everybody hates hard work...

ain't it the truth.  i guess i should preface this by mentioning that it's about that time for me to be on a semicolon, and boy, do i have a semicolon for the time being.  it's one of those big ones, like the one that fred sanford thought was gonna take him out, but never actually did.  it's like that one kid that homey the clown could never hit enough times with the sock.  it's like the last crumb of a piece of cake that a fat kid just can't reach...

here's the story.  last nite we had the first set of parent/teacher conferences at the new school.  it went for about four hours.  and on a sidenote, i sat in a chair for the WHOLE four hours.  no restroom breaks, no water breaks, no anything.  there were that many parents that came out.  now, keep in mind that i'm coming from a different school.  at this different school i would maybe see a parent if i was lucky.  i have to admit that i was completely caught off guard by the...fervor...that these parents have for their children.  it could have been heartwarming...you know...if i had a heart.

so things are going in a pretty hectic manner, and i get this set of parents with their child (who's in my homeroom) who put on this...what i can only describe as a performance.  this is what sent me on my downward spiral into this semicolon.  this kid...let's do "paul"...and his parents walked up with ne'ry a smile on their faces.  they came up looking like someone had already done them wrong, and they hadn't even gotten paul's report card.  when they did, they pretty much went in on me because they could not, and would not, understand why their child got the grade that he did in my class.

i proceeded to explain that he is quiet and doesn't say too much, but that he'll participate when he's called to do so.  i said that he's not a particular problem, but reiterated that he is a quiet person.  i showed them grades that he received.  they looked at every other child's grades (which is illegal) and pointed out that on a particular test, most of the students did poorly, so "it must be something that you are doing."  the "you" was apparently referring to me, wesley.  it's probably a good thing that we can't see our own faces, because i'm quite sure that i made a face i wouldn't have wanted myself to see upon hearing a comment like that.  it was approximately fifteen minutes that they went in on me, criticizing my teaching methods and anything else that came into their heads.  they talked about my homework procedures, mainly that they way i assign homework is too advanced for a fourth grader.  well...i give out homework on monday and it's due on friday.  i'm an open-minded person who can see things from many perspectives.  however i could not see the logic in their reasoning.  and that's probably because they were being illogical.  it was basically one of those things where, as a teacher, i had to sit there and listen, even though my mind had checked out a long time ago.

as much as i do for these kids, to be got at like that was unacceptable in my eyes.  meanwhile, MEANWHILE, paul is standing off to the side, crying as if it was part of the whole act.  had i known better, i would have given him the award for best supporting actor in a parent/teacher conference.  it was...strange.

i almost forgot...the grade that they were so pissed off about...was an eighty-six (86).  it's a B+.  it's not an A, but it's a B...+.  now, had they come in raising hell about how paul received a forty-three that would be different.  this was what caught me off guard so hard.  every parent likes to think that his/her child is a straight A student.

excuse the hell out of me for teaching science with academic rigor.  i'm sorry...excuse the sh*t out of me for teaching science with academic rigor.  actually...excuse the f*ck out of me for challenging the students and not bogging them down with worksheets every day.  excuse the f*ck out of me for raising the bar.

needless to say, i was, and have been, utterly pissed off about this since that night.  i've vented, and now i've blawged about it, so i feel vindicated a bit, but until i see them again and get this straight, it's always going to be there.  i'm such a passive-aggressive person that i feel like i need to do something to balance the scales.  it's not a "two wrongs don't make a right" thing, but more of a "i need to right your wrong" thing.  it pisses me off that students like paul act a certain way in class, then go home and tell something completely different to their parents, making me out to be the bad guy.  don't get me wrong, i am cold-hearted, and sand flows through my veins, but i'm never unfair or outright evil to children.

i remember the days when a teacher would tell a parent that his/her child did something and there were no questions asked.  the parent would deal with the child.  nowadays, if a teacher tries to communicate something with a parent, there has to be explicit documentation, no less that two hundred pages worth, recorded video and audio, signed and notarized affidavits, and written confessions for a parent to even consider the possibility that his/her child did something in class.  ri-damn-diculous.

and if that weren't bad enough, here comes parent after parent trying to do more or less the same thing.  now, i realize that i made a mistake in the grading of the students on the computer, so this weekend i'm going back in and manually calculating grades.  one error kind of threw off a lot of scores.  i didn't know that people weren't allowed to make mistakes.  so now parents are up my arse about it, even though i'm telling them that there has been a mistake.  でも実はあなたの子供はバカバカしい事をして、何もやってないし、多分確かに落ちるんだ...or something like that.  oh well...i am in the process of formulating a plan, which is great because then i get to do my plan laugh...

when no one's watching or listening, i sneak off somewhere and laugh like that.  it makes me feel like i've done something insidious, which is just a fancy word that means good.  anyway, when i get my plan together and execute it, i'll blawg about it.  operation: payback is in the works, people, it's in the works.  you know it's serious because i've repeated a sentence...that's right, i've repeated a sentence.

so...that is that...now to this.  my semicolons bring me to a point where i don't want to do anything with anyone.  i just want to be by myself and work my way out of it, because i'm resourceful enough to do that.  trip and luby, bless their hearts, convinced me to go and do karaoke with white people at a bar in midtown.  i can't say that i had the best time, for a number of reasons which i will decline to mention here (that whole hurting people's feelings thing, i guess), but i tried to at least pretend i was having fun.  it probably didn't go well, though.  you know, that whole not being able to see your own face.  i just hope they don't ask questions about it...because then i'll have to talk...damn.

it wasn't because of them...mostly, but it was the semicolon, and the added bonus that i didn't want to do anything.  i think i've put myself into an awkward position.  i tend to live on the lighter side of life.  i joke around a lot and don't take things too seriously.  however, those few times where i do get serious, nobody seems to believe me.  it's almost like that idiot who cried wolf.  i'm not an idiot, though.  i'm an idiot savant...shout out to stella valand (nee morrison).

speaking of idiots...

this was trip singing at karaoke, and luby dancing with some random stranger.  i will mention this about trip.  he's my brother, so i can do this without conviction or fear because c'mon, what's he gonna do?  i'm gonna make an analogy that perfectly describes this situation.  i'd never heard this wide-mouthed n*gga sing.  i play volleyball...a lot.  every now and then a new person will make his way into the gym.  he'll be extremely tall and have that air about him that makes him look fierce, and you're happy to have him on your team.  after the very first play, however, you're like..."he fooled the hell out of me" because he turns out to be awful.

it's not exactly like that...have you ever prejudged a person based on their everyday actions and then gotten surprised when they did something that caught you off guard?  i'm not saying (not at all) that he's a great singer.  it's just that...his talking voice and his singing voice are like two different people.  the sitcom that perpetually plays in my head had the studio audience laughing for five minutes from the face i made when the first note came out of his mouth.  i guess i was expecting a barry white voice, but got keith sweat instead.  it was...funny to me.  now that, i did enjoy at the karaoke.  he whined for two songs, and i could not get enough.  i want him to sing at my wedding...for my own fiendish purposes...and then i'll sneak off somewhere and...

luby looked like a free spirit, just moving where the wind blew her as she danced with that man.  bless her heart; she didn't care how she looked.  life should be that way.  she's going to lead the soul train line in my wedding...again, for my own fiendish purposes...and then...

oh goodness,

i have a training in less than five hours...nappy time...

-w

everybody hates esmerelda...

if you don't know who esmerelda is, i'm not talkin' about that ho' from bewitched, but i'm talkin' about this b*tch from a place called the magic time machine.  it's supposed to be this fantastically magical restaurant, where every section is a different theme.  there is a section where you're in a genie's bottle.  there's a section where you're on a magic carpet ride.  there's a section where you're in neverland (not michael's ranch...i said fantasy, not fetish).  you get the point.

meanwhile, i went to a former coworker's berfday party.  she's forty, and she'll be called..."big mama" because that's what one of her students called her once.  it kinda stuck with me.  now, the cast of characters in this blawg are a completely different set of folks, so try your best to keep up, and i promise i'll do the same.  before i came to this new school, i was at my old school.  there was a group of us who had been thrown together by the forces of fate.  there was me, obviously, there was "kandi" (a hilarious coworker who for some reason found my jokes funny, and always would be singing at any given moment), there was "jab" (a large eyed lass who usually underestimated her own strength when she "playfully" punched people in their arms while demanding that they shut up), there was a lot of us.

anyway, we're all at this place, the magic time machine.  there were quite a few people there.  pretty much our whole old school clique was there, as well as big mama's other friends and family members.  it was such a diverse crowd that i don't know if i can do justice trying to describe everything that happened.

first of all, though, there was out server.  the people who work there are dressed like all kinds of creatures and characters from fairy tales and storybooks and urban legends and what not.  our server was esmerelda, like from the hunchback of notre dame.  she came in with an attitude, probably because she saw all of us black people in one place.  i don't remember esmerelda being a b*tch in the story, but this chick was playing the part especially well.  she came in and was like, "here are your napkins!"  she threw everyone's napkins in the air and we had to catch them as they rained down upon us.  it was marginally funny, but when she did the same thing with the straws, enough was enough.  now, big mama has a sister, who i'll call "lil' mama."  this heifuh is crazy.  i was sat at the opposite head of this table, and lil' mama was right next to me, so i could hear her all night cussing the hell out of esmerelda's hunchback quality service.  i pretty much cried tears of laughter the entire time.  eventually i just stopped wiping the tears away.

meanwhile, kandi and jab were sat on the other side of me, cracking jokes and laughing at "blanche," who was an older woman who was likened to big mama's own mother, but wasn't.  she was too old to be talking about sex as explicitly as she was.  she was talking about how she used to drink moonshine, you know, the bottle from the cartoons with the "xxx" across it in big black letters.  everything that came out of her mouth was rated m, which was bad because two tables over were some of the most shiftless children i've seen since i was at my old school.

keep in mind that this was supposed to be a party for grown folks.  even though it was at a place that could be considered for children, the party itself was adult themed, especially when you take into account the level of conversation.  these kids were maybe around between six and nine, and i suspect that they ran their parents ragged, or their parents were ashamed to do anything because everybody was there.  we were at their sorry excuse of a salad bar when the mama asked a boy if he wanted something on his plate...this niglet screamed out, "i don't want any of that!  leave me alone...you don't know what i want."

pause.

had it been my child, what would have ensued would have been possibly in the top five list of all time best arse whoopings in history.  it would have been up there with ike and tina, joe jackson and any jackson child, bobby and whitney, and steven and irene from the real world.  i would have damn near broken my wrist on that boy.  this woman was a lot better than me, or was she?  she just stood there and took it.  hell to the no. but we all know that it's not in my nature to cater to the whims of children.  just not my style.

anyway, also in attendance was "flo," another former coworker of ours with whom i never truly got along.  her personality is very similar to sandpaper.  she is extremely rough and tactless.  that seems odd because i'm more or less the same way, but i think i just have a better grip on reality than her.  she also acts like she's hard of hearing, yet knows everything about everything.  example...

principal: make sure you have your paperwork turned in by friday.
everybody else: okay.
flo: (leaning over to kandi) what she say?
kandi: she said we need to have our paperwork in by friday.
flo: oh, that's what i know.

that's her catchphrase: that's what i know.  what she doesn't know, though, is that she ain't all that.  i think i was the only one who saw through all her bullsh*t at the old school.  she's quick to put you out on front street, too.  i'll save that story for another blawg, maybe around my berfday (there's a relation to that day) because i tend to get a little snippy the more i think about it.

i digress, though.  she was at the party, eating...nothing.  another thing she does a lot of is not eating.  all she eats is rabbit food: lettuce (which has no nutritional value whatsoever), carrots, celery (again, no nutritional value at all), tomatoes, and lemon juice.  if you never saw her, you'd think she was as thin as that chick that played ally mcbeal.  if you did see her, though, you would probably spend all your time wondering how she ended up with that big ol' back porch of an arse.  you could set up a gazebo on it.  and i'm not sure, but i bet if you threw a quarter at it, two dimes and a nickel would bounce back at you.  the point is, she came to a restaurant and had three bites of lettuce.  we should have split the bill evenly; that would teach her.

kandi, jab, and i have this special bond, where we just tend to sit around and talk about everything that happens, even if it's right in front of the people who are the topic of our conversation.  we were the moral center of our group (there's that moral center thing again).  when big mama or any other crazy folks would get into their trademark crazy shenanigans, we'd catch each other's eyes from across the room and shrug.  it never happened more frequently than when we were in a faculty meeting, because our principal there had to have come straight from timberlawn to that school.  timberlawn is a mental institution.  anything she said, i would laugh.

kandi has two kids, both by the same man, a half-giant similar to hagrid from harry potter.  the guy is unnecessarily tall.  they both look like both of their parents, but they both inherited her mustache.  it's cute; it's like peach fuzz.  i'm the godfather, so i can mention it without hesitation.  kandi once wasted hot fish grease on her arm...if she had been dark skinned like jab, she would have been in big trouble.  she's my complexion, though.  it's a nice caramel java mocha skin tone.  we had a lot of interesting misadventures together.  she and another coworker, "adelle," were leveled from that school recently.  it's very odd, especially considering that they've been teaching for at least ten years.  it doesn't make sense, but it's not my place to speculate, even though my hunches are never wrong...

so this party was so funny, i lost two pounds just from laughing.  lil' mama and i both ordered this prime rib.  i wanted mine medium well, and she wanted hers borderline burnt.  when they came out, mine looked fine...a little more done that i would have liked, but edible.  hers winked back at her.  the middle was the color of fresh blood.  it looked like her plate was being sacrificed to the gods.  she did her best not to raise hell, but i just kept on eating.  it sure was good.

i also had "salmon baby."  that's big mama's way of referring to what would normally just be salmon.

when the party was over, around midnight i would say (or perhaps earlier), we were wanting to go do karaoke upstairs or something else.  let me mention this about big mama: she can't drink.  she gets tipsy just looking at a bottle of alcohol.  somebody f*cked up and got her a drink.  keep in mind that she nursed it all night, which was hours, and at the end of the party, why was she walking like estelle getty on golden girls?  she was shuffling worse than cupid, and swerving like a drunk driver.  she was still walking.

she once got so drunk off of a virgin shirley temple, she texted us with this message: "i'm drunk as a scuk."  i guess perception is reality.  b*tches be trippin'.

needless to say, she was so drunk (not quite as a scuk but pretty close), she ended up going home and there's really no telling if she's gotten up yet.  this was two weeks ago that this all happened.  alcohol doesn't mix well with her inner workings.  oh yeah, esmerelda didn't get good tips that night...it wasn't because we're black, either.

and that's a typical outing with my old school crew,

-w

everybody hates "treasure"...

it's true.  we have a student, who will be called "treasure" (as you remember from earlier blawgs) for no real reason at all, except that he looks like the younger brother of precious, from the movie of the same name.  well...it turns out that nobody likes him.  he's a little shorter than i'm, which would put him at about 5'5" or 5'6". it's not the normal height for a fourth grader, but wait...there's more.  he has to weigh a whopping two hundred pounds of solid...well, he weighs a couple hundred pounds.

for the longest time, i took up for him because he was always saying that he was being picked on by others.  for once in my life, i felt a twinge of pity in that space i now refer to as my anti-heart.  that's for another blawg.  so i would watch over him from the shadows and give him advice on how to handle these so called bullies.  well, i found out that he is the one who is bullying others.

the counselor told me that she did a class with them about bullying, and he told her that he does pick on people.  how bold are you to up and tell someone something like that?  pretty damn bold, let me tell you.  so from that moment, i was somewhat suspicious of him, but i didn't judge just yet.

warning: this true story may cause a violent upheaval of laughter...read with caution...

well, the sh*t hit the fan this past week when harvey and i were taking our classes to the gym.  a girl was standing outside the gym door with one of her shoes and socks off.  she was crying.  with as much "compassion" as i could muster (because i don't tend to have much), i asked, "girl, what's wrong with you?"

"treasure accidentally stepped on my foot."

my eyes kind of widened up as she said those words to me.  "what?"

"treasure accidentally stepped on my foot."

this poor girl had them big ol' crocodile tears in her eyes.  they hadn't come out yet, but they were on standby.  if she had blinked, they would've fallen and splashed on everybody in a twenty foot radius.  i wasn't too far behind, because tears of laughter began to well up in my eyes.  all i could say was "oh" and turn around and start walking away.  harvey asked if i was alright.  i looked at him, tears streaming down my eyes, and told him no, because i had just heard the funniest thing anybody could possibly have said that day.

so, harvey and i were walking to the office to check our teacher boxes for anything.  i'm crying the entire time.  just when it was about eighty percent contained, i turned around and there that girl was, still with one shoe on, limping into the nurse's office to get some ice.  i lost control and i'm not quite sure, but i think a little bit of pee came out.  this girl proceeded to go for the rest of the day with one shoe on, even going into the restrooms and outside the school.  it was so hilarious that it made me forget how bad the kids were that day, because from what i can remember, they were terrible that day.

digression.  i do know that whatever happened had treasure written all over it, because my fourth period class was spent complaining about him.  all the students had stories to tell about how treasure had done something or said something to them to be an instigator.  it was idiotic from a grown up's point of view, but it is what it is.

i'm aware of treasure at all times now.

and curse the day he ever steps on my foot.  i'll unleash trip on him.  i don't even think he could clothesline this kid.

my berfday approaches,

-w

everybody hates psychics...

here's what i should've been blawging about a week and a half ago...

we are gathered here to say goodbye to two tarnished souls who left us way too early.  they were only in their sixth week of life, and to be taken away so suddenly and without warning...  we shall miss them so very much; two immensely large chasms have been chiseled into our hearts.  we can only take solace in the fact that god knows all, and that he has a purpose for everything in this world.  they are leaving us behind, but their memories will always stay with us, for when we lose the ones we love, all we have left are the memories that we shared.  those memories must sustain our burdened hearts.  they must sooth our emotional aches.  we all know that this day will eventually come to us all, but we never expect it to happen so early.  even when this day does come, we can never truly be prepared for it.  we can only take comfort in knowing that they are in a better place now, with no suffering, no pain, no torment, no harshness, no misery, no trifling, shiftless, ignorant, mean-spirited, rude, impudent, blameless, unwilling children...


luby (1985 ~ 2011)
trip (1998 ~ 2011)


***


basically, this is how school works: you go for a couple months and count all the students enrolled and in class. then when you get an accurate count, you divide that by the number of teachers in the school.  the ratio has to be at a point where there are enough students to sustain each teacher.  if there are too many teachers, then some will have to go.  if there are too many students, then more teachers will be needed.  and this is called leveling.  i know, right.  it's eerily likened to leveling a building.  so all of that was to mention that my brother and sister were leveled because there aren't enough students at the new school.  they haven't been teaching long, which put them at the bottom of the totem pole, so they were on the chopping block when leveling time came around.  was i devastated?  a little, but...


i've got the eye.  i'm hesitant to put this out there, but i have a kind of psychic gift.  i see things coming from miles away sometimes.  when those two idiots told me they had been leveled, it went a little something like this:

luby: wesley, you handsome brother of mine, we've been leveled.
trip: huh?
wesley: you've been leveled?  who told you that?
luby: oh magnificent brother, the principal informed us...hold on, my phone is ringing...hello?
wesley: trip, what the hell is going on?
trip: i don't know.  all i know is i don't have a job anymore.  (a kid walks down the hall)  hey, come back here.
wesley: trip, don't clothesline...
(trip mercilessly clotheslines a random student, then kicks his body across the hall as his eyes flash green)
wesley: ...him... (sigh)
trip: hulk smash.
wesley: you're not the hulk, so stop acting like you are.  tell me about this leveling thing.
luby: okay, so i was in the principal's office...
wesley: when did you get back into the conversation?
luby: i've always been here.  anyway, when the principal came on the announcements...hold on...hello?
wesley: (rolls eyes) trip...can...you...tell...me...what's...going...on?
trip: about what?
wesley: i'm surrounded by idiots.
trip: you calling me an idiot?
(trip goes to put me in a headlock, but i catch his hand and flip him to the ground)
wesley: i don't feel like whoopin' your arse in the school today...

it was an awful conversation.  i pretty much had to get all the information from other sources.  so i found out that those two were gonna be released because there weren't enough students at the school, which meant that two other teachers in the school would have to move from their grades to replace them.  we had narrowed who was going to be moving down to two people.  the strange thing (which i was the only person to notice) was that we all knew that trip and luby were leaving.  yet, nobody knew who was going to be moving to replace them.  it was strange to me because usually, whoever was replacing them would have been informed and would already be moving their things into their new places.  i was stalking teachers like a thief in the night.  i was snooping around like a detective.  every single room in the school was fresh.  no boxes, no suitcases, no styrofoam, no nothing.  it was peculiar to me.  it was about that time when i had a sudden intake of air as my vision went into the future...

i saw the entire fourth grade team standing in the hall of a portable classroom, admiring the christmas decorations that were so haphazardly thrown all over the place.


as my vision returned back to normal, i knew that everything that could have been (and probably should have been) was not going to happen, at least not for the time being.

when you're psychic, you have to be careful about what you say because people are quick to assume that you're crazy.  i told trip's dumb ass, as well as luby, that too much time had gone by without anyone else getting any notification about having been moved to replace them.  it made no sense to me.  of course, they were all skeptical about what i was saying.  trip resorted to moping around the school, clotheslining whatever he could find, and then following that up with "i'd help you out, but i don't have a job."  meanwhile, luby's left eye (to her it would be the right eye) turned the color of fresh blood as she immediately began to worry about what was going to happen to her students.  bitch, leave them niglets alone; they'll be okay.  i didn't tell her that, though, i just thought it.

well...last nite i was at a surprise party for a friend and as we were waiting for her to get there (that's a story for another blawg; we got locked out of the party venue) i got a text from luby saying that she was going to be staying at the school after all.  it wasn't too long before i got a text from trip that said that same thing.  we ended up all talking on the phone (trip, luby, cece, and me) and i reminded them all that i foresaw this whole thing from the get go.

"you're right."

damn straight i'm right.  my hunches are never wrong.  as i've mentioned to people countless times, tupac would still be alive today if he had answered my telephone call.  next time they should all take me a little more seriously...if that's possible.

the more i think about it, the more i realize that harvey and i are the moral center of our group.  i know i've blawged about this earlier in the summer about shania and me.  every group has a moral center.  for now it seems that it's harvey and me.  when all these other crazy teachers get into these crazy shenanigans, we always manage to catch each other's eyes and shrug...because we're moral...that is why we shrug.  harvey is always leaving the school right when it's over, so that leaves me to be the only sane person at the school for most of the day.  it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

that someone is me,

-w

everybody hates first base...

this is gonna have to be a quick for free blawg.  i haven't been on lately because...well...i've been lazy.  and as i very well should be.  it's hard work being a fourth grade science and social studies teacher, as well as being the grade level chair.  i maintain, though.  it's a bit lonely at the top, but i'm used to having to live life that way.

meanwhile, on to the point of this ridiculously true anecdote.  as you're aware, i'm here at this new school with trip and luby, my newly found younger brother and sister, respectively.  well...i'll post another blawg about them soon, but for now...

trip allegedly "plays" baseball.  there are a few things wrong with that statement.  first of all, he's awful at it.  second of all, he's overly aggressive.  i mean, i'm 5'10" and he's 6'3".  i weigh about 175lbs and he's around 280lbs.  he picks on people smaller than himself, which has lately been me.  luby's too busy flirting with him for him to pick on her, so i guess i'm the only one left.  i digress...

so he's playing at this baseball game with these mexicans (that's how he described it, not me).  somebody must have been smoking the stickiest of the icky because they decided that it would be a good idea for him to play first base.  that person would soon realize his mistake.  so...this guy is at bat and he connects...slightly.  but he takes off running anyway because that's pretty much what you're supposed to do after you hit the ball.

he's running towards trip, and the guy at home gets the ball and throws it to him.  so, to make sure you're caught up, the ball is now being thrown to trip from behind the guy who's running towards trip.  the ball did not go straight to trip, and he had to step out a bit to catch it.  as he extended his arm, the guy was nearing first base.  this poor guy knew that he had to do something otherwise he would be out.  in a last ditch effort, his feet left the ground as he began his slide to first base.  meanwhile, trip had just caught the ball, although he was not on the base anymore...from having had to step out.

as the poor guy began his descent to the ground for what could have been a spectacular slide, trip (being the evil person that he is), lowered his arm to the guy's level and caught him around the neck.  if you're a physics major, you'll have fun with this.  imagine an object traveling in one direction, and then suddenly being forced to go the completely opposite direction with no warning, and at pretty much the same speed.  this poor guy did like two backflips before slamming into the ground on his back.  i was surprised that he didn't break his back, as hard as he landed.  it was terrible.  and trip is looking around like, "something hit my arm.  what his my arm?"  as i've come to discover, trip is about 110% muscle and -10% brain, with a 10% margin of error.  he clotheslined the sh*t out of this poor guy, who would have gone to the hospital if it weren't for the fact that he was mexican, and (according to trip) didn't have any insurance.

if i hadn't seen it, i would never have believed it myself.

-w

everybody hates butter...

okay.  it's been told to me that i apparently say things that others are thinking.  i don't know if i necessarily agree with that, but it is what the f*ck it is.  i just felt like throwing that f-bomb in there.  i don't usually do it, but here's a random story that i thought about when i wrote that...

about a month ago i was out with chong (former roommate now...had to put him out...) because we were just gonna go hang out and get something to eat.  we had our sights set on this place called california roll.  we'd been there once before.  it was a strange place because they specialized in (surprise) sushi rolls.  their menu was honestly at least fifteen pages, each of which had about twenty kinds of rolls.  that's a hell of a lot of rolls.  when we went that one time, i ended up just getting some custom rolls.  not to say that their rolls were bad, but they were too many.  anyway, that was to provide some sort of intro.  so, we were going to go to this place, only to find that it went out of business.  holy hell, what is wrong with restaurants today?  one day they're there, the next day they're gone.

that's my minor point.  the major point is that when we went to find another place, chong took us on an access road.  we were about half a mile from the traffic light, which had been green for a bit.  he decided to see if he could make it and slammed down on the gas pedal.  there were plentiful cars at the traffic light...

***flashback***


in 2005, when i was living in japan, some friends and i took a trip to china.  we went to shanghai, xi'an, and beijing, to name a few places.  we climbed the great wall, we saw the forbidden temple (not so forbidden after all), we saw mao's body, we did it all.  one morning, we were on the way to the airport to go somewhere and we (there were five of us) took two cabs.  i sat in the front seat and two of the others were in the back.  to make a long story short...our retarded taxi driver smashed the damn cab into another taxi that was stopped at a red light.  there were, by the way, five lanes in the street, and the only other car was the one that we hit.  it was ridiculous.  the guy was going 120 km/hr, which was pretty quick considering that we were on a regular street.  it caused a lot of trouble; we were lucky to walk away from that...well not exactly walk away...but we're alive and well now.


***end flashback***


chong, knowing damn well that i have this traumatic experience under my belt, went from twenty to fifty in two seconds and it scared a little bit of pee out of me.  when he finally realized that he wasn't going to make the light, he slowed down.  did i mention that there were other cars on the road?  it was like china all over again.  i dropped the f-bomb on him that day.

that was that.  so...luby, trip, and i have been hanging out at this new school.  they're on to me.  i suspect that they know their codenames on this blawg, so i don't know how much longer i can keep this up.  i may have to change them...but they fit so well.  i'll just keep them after all.  besides, luby is too preoccupied with the 1243124839 other things going on in her life, not to mention the nosebleeds that she gets on a constant basis from being thrust so far up into the sky with those skyscraper-height heels.  the tip of her heel carries so much power behind it, i bet it could easily crack a brazil nut.  she walks hard.  and poor trip, bless his heart, is as big as grape ape, but (in keeping with stereotypes) isn't the sharpest pencil in the case.  i don't think he'll ever figure it out, but we'll see.  i am, after all, the wise sibling of us three.  trip got the brawn (not all of it, just the majority share).  luby got the unfortunate privilege of being the middle sibling, forced to step in when trip and i get into those random skirmishes and he has to go to the nearest hospital...

we went to on the border last week for happy hour.  thanks to luby's foolishness, we got there way after happy hour, like two hours afterwards.  i'm gonna be like ty pennington on extreme makeover: home edition.  i'm gonna make her my special project.  she's like my sister; she needs help.  i've been introducing her and reintroducing her to someone who could be a good match for her (i can't say now...i've been warned to not do so...but since when have i been scared of anybody?) but she's very closed about the heart.  being the empathetic person i am, i was obviously sent to her to help her, and help her i will.  trip...i got his help as well...my left fist.  he's not worth the right fist.  i kid, i kid.  he can have the right fist.

i digress.

one story and i'm off to bed.  i am extremely exhausted from work and life in general.  it's about that time that i take that one night to go to bed early to recharge for a while of staying up late.  anyway, we all know that god doesn't like me.  that's why i can't pray all the time.  i know the prayers won't always be answered. i know that i'm not as highly favored these days because of the kids i got this year.  they're not actually that bad, and certainly not as bad as the ones i had at my former school, but they're just a different kind of ignorant.  buffoonery abounds at this school in the fourth grade.

so, last week i did a science experiment with them where we made butter.  it's actually pretty easy.  if you put heavy whipping cream in a jar and shake the sh*t out of it for long enough, it separates into fresh butter and buttermilk, which i used to make pancakes.  well, one of the classes i had that day initiated what i must call "the great butter war of 2011."  this one kid, "opportunity," had said something ignorant and i moved him to the back of the room for the time being.  in the middle of the experiment, we all heard this strange sound.  i looked over and it was good ol' opportunity, kicking the desk.  i went back to talk to him.  most people don't know this, but i'm really very good at talking to kids on their level.  it's just more interesting to talk crazy to them.

so, i'm soothing this kid to keep me from wrapping my hands around his throat, and i hear this strange sound.  it was about three seconds after i started talking with opportunity, and we both turned around.  in those scant three seconds...there were five or six idiots running around the room like a gang of monkeys...with butter all over them.  mike, if you remember from an earlier post, was all up in that group.  he had butter all over his face.  it was on his cheeks like that black sh*t soldiers put on their face to scare others.  treasure (also from another post) had butter on his nose.  somebody had butter in his head, one had it in his clothes, it was on backpacks, it was on the floor.  it was unbelievable.  had i not been there, i would have thought this was all just a dream.

but a dream it was not.  opportunity got a reprieve that day because i had to go into my office and draft up a treaty to end the war.  i don't raise my voice much this year; i just say things to children to make them think about their actions.  after the war was over and the casualties counted (two got buttered beyond repair), mike openly expressed his dislike of me in the cafeteria: "i can't stand him."

that's what i heard as i was leaving the cafeteria that day.  who cares?  it's not in my nature to cater to the whims of children.  everybody knows that.  and that was the tale of the great butter war of 2011.  yeah, we won't be doing any more science experiments in that class for quite a while.  on the bright side, though, making butter has become a hobby for me.  so far, i've got two jars of unsalted sweet cream butter, two jars of salted sweet cream butter, a jar of honey butter, a jar of garlic herb butter, and a jar of cinnamon sugar butter.  it's good.

the butter will live on, but i must sleep right now,

-w

everybody hates cheese...

well, here i am again, procrastinating as usual.  since i've returned to dallas from my cross-country adventure, there has been a lot of change in my life.  so much has changed in my life, some for the better, some for the worse, but it's still change.  i'm not usually one to just accept things changing.  if i had my druthers, things would still be the same way they were back in 1998.  those were the days.

so, the first thing is that i'm at a new school now.  it's a bad thing and it's a good thing.  of course i liked my old school, specifically the staff.  the kids were compact heart attacks waiting to happen.  they were impending doom in a small container.  they were noisy little migraines.  the strange thing is that i got the news that i was having to move when i was still on my summer adventures.  i was hanging out with james when my principal called me early saturday morning (it was 7.5a).  i was still half asleep and she was like, "i hate to tell you this..."

when has any good news ever come after those six words?  i'll tell you: never.  it was awful at the time, but my principal was cool about it and hooked me up with a phone interview.  that was a relief because it would've been holy hell to have to fly back to dallas for a job fair then fly back to north carolina and have to be docked for leaving, when lord knows we already were getting paid by the minute.  did i mention the pay at this nysp thing was slightly less than what the kids get paid at sweatshops in india?  it's minimum wage plus tips...without the tips...

anyway, i had a phone interview and apparently did well because i got a position at another school.  this school, coincidentally, is literally a hop, skip, and jump from my old school.  i think the most terrible thing about having to move at all is the fact that i was teacher of the year.  teacher of the freakin' year, and i have to change schools???  i can't even park in my damn spot.  it's a lovely spot that says "toty."  that, of course, stands for teacher of the year.  jerome, who is at that school (we used to be coworkers...now we're just colleagues) parks there because he was teacher of the year the year before.  what i ought to do is drive to that school, park in the spot that i earned and deserve, then just take a bus to my current school.  that would probably freak the mess out of people at both schools.  then my job would be done.  i'm wesley.  i freak people out at schools.

so at this new school, there is an older crowd, meaning that the staff overall is a little older than the staff at my first school.  it's not a bad thing; they're all veterans.  it makes me coveted.  what makes me feel even more coveted is the fact that i'm a male.  guy teachers are already rare, especially at the elementary level.  at my old school the principal was really obsessed with hiring men to work there, so it wasn't that big of a deal.  at this new school, though, i am one of i think five male teachers.  three of us are on the same team.  i teach fourth grade now, fourth grade science and social studies...and by the way, i'm the grade level chair, which makes me the HNIC.  if you don't know what that means, look it up.

and...at this new school i am (i calculated it) the third youngest person there...at thirty-three.  there's me, wesley.  there's a kindergarten teacher who we'll call "luby."  she's tall and insists on wearing three foot stilettos to school like she's at the club trying to get picked up.  it's a school full of women, so good luck with that.  actually..that brings me to the other one.  we'll call him "trip."  the three of us are the youngest ones there, so i guess that brought us together.  of the three, i'm the oldest and most mature.  luby is the middle one, and trip is the youngest.  he's an open mouth (and this n*gga has a mouth full of teeth too), which already kind of bothers me.  we're like a mini family...like brothers and sister.  i'm quite sure there will be plenty of stories about our misadventures.

meanwhile the fourth grade team is brand new.  three of us (myself, trip, and "harvey") are new to the school.  the last teacher, and the only female on the team, "cece," was there before, but in a different grade.  we all get along well, at least i think so.  trip, being the child, is always doing or saying or thinking something stoopid.  i have to constantly counteract his buffoonery.  i don't know how cece, harvey, and i are going to deal with him...

to digress just a bit, trip and i have (for some reason) decided to start a running gag.  i always like a good running gag because it makes things interesting.  so this year, and i guess for as long as we keep it going, trip and i are brothers...half-brothers.  if you have the same father, you're half.  if you have the same mother, you're full.  that's the way it's always been.  even if you come from the same mother and have different fathers, you're still whole siblings.  so we're half-brothers from another mother.  i'm the older one, which a lot of students have a hard time believing because trip is bigger than i'm.  i could take him to the floor if i wanted to, but there's not been a reason yet.  they can't all be like kel.

i've been at this school teaching for two weeks now, so i've gotten my feet wet.  the kids so far are much better than the ones at my old school.  i'm still trying to learn their nuances, though.  what i have discovered is that they're quadri-polar.  i'm new to the fourth grade team, which does a departmentalized system.  i teach science and social studies, cece does reading, harvey does math, and trip does writing.  the kids are with each of us for about an hour and a half, then switch to the next teacher.  at first i was a little leery because i wasn't used to it.  i've always done the self-contained thing, where i teach all the subjects to the same group of kids.  i'm kind of digging this departmentalized thing though.  i do the same lesson four times a day, which lightens my load.  anyway, that was a background explanation.  there are kids who i like that nobody else likes.  there are kids that one of us likes, but none of the others do.  they act differently in each of our classes.  that's not to say that it's always cut and dry...

there are kids so far that i decorated profusely with red flags.  the most rambunctious one is going to have to be called "mike" because he thinks he's mike tyson.  in the two weeks we've been in school, he's had two fights.  he's on track to have one every week.  and the very first one was in my classroom.  he tried to fight this boy we'll call "treasure."  if you've ever seen the movie precious, he looks like precious' brother.  woof. and he's at least six times larger than tyson.  you can imagine, then, the hilarity of tyson trying to knock this boy down.  i caught one of his punches as i stepped between them and for a split second thought that someone had thrown a paper ball at my chest...

the buffoonery will continue as the year progresses.  hopefully i will be inspired to keep track of it all through this blawg.  but this is all about change.  when school first started, we (the staff) had to read this book called who moved my cheese?  it's a simple story about dealing with change in your life.  it's surprisingly deep and informative, even though it's a quick read.  basically, it tells this story of two mice and two little people who are the same size as the mice.  they are in this maze looking for "cheese," which is a metaphor for something that a person wants.  one day, they find that the "cheese" has been moved, so they have to go looking for it.  in short, the point is that you have to move with the "cheese," meaning that you have to accept change and not get stuck in the same routines.

having mentioned that, my roommate chong is leaving.  he'll be finished moving out tomorrow, and gone back to houston for the time being.  cheech is still here, but he's on vacation for the next two weeks.  chong and i have been roommates since 2008, which makes this a sort of sad occasion.  before reading the book, i was having a hard time accepting and dealing with him leaving because i got used to things being the way they were.  i've come to accept it, and everything happens for a reason.  it's the end of an era.

the awful thing about him leaving is that now i have to find someone to replace him.  it's a monetary issue mostly.  i've been putting the room out there on the craigslist and everything, but so far the people who have replied haven't given me the "feeling" yet.  you know, it's the feeling that you get when you know that you've hit the target.  so far, it's been one issue after another, and as much as i like to advertise for roommates, i'd rather not.  i've got lesson plans to do.

how will i spend labor day?  i can either do schoolwork or procrastinate further.  i think we all know what's going to happen when i wake up tomorrow afternoon.

there's always tomorrow,

-w