Caustically Optimistic

PB & AYFKM?

I’m looking for a new job because I am moving back to where my parents live. I keep having nightmares where my parents introduce me at church as their ‘failure to launch,’ while I would characterize myself as a ‘failure to nest,’ the idea of joblessness is leading to sleeplessness and tortured sleep. This was satiated by being finally certified in the Commonwealth and almost immediately getting appointments for interviews. I even received a job offer – which I turned down despite me job-related anxiety.

I am not claiming to be perfect but if I were writing to someone to be an English teacher at my school I would probably spell check the query email and have a peer proof read my work before making that crucial first impression. I also wouldn’t construct the e-mail in the form of a text message. I realize that I am BFF with the English teacher on my team and we TXT back and forth all the time, LOL and ROTFL sometimes ICFBTS and more OMG than I would like to admit but I know her and neither of us is interviewing the other for a job. I feel like responding with AYFKM? SRSLY? STFU. SRSLY? NFW! YFSMT? WTFIWWY? SRSLY? NFWAIWFYDA. TTFNMF. If you’re having trouble parsing that I am using Revised Modern New Jersey Text Messaging. I’m a mess, I shouldn’t judge.

Today, Michelle came to my classroom to help with a lesson – one of my favorite lessons. In this lesson the students write ‘functional text,’ which answers the question of ‘how are going to use this,’ because functional text (written directions) is the text most encountered in life. I expect this question when I am teaching History or Science but when I am teaching a core, skill based class like reading, writing, or math I am always shocked to get that question. I use this lesson to bring it home to the kids because no matter what you are doing in life you will be reading instructions and if you move up the heap you will be writing them as well. My lesson is pretty simple – so you can see the beauty in the comedy of it – the students write instructions on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for someone who has never done this before.

I had one good set of directions, a couple of mediocre ones and some truly terrible sets of instructions. After having written the instructions and submitting them for peer review the students were visited by Michelle’s class who used their directions to make the authors a sandwich.

A student who has obviously been in my kitchen trying to make a sandwich wrote my favorite. His instructions included sage advice like, “check the expiration date,” and, “if there are no clean knives using your finger is acceptable.” The girls in class – who are too few in number – all included ‘clean up your mess,’ and, ‘do not mix the peanut butter and jelly.’ This betrayed the fact that they had switched papers (as instructed) because they included the information.

Many of the boy’s instructions went along the lines of, ‘take two piece of bread, put the peanut butter and jelly on the bread, eat it.” The math students making their sandwiches dutifully took two pieces of bread, slammed the jars of peanut butter and jelly on top of them, and presented them to the boys to eat.

I should have been embarrassed but this is part of the learning process. They can rewrite their papers for increased credit. Writing requires constant revision; life is like writing because you are constantly revisiting, revising, and trying again. It was very brave of me to have Michelle into my class while my students were bearing the fruits of their labor and it was brave of Michelle to eat one of the sandwiches. I will eat anything.

So, what is the proper way to make a peanut butter sandwich? We use a very simple method:

1. Have your students ready by the door at least five minutes prior to the bell so you can get out to the parking lot quickly. Shoo them out the door as soon as the bell wrings. If you are me then you treat them as if they are the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division – we check, double check backpack readiness and I scream, “go, go, go!” as they leave the room.
2. As soon as the students clear the classroom, lock the door, and rush to the parking lot where Ashley has left the urban assault vehicle (UAV). Pregnant teachers sit in front, math teachers and men in the backseat. Buckle your seatbelt.
3. If it is not Ashley’s week to teach then you need to make sure that you have a driver picked before lunch and that they hit the curb on the way out of the parking lot, in the Wendy’s parking lot, and that you do not get behind any old ladies. You must be very careful because if something happens to Valerie, her children will be eaten by wolves or sold to gypsies.
4. Enter the Wendy’s drive through. Everyone should know what they want before you get to Wendy’s – this is important because we only have thirty minutes to do all this and eat and they will get the order wrong. McDonald’s is too far away and Taco Bell is slow.
5. Argue over who is paying or alternately how lunch will be paid for, this should be resolved before we get to the window where the scary toothless woman is waiting.
6. Have Valerie check the order because the driver cannot and Christopher will only start to eat your fries, he can’t get passed that part.
7. Return to school, avoid speed traps, and, yeah – that u-turn was totally illegal.
8. Valerie carries the drinks, Ashley carries the food, Christopher is a klutz and cannot carry anything as he will drop it.
9. Go to the bathroom.
10. Gossip, you won’t see other adults for hours.
11. Take you food back to your classroom because it’s fifth period and you have to teach.
12. Eat in front of the kids.

Other cautions:
1. Train new teachers on this BEFORE students arrive. Cindy was almost left behind too many times because she didn’t have the students out the door fast enough.
2. Do not take orders! They don’t pay you back and they slow us down.
3. Student teachers are not officially there to pick up lunch for us so we can sit down and eat like humans. Student teachers are interested in good evaluations and job recommendations. They'll fetch food if they know what's good for them.
4. If you get pulled over it will happen in view of students on the pasture. They will take your picture. You will be on MySpace before say, “norms.”

fortune cookie

I went to lunch with Michelle at Pick up Stix, a faux Asian restaurant being sued by Taco Bell for infringing on their patents – namely the ones on diarrhea and indigestion. Faux Asian food always comes with fortune cookies, which are a purely American invention. I had two cookies – because I am a glutton – and my fortunes in order were: “your financial situation will improve greatly,” and, “You will soon inherit a large sum of money.”

Now, my religious beliefs stand squarely against fortune telling. It always amuses me when someone who mocks my faith will at the same time give credence to a slip of paper in a cookie. If you think my religious is based on magic, prejudice, and superstition please don’t let me catch you believing in a cookie. Pick a narrative; stay consistent. While, I’m in this paragraph I will stay on the same topic and admit that I get excited about the fortunes I receive. I know they are as meaningless as a campaign pledge but I love to hear it. It’s whimsical and if you can’t have a little whimsy in your life, why read this?

The fortunes always set off a parlor game between Chaos Bean and I to see what will happen next with it. With the prophecy be self-fulfilling? Will it turn to garbage like the cookie that bore it? The first fortune – your financial situation will improve greatly – isn’t a stretch because I am a teacher looking for a new job and it is almost impossible for this not to come true. I made more in Connecticut working the McDonald’s drive-through than I was making teaching. It was the second fortune that started our game because it proposed a few good questions. We had to extrapolate who had money, was dying, and knew me enough to leave it to me, but didn’t know me well enough to know that I am loud, arrogant, often wrong, and generally disagreeable.

This was a riddle because Chaos Bean and I come from a long line of poor white trash. Amy might protest that we are not trash, “poor, not dirty,” but I would entreat her to speak for herself. Our family is the stuff of Jerry Springer. That we haven’t been on the show yet is astounding but I don’t have television so its entirely possible that someone in our family has indeed been on the show and I don’t know it. I doubt it, Chaos Bean would have recorded it and made sure I knew about it. Very little gets passed Chaos Bean.

I talked with our Aunt Stella about this and we narrowed it down to a relative who has been hoodwinked by the geography that separates us that I am a nice young man. This relative doesn’t have a lot of money but they are sitting on a property close enough to a major metropolitan center and the rail lines to it that their home would be worth something. I doubt that this winner is going to leave anything to me because while they think I am a nice, young man I haven’t been circling him like the sycophantic vultures that populate our family picnics. Let me be clear: I do not want this person’s assets but I am pretty that if I inherited the money that I would be challenged in probate where I would hold it until it was all gone.

If I did end up with any of their money I would do something with it to memorialize the person. Considering the person’s politics – he rushed to contribute the legal limit to George Bush before his wife died in 2004 - I would give all that I could to Barack Obama. If there was anything left I would have an abortion – that I cannot have an abortion doesn’t actually figure in to my calculus but I’m pretty sure that it is the most offensive thing I could do. I realize that the person won’t be around to be offended by my antics but I’m confident that that if I listened closely at night I would be able to hear him turning in his grave.

This is all a pipe dream, however. When I last saw him he was telling some misogynist joke about Senator Clinton, as if telling misogynist jokes or speaking ill of Senator Clinton were safe things to do around Chaos Bean or polite in general, and I replied that in our house we didn’t refer to her as Hillary – that’s disrespectful – but rather Senator Clinton or President-elect Clinton. I’m pretty sure that I revealed his worst fears for me, or any family member, – that we’ve escaped the bigotry of our upbringing and economic station. I’m certain that if this sunk through his thick skull that I would be off any list.

It was a fun game until someone let our mother in on it, she thought it was unseemly and ran further afoul of our faith than giving weight to the cookie in the first place. She also noted that we could all use a trip to Disneyland Anaheim more than the Obama Campaign needs money. I disagree, and so does Chaos Bean, we’d prefer Disneyland Paris.

Third Shift

When I was in college I took a May Term class. The college was in a town where there was little to do at night during the school year and this situation only got worse during the summers. During May Term we would hang out in the lounges a lot playing board games, often we got loud and one night we woke the Gorgons. Shaking the Earth, they stormed into the lounge and loudly announced, “It’s three in the morning and now I’m a/n [obscenity].” Julie’s eyes rolled right out of their sockets and Amy mustered the will to be diplomatic when she should have putting the kibosh on my mouth, I said, “Michael, you’re always a/n [obscenity].”

This story kept coming to mind during presidential campaign when we would see these ads where we were expected to believe that the one candidate or the other was going to be the best person to wake up at three in the morning. It occurred to me today, while talking to Julie, that I am awake at three in the morning. I know about the world; I’m pretty smart: I should answer the phone for the president. Then I realized that it wasn’t enough to just to answer the phone for the man but I should be making decisions as well so he doesn’t need to be woken up. I should be President of the United States, during third shift.

Betsy can be Third Shift Vice-President of the United States. We are both always looking for an interesting new job to do when teaching becomes boring. Teaching doesn’t pay well, no one appreciates us, and for those of who actually do our jobs we’re disliked intensely by our students. I shouldn’t use plurals on that because Betsy and I know the trick to do our jobs right and make the kids think that school is fun. You have no idea how hard it is to build yourself into demagogue, trick kids into thinking that school is fun, and you are cool.

I would rather be sitting around answering a phone at night, making important decisions, or at least politely, deftly telling people they can call back in the morning when the day President is around. As teachers we’re adept at making decisions, getting people to believe we know what we are talking about, and most important of all: passing the buck. This would also be a pretty inexpensive operation to run. I would need Julie, as an assistant, to assist but after that we would need very little of the perks of the daytime president.

Sure, we would want to use the bowling alley and the gym, and we would keep the kitchen busy but beyond that we would pretty cheap. You could double our teaching salaries and still not hit what you’re paying the President after you had taken care of the three of us. We wouldn’t need Secret Service protection and wouldn’t need the retinue of aides, a cabinet or a motorcade. We could even do this from Kansas City, Kansas and not tell anyone that we were the third shift President and Vice-President.

I’m up at this time anyway playing Canasta on Club Pogo, loading and commenting on pictures at Buzz Net, and filling my brain with Wikipedia. I am sure that Betsy could adjust her sleep schedule if she saw the salary and benefits package. Just the idea of not seeing kids – even when we took our hour lunch break at some all night Wendy’s, pretty much awesome. Honestly, beyond not seeing kids, you cannot beat going to work in your pajamas and not writing lesson plans.

So don’t worry America, when problems arise you can sleep well knowing that Betsy and I are watching the phones. I’m pretty sure nothing happens at three in the morning but you can rest assured if it does that we will handle it with the swift, knowledgeable professionalism of public school teachers. You seriously don’t want to wake someone up at three in the morning and expect them to make an important decision well. Its better to have someone awake and ready to make the important calls. You don’t need the president to be a/n [obscenity], you need a third shift president.

like a record, baby

Today I went to the dentist because I had a toothache for a few weeks now. I am renown for irresponsibility and caprice, but I am not cavalier about my dental health. I lost a filling a few months ago but didn’t want to get it fixed because I knew it would take time and I don’t take time for myself during the school year if it has to happen during the school day.

I knew that the missing filling would be a problem but I didn’t think it would be a root canal and when presented with the option I decided to just go ahead and get it done today. I didn’t need the time to think about it: why wait? If I waited I would have psyched myself out and then perhaps would have not done anything.

Many of you have had root canals and have told scary stories about them. My biggest fear was the bill – I’m a teacher and I don’t want to spend my summer money on something as lame as new teeth. I had no idea that I was in for medieval torture.

It annoys me when my students display the incorrigible and infectious habit of text-messaging others at inappropriate times. For some reason I felt this urge and during my surgery sent and received several text messages, fired off emails and read a lovely article about Senator Obama. This is a very, very rude thing to do while someone is trying to do work on your mouth. If Michelle had been there she’d have taken my phone away; she hates text messages that she is not the sender or recipient of. She knows we are talking about her. I also took a picture of myself.

Also, don’t go to the dentist after a long day of work and fall asleep in the chair. This apparently scares the hell out of people when they’ve recently pumped you full of enough drugs to tranquilize a rhinoceros – and not just the rare North American Birthday Rhinoceros - one of the big ones from across the seas. I am afraid of putting chemicals into my body that aren’t served on ice or out of drive-through windows.

After my nap I decided to fight sleep, which led the dentist to think I was terrified of what was happening. I was just glad my father wasn’t there. The few times he’s taken us to the doctor for any kind or procedure he’s commented that we have the same or similar tools at home. The dentist wasn’t assured of this until he took out all the equipment in my mouth.

This was really a terrible experience. I didn’t feel anything. I heard the drills. I felt the pressure of the procedure and saw other unidentifiable objects go in and out of my mouth without knowing what they were doing. Then there was the plastic tent they pitched in my mouth because the chemicals they were using to fix my tooth were not organic, Prius driving chemicals. The worst part was drooling all over myself. I’m not going for “attractive” but neither am I going for, “grandpa.” That’s okay, they let me borrow Jackie Onassis glasses from someone to wear while I was in the seat.

Now I’m all Betty Ford on these pills they gave me which aren’t helping the throbbing, undulating pain in my jaw as much as they are clouding my thoughts, making my stomach hurt, and making me spin right round like a record baby, right round, right round.