career that uses your God-given talents as I have. Not everyone is as blessed as I have been. Many of my friends are successful in business, medicine and law and have to suffer through vacations in Europe and swimming pools in their homes that are not Olympic-sized! Others will even retire before they are sixty-five, move to Florida and be forced to do things like golf all day and sale around on tiny boats.

I, on the other hand, will get to die at my desk. A reward few receive in life that I will gladly take on. My temporal reward for my effort will not be luxuries or early retirements. My reward will be that somewhere former students will gather (I like to think that they’ll form support groups) and talk about the madcap and mayhem that happened in my classroom. Hopefully, it ruins a few Google searches too.