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
12 September 2011
04 September 2011
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
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
15 August 2011
everybody hates goodbyes...
well, i'm back in dallas, specifically sittin' up in my room like brandy. it wasn't easy getting back...
first of all, we (the staff) went to "end of cycle," which is like a final night out for everybody before they all go their separate ways for the rest of the summer. in attendance were a couple PCs (the bosses, remember?), tootie, la-rwanda, allie, laverne, shirley, karl, jerome, fred, barney, india, and huey. if there were more, i can't remember at this moment. we went to dave and busters, a nice place. last year we were taken to karaoke. i enjoyed myself because i enjoy all things japanese, but everybody's not as easily satisfied as i'm.
so we're at the dave and busters. they had a little (and i mean little) buffet set up for us. i liked the chicken tenders and ginger ale. i always enjoy a nice gingered ale. it clears the palette. who did NOT show up? stallone, shania, kenan, and kel. do i need to fill in any blanks here? i can't exactly say what they opted to do instead, but...
the war between kel and me is officially over. i've returned to texas, and he's back in hell where he belongs. to say who the winner was is very difficult. for a long time, we were pretty level with each other. i'd do a move on him, then he'd come back with some weirdness that he apparently considered a move of his own. oh yeah, i got dealt with a couple times. the thing about that is...this is my blawg, so whatever gets put up on here has to get my approval. i don't typically approve things that don't kill me the way i want to die. that written, i did win. it wasn't close. the semicolon threw me off for a little bit, but i was able to bounce back. better luck next year, kel, better luck next year. maybe he won't come back next year at all. but considering all the garbage we all had to endure this time 'round, not coming back wouldn't be such a bad thing...
anyway...dave and busters. we all had a pretty good time. racing cars, fruit ninja, horse racing, skee ball, this, that, the other. when it was all over and it was time to go back to our place of residence, there was a slight problem. in my car was india, la-rwanda, and tootie. laverne had asked if she could get a ride, but turns out she already had a ride to there. so her, shirley, and allie didn't have a way back. the way NYSP works, they give you rides to places, but you're on your own from there. they were gonna take a cab, but we said no. why waste money on a taxi when we could all squeeze into my car (a suzuki sx4 crossover...bigger than a mini cooper, but smaller than anything else) like a bunch of mexicans? so we did the impossible, and seven people rode in my car for twenty minutes. i was the only guy, so technically that made me the pimp and them the bitches (but they weren't trippin'). any bumps or corruptions in the road were painful to all. i was so close to the dashboard (as was laverne, who rode shotgun), that even slamming on the brakes would send me right through the windshield. good times.
so we finally made it back, and everybody spilled out like soda when you shake the bottle a little too hard. when we went in, kenan, tia, tamera, shania, stallone, and jerome were all hanging out in one of the rooms. they were having fun. tootie and i went in for a while to hang out and stuff because everyone was leaving the next day to go their separate ways. in addition to them was "marcia," who worked there last year, but decided to do a different track this year (meaning she worked in different locations than us) and another girl i didn't know.
tootie and i didn't stay long because we're old and can't hang like we used to do. those other folks are in their early twenties. tootie is in her late twenties, and i'm thirty-three. those party days are far behind me...far behind me. kel was mysteriously absent. i didn't bother to ask where he was, because i knew that with things being the way they were at that time, in that room, it would have led to world war iii. i didn't want to have to pearl harbor his arse. it wouldn't have been the best way to leave.
we stayed for a while though, tootie and me, and then left. kenan (who shares the same last name as me) was acting strangely as usual. he was doing all that n*gga sh*t like man hug/fist bump/silly hand sh*t that i don't always do. something's wrong with him. kids...
and then...they all went out to a club. it was already close to midnight. i went to put a couple more things in the car to prepare to leave a few hours later. when i came back, i was forced to wait for what looked to be the entire population of saudi arabia. they were all checking in...at midnight. plus...they stank. i don't know what it is about people from over there. deodorant is worldwide. i followed them upstairs with my nose and face twisted. i was downwind from them, after all. on my way up, i passed the gang. they were on their way to the club. they were laughing at the way my face looked. i couldn't help it. i was laughing at kenan, who was very vocal about how it stank. he used every word i could think of to describe them. the thing, though, was that they were still there. they heard every word he was saying. i don't know if they understood it, however. if they didn't, no harm. if they did, who cares? we won't ever see those people again.
i went to take a nap because i was getting up a couple hours later. i had a twenty-one hour drive ahead of me. i left around three in the morning. the gang still had not gotten back, so i left huey a goodbye note. we were very close, him and me. we have similar personalities. i am his son, after all. he called me later when i was on the road to say that they had gotten back and to wish me a safe journey. that huey...he's so nice.
amanda had scared the bejesus out of me with her scary stories of deer in the roads at night. i had never paid any attention to it. she said deer totaled her car before and it was just awful. so imagine my shock when i was driving in the middle of the night, pitch black sky (because in the country there are not any street lights). the little reflector things in the road that keep you in the lanes were moving...it was peculiar. then i was like, sh*t...deer. so i had to slow down from seventy-five to thirty-five for almost twenty miles. it was nerve racking, to say the least. and the most horrifying part was when i was driving and had to literally swerve into another lane because a deer carcass was taking up the entire lane. gross. them sh*ts don't care what's going on at night.
i got tired from driving so slowly, and i didn't want to hit (or get hit by) any deer, so i stopped at a rest area, let my seat back, and went to sleep until the sun came up. once it was daylight, i felt much more comfortable driving. if i'm gonna hit a deer, i at least want to see it coming. i want to hit it on my own terms, not the deer's. life doesn't work that way.
i went all the way to nashville, which took all day because i passed through roanoke and hung out with james! he brings out the exclamation mark in me! we went to a comic book store, we sat around, we had bagels like jewish guys, we exchanged jokes that were hours long...it was great! he's the big brother i would've had if we had the same parents. the coolest thing is that he got a job teaching fourth grade science. i know you're thinking that it's not as cool as i'm making it sound...
the sad news is that i was released from my school. a blessing in disguise? maybe...definitely...certainly. my school was awesome in terms of the staff getting along with each other. it was awful in terms of the kids. i think the staff got along so well because we were united in a front against those damn kids. anyway, i guess there weren't enough kids there to have the number of teachers that were there, so more cuts had to be made. cuts were supposed to have been made before the end of the school year, and i thought i was safe. imagine my shock when my principal called me early on a saturday morning when i was in virginia (i was ironically visiting james that time) to inform me that i had been released. it was depressing, especially since there was a job fair for recently released teachers that thursday...and i was a thousand miles away. she did, however, arrange a phone interview with a principal at another school. i got that job, which brings me to the cool part...
i'm teaching fourth grade science (and social studies) just like james! we're teaching buddies! i think that fact is what's gonna get me through those long nights.
meanwhile (i digress)...after hanging out with james, the wife in-law, and the godson/nephew, i made it to nashville late that evening to have dinner with kia, a college friend who still thinks i'm funny for some reason. my jokes are mediocre at best. we reminisced about the good old days (she referred to it as the "days of dooley"...it's an emory/oxford thing), and talked about life in general. then i took a room for the night and headed back to dallas. i got back home a little before six in the evening yesterday. being from texas sucks because you think you're on the home stretch when you cross the state line back into texas, but then you realize that you're still four hours away.
but i made it...and boy is it hot here. in fact, this afternoon i got in the car and the temperature read 119. just looking at that made it hard to breathe. it was terrible. i need to tint my windows or something.
so, i got back yesterday, reunited with my roommates, "cheech" and "chong," and sat around for the rest of the day because today work started back. that's right, ain't no rest for the weary. i got up in plenty of time, but somehow got to work at my new school, with new people, fifteen minutes late. it was a very wesley thing to do. usually i'm good about being to work on time, but what threw me off was the fact that we were meeting at an arcade place which was farther away than i figured. it was just far. the school itself is only down the street from my old school, so no change there.
the new staff seems to be pretty nice. we'll see about it, though. i have high hopes that i will actually have a chance to teach this year. at my old school i played the part of:
first of all, we (the staff) went to "end of cycle," which is like a final night out for everybody before they all go their separate ways for the rest of the summer. in attendance were a couple PCs (the bosses, remember?), tootie, la-rwanda, allie, laverne, shirley, karl, jerome, fred, barney, india, and huey. if there were more, i can't remember at this moment. we went to dave and busters, a nice place. last year we were taken to karaoke. i enjoyed myself because i enjoy all things japanese, but everybody's not as easily satisfied as i'm.
so we're at the dave and busters. they had a little (and i mean little) buffet set up for us. i liked the chicken tenders and ginger ale. i always enjoy a nice gingered ale. it clears the palette. who did NOT show up? stallone, shania, kenan, and kel. do i need to fill in any blanks here? i can't exactly say what they opted to do instead, but...
the war between kel and me is officially over. i've returned to texas, and he's back in hell where he belongs. to say who the winner was is very difficult. for a long time, we were pretty level with each other. i'd do a move on him, then he'd come back with some weirdness that he apparently considered a move of his own. oh yeah, i got dealt with a couple times. the thing about that is...this is my blawg, so whatever gets put up on here has to get my approval. i don't typically approve things that don't kill me the way i want to die. that written, i did win. it wasn't close. the semicolon threw me off for a little bit, but i was able to bounce back. better luck next year, kel, better luck next year. maybe he won't come back next year at all. but considering all the garbage we all had to endure this time 'round, not coming back wouldn't be such a bad thing...
anyway...dave and busters. we all had a pretty good time. racing cars, fruit ninja, horse racing, skee ball, this, that, the other. when it was all over and it was time to go back to our place of residence, there was a slight problem. in my car was india, la-rwanda, and tootie. laverne had asked if she could get a ride, but turns out she already had a ride to there. so her, shirley, and allie didn't have a way back. the way NYSP works, they give you rides to places, but you're on your own from there. they were gonna take a cab, but we said no. why waste money on a taxi when we could all squeeze into my car (a suzuki sx4 crossover...bigger than a mini cooper, but smaller than anything else) like a bunch of mexicans? so we did the impossible, and seven people rode in my car for twenty minutes. i was the only guy, so technically that made me the pimp and them the bitches (but they weren't trippin'). any bumps or corruptions in the road were painful to all. i was so close to the dashboard (as was laverne, who rode shotgun), that even slamming on the brakes would send me right through the windshield. good times.
so we finally made it back, and everybody spilled out like soda when you shake the bottle a little too hard. when we went in, kenan, tia, tamera, shania, stallone, and jerome were all hanging out in one of the rooms. they were having fun. tootie and i went in for a while to hang out and stuff because everyone was leaving the next day to go their separate ways. in addition to them was "marcia," who worked there last year, but decided to do a different track this year (meaning she worked in different locations than us) and another girl i didn't know.
tootie and i didn't stay long because we're old and can't hang like we used to do. those other folks are in their early twenties. tootie is in her late twenties, and i'm thirty-three. those party days are far behind me...far behind me. kel was mysteriously absent. i didn't bother to ask where he was, because i knew that with things being the way they were at that time, in that room, it would have led to world war iii. i didn't want to have to pearl harbor his arse. it wouldn't have been the best way to leave.
we stayed for a while though, tootie and me, and then left. kenan (who shares the same last name as me) was acting strangely as usual. he was doing all that n*gga sh*t like man hug/fist bump/silly hand sh*t that i don't always do. something's wrong with him. kids...
and then...they all went out to a club. it was already close to midnight. i went to put a couple more things in the car to prepare to leave a few hours later. when i came back, i was forced to wait for what looked to be the entire population of saudi arabia. they were all checking in...at midnight. plus...they stank. i don't know what it is about people from over there. deodorant is worldwide. i followed them upstairs with my nose and face twisted. i was downwind from them, after all. on my way up, i passed the gang. they were on their way to the club. they were laughing at the way my face looked. i couldn't help it. i was laughing at kenan, who was very vocal about how it stank. he used every word i could think of to describe them. the thing, though, was that they were still there. they heard every word he was saying. i don't know if they understood it, however. if they didn't, no harm. if they did, who cares? we won't ever see those people again.
i went to take a nap because i was getting up a couple hours later. i had a twenty-one hour drive ahead of me. i left around three in the morning. the gang still had not gotten back, so i left huey a goodbye note. we were very close, him and me. we have similar personalities. i am his son, after all. he called me later when i was on the road to say that they had gotten back and to wish me a safe journey. that huey...he's so nice.
amanda had scared the bejesus out of me with her scary stories of deer in the roads at night. i had never paid any attention to it. she said deer totaled her car before and it was just awful. so imagine my shock when i was driving in the middle of the night, pitch black sky (because in the country there are not any street lights). the little reflector things in the road that keep you in the lanes were moving...it was peculiar. then i was like, sh*t...deer. so i had to slow down from seventy-five to thirty-five for almost twenty miles. it was nerve racking, to say the least. and the most horrifying part was when i was driving and had to literally swerve into another lane because a deer carcass was taking up the entire lane. gross. them sh*ts don't care what's going on at night.
i got tired from driving so slowly, and i didn't want to hit (or get hit by) any deer, so i stopped at a rest area, let my seat back, and went to sleep until the sun came up. once it was daylight, i felt much more comfortable driving. if i'm gonna hit a deer, i at least want to see it coming. i want to hit it on my own terms, not the deer's. life doesn't work that way.
i went all the way to nashville, which took all day because i passed through roanoke and hung out with james! he brings out the exclamation mark in me! we went to a comic book store, we sat around, we had bagels like jewish guys, we exchanged jokes that were hours long...it was great! he's the big brother i would've had if we had the same parents. the coolest thing is that he got a job teaching fourth grade science. i know you're thinking that it's not as cool as i'm making it sound...
the sad news is that i was released from my school. a blessing in disguise? maybe...definitely...certainly. my school was awesome in terms of the staff getting along with each other. it was awful in terms of the kids. i think the staff got along so well because we were united in a front against those damn kids. anyway, i guess there weren't enough kids there to have the number of teachers that were there, so more cuts had to be made. cuts were supposed to have been made before the end of the school year, and i thought i was safe. imagine my shock when my principal called me early on a saturday morning when i was in virginia (i was ironically visiting james that time) to inform me that i had been released. it was depressing, especially since there was a job fair for recently released teachers that thursday...and i was a thousand miles away. she did, however, arrange a phone interview with a principal at another school. i got that job, which brings me to the cool part...
i'm teaching fourth grade science (and social studies) just like james! we're teaching buddies! i think that fact is what's gonna get me through those long nights.
meanwhile (i digress)...after hanging out with james, the wife in-law, and the godson/nephew, i made it to nashville late that evening to have dinner with kia, a college friend who still thinks i'm funny for some reason. my jokes are mediocre at best. we reminisced about the good old days (she referred to it as the "days of dooley"...it's an emory/oxford thing), and talked about life in general. then i took a room for the night and headed back to dallas. i got back home a little before six in the evening yesterday. being from texas sucks because you think you're on the home stretch when you cross the state line back into texas, but then you realize that you're still four hours away.
but i made it...and boy is it hot here. in fact, this afternoon i got in the car and the temperature read 119. just looking at that made it hard to breathe. it was terrible. i need to tint my windows or something.
so, i got back yesterday, reunited with my roommates, "cheech" and "chong," and sat around for the rest of the day because today work started back. that's right, ain't no rest for the weary. i got up in plenty of time, but somehow got to work at my new school, with new people, fifteen minutes late. it was a very wesley thing to do. usually i'm good about being to work on time, but what threw me off was the fact that we were meeting at an arcade place which was farther away than i figured. it was just far. the school itself is only down the street from my old school, so no change there.
the new staff seems to be pretty nice. we'll see about it, though. i have high hopes that i will actually have a chance to teach this year. at my old school i played the part of:
- father
- mother
- judge
- referee
- umpire
- arbitrator
- warden
- counselor
...and maybe teacher if there was enough time at the end of the day. i hope i still remember how to teach.
that's about it. the best part of being done with NYSP is that nothing new is happening there, so i have time to catch up on all those topics i said i was going to come back to but didn't at the time. the back up is finally easing up, so i should hopefully be able to blawg about the other miscellaneous foolishness that went on there...provided i can still remember it. and then i can transition to the foolishness that is destined to go on here.
so, to all my NYSP coworkers, it's been real. i enjoyed seeing everybody again from last year, and meeting new people this year. i think we all got along well for the most part, through all the long nights and long hours, and the minimum wage plus tips (with no tips). i'm gonna miss everybody there...even kel. keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. since the war is over, i'm gonna reveal this: the war between him and me was slightly exaggerated. the premise behind the war, however, was real. but since it's all over, i'm willing to let the past go and move on...but i'm still passive-aggressive, and quite flaky, so what i'm saying now probably will be null and void if we all get together again next year.
and i'm not gonna drive that far anymore,
-w
11 August 2011
everybody hates variety...
it's late, so i won't be too long. to celebrate the near end of our stint here in chevy chase, "beth" (one of our program coordinators, and therefore bosses) and "nina" (another PC) organized a staff variety show. usually, every wednesday is my favorite day because the "scholars" get to do a variety show. it's basically a talent show, but with no winners. the reason there are not any winners is because there is not any talent...at all. it's a tie; they all lose. i have been lucky enough to be the host of said variety show a few times now. i don't know why people want me to host it. i'm not overly funny or anything; i just go up and introduce the people. that's my part.
anyway, we had a staff show after all the kids were taken care of, and some people finally got the chance to show us their stuff. let's see...there was (in no particular order):
amanda, beth, laverne, allie, fred, barney, kel, tia, tamera, "meredith" (another veteran here...she makes the best cookies), karl, huey, and "india" (a noob here, and quite the free spirit)...i think that was all. there was a lot of "going in" on people, which is sort of a tradition here at NYSP with the staff. people just go in on each other all the time. something's wrong when you don't go in on somebody. i've never gone in on kel or anyone. but i'm neutral, so i stay out of it. i'm too tired to go into great detail like i want to, but it'll be mentioned in full soon. for now, here are a few videos from the madness...
warning: if you have a weak constitution and cannot stand a lot of buffoonery, please don't watch...
this is huey, tia, fred, meredith, karl, and barney doing their rendition of a song from the musical "rent." tootie actually made a cameo appearance because she was doing the music, and singing probably harder than any of these other folks. bless her heart.
this is tamera doing a magic trick. i will be the first to admit that i thought she was going to show us the secret behind her and tia's cheating in spades, but it was actually a legit magic trick. she magicked that handkerchief right into thin air. good job, twin evilene.
this is fred, barney, and "pretty boy" kel doing something to "sweet dreams are made of this." when i don't know the proper name to a song, i just call it the first line that i hear of the song, whether the line is accurate or not. i'm not good with many songs; i mostly make up my own lyrics.
the show itself was funny. i'll next time try to go through each act and give my two cents. but for now, i must sleep and prepare for the last day here at NYSP for 2011. we'll see how it goes.
hello sleep,
-w
anyway, we had a staff show after all the kids were taken care of, and some people finally got the chance to show us their stuff. let's see...there was (in no particular order):
amanda, beth, laverne, allie, fred, barney, kel, tia, tamera, "meredith" (another veteran here...she makes the best cookies), karl, huey, and "india" (a noob here, and quite the free spirit)...i think that was all. there was a lot of "going in" on people, which is sort of a tradition here at NYSP with the staff. people just go in on each other all the time. something's wrong when you don't go in on somebody. i've never gone in on kel or anyone. but i'm neutral, so i stay out of it. i'm too tired to go into great detail like i want to, but it'll be mentioned in full soon. for now, here are a few videos from the madness...
warning: if you have a weak constitution and cannot stand a lot of buffoonery, please don't watch...
this is huey, tia, fred, meredith, karl, and barney doing their rendition of a song from the musical "rent." tootie actually made a cameo appearance because she was doing the music, and singing probably harder than any of these other folks. bless her heart.
this is tamera doing a magic trick. i will be the first to admit that i thought she was going to show us the secret behind her and tia's cheating in spades, but it was actually a legit magic trick. she magicked that handkerchief right into thin air. good job, twin evilene.
this is fred, barney, and "pretty boy" kel doing something to "sweet dreams are made of this." when i don't know the proper name to a song, i just call it the first line that i hear of the song, whether the line is accurate or not. i'm not good with many songs; i mostly make up my own lyrics.
the show itself was funny. i'll next time try to go through each act and give my two cents. but for now, i must sleep and prepare for the last day here at NYSP for 2011. we'll see how it goes.
hello sleep,
-w
everybody hates kickball...
this is not gonna be too long. we've got one more day before the very last batch of "scholars" are done, meaning that we've got one more day until we're all free from this place...at least for another year.
to start off, we had the team rally earlier this afternoon. team rally used to be a time where each leadership group (that's a fancy name for class) shows off a cheer that they've made up to represent themselves. that's how it was last year. each group would get up, shout their leadership number, do a cheesy rhyming chant, and that would be it. i can't really pinpoint it, but if i could, i would point the finger at huey...
last year he was an FA (faculty advisor...basically teacher) and his group got up and did their cheer. there really aren't too many words that can describe it besides...well...awful. let's be honest; better sh*t came out of his arse than what he put up on that stage. that was, i believe, week one of last year's track. those poor kids were subjected to going up, shouting whatever they felt like, and going back to their seats. in all, i think that group's team cheer lasted for about four seconds, give or take a few nanoseconds. huey must really have done something to anger god because his cheer was like a form of vengeance.
anyway, i think that was the wake up call that slapped the rest of us across the face like a frenchman initiating a duel. somewhere along the way, the team cheer evolved drastically and dramatically from a few seconds of chanting to minutes long productions with music, choreography, props, themes, cues, smoke, skits, intros, shout outs, disses, and maybe...just maybe...an actual cheer related to the group's leadership strand (the four different theme lessons that we teach). i bring all that up to lead to my group's cheer. it was (for lack of a better word) epic. we f*ckin' killed it today. i just wish someone had a video of it. basically...i had this idea for a team cheer for last week's group, but it didn't work out because that batch of bitches kept trippin', and so i allowed them to make the whole thing up and put it on, without any assistance from me. they crashed, then burned. i told this week's group about that; they listened to me without any problems.
of course this wasn't the exact skit, but it was the inspiration for what we did. since i teach creative construction, we had hammers and saws and screwdrivers coming out of the blocks. of course there was a mushroom and fire flower, as well as coins. no star, though; we didn't have too much time to practice. we basically threw it together in about two hours. we even had the pause. if anyone has the video of it, please please please let me know.
that's what team cheer has come to be over the past year. we've turned it into an unofficial competition with each other to see who can be the most creative. of course everyone's a winner...but between you and me, i won...hard.
speaking of huey...i've gotten to know him a little more since we've been roommates. he's really an old soul. and i'm talking about REALLY an old soul. he's got this way of talking that makes him sound much older than he actually is. he says things like "frigedaire" instead of "refrigerator" (i do it as well...but i really am old). he adds those miscellaneous mysterious syllables to words, knowing good and well that they don't belong there. it's hilarious to me.
apparently we favor each other about the face. lots of "scholars" come to us and call us each other's name. i've been called huey and huey's been called wesley many many times since we've started this NYSP thing. so i started asking these kids some questions, and received some very interesting answers. as it is perceived by every single child here, huey and i favor each other about the face, and i look like a younger version of him. i find this extremely interesting, as well as entertaining...
me: how old do you think mr. huey is?
child: i don't know...old.
me: how old?
child: in his forties.
they were doing double takes left and right when i told them that i was actually much older than huey. huey is twenty-four, while i am thirty-three. they couldn't believe it. they still can't. but it's true.
i digress. the main point is that after dinner, we had recreation time. i was supposed to be doing basketball with kel (which upset my stomach a little bit), but things ended up changing. we ended up doing a kickball game with kids and grown folks. the way it was, kenan and i were on one team, and the other team had kel, barney, and stallone. kenan is quite the competitive person. i admit, i didn't know that about him until today.
the game was tied at one point, and he said we were losing. i told him it was tied, and he said if we weren't winning, we were losing. well, we ended up winning the game. kel tried to show off his "spectacular" kicking skills by kicking the ball damn near over the fence. kenan did him one better and tried to peg kel as he was running home. he blindly threw the ball in that direction, which just happened to be the direction of the very busy connecticut avenue. the ball went into the street, and all you could hear was the screech of a tire, followed by a rather loud bump sound. the ball suddenly was going in the opposite direction. kenan was able to get it; the cars slowed down for him. he managed to one-up himself later on by trying to be a superstar. a kid was running home and he tried to peg them from afar again. when you're shiftless like kenan, you don't really learn from mistakes the first time. it takes time after time after time.
he threw the ball and this time it went right into the group of kids waiting at home plate. it was like a cartoon moment when something really awful happens and the characters all turn around because they don't want to see it. i was not like those cartoon characters. i saw the whole thing myself. that ball hit this poor girl in his stomach. there were three kids directly in front of her, and they jumped out of the way at the last possible minute. it was the funniest thing i had ever seen. she went down and came back up like one of those training dummies. she said she was alright, so all was well.
and so went the game. kenan and kel spent the entire time trying to outdo each other. it's great to see two...guys...engaged in friendly competition. at one point, and he probably didn't even realize it, i snuck in move #62 on kel as he ran past me to second base. it was a quick maneuver. i caught him with an elevated spinning scissor kick that sent his entire body spinning around in place. he spun a good ten times before he continued to run. it happened so quickly that very few people saw it.
the game eventually ended up drifting into nothing, as kenan, kel, jerome, barney, and stallone went to play football. football, by the way, is not my game. i'm sticking with volleyball. jerome threw a ball to me earlier and i missed it...horribly. i can usually catch things, but throwing is a whole different story. for some reason, i just can't throw a football if my life depended on it. can't explain why. maybe i should learn.
someone teach me how to throw a damn football before i turn thirty-five,
-w
to start off, we had the team rally earlier this afternoon. team rally used to be a time where each leadership group (that's a fancy name for class) shows off a cheer that they've made up to represent themselves. that's how it was last year. each group would get up, shout their leadership number, do a cheesy rhyming chant, and that would be it. i can't really pinpoint it, but if i could, i would point the finger at huey...
last year he was an FA (faculty advisor...basically teacher) and his group got up and did their cheer. there really aren't too many words that can describe it besides...well...awful. let's be honest; better sh*t came out of his arse than what he put up on that stage. that was, i believe, week one of last year's track. those poor kids were subjected to going up, shouting whatever they felt like, and going back to their seats. in all, i think that group's team cheer lasted for about four seconds, give or take a few nanoseconds. huey must really have done something to anger god because his cheer was like a form of vengeance.
anyway, i think that was the wake up call that slapped the rest of us across the face like a frenchman initiating a duel. somewhere along the way, the team cheer evolved drastically and dramatically from a few seconds of chanting to minutes long productions with music, choreography, props, themes, cues, smoke, skits, intros, shout outs, disses, and maybe...just maybe...an actual cheer related to the group's leadership strand (the four different theme lessons that we teach). i bring all that up to lead to my group's cheer. it was (for lack of a better word) epic. we f*ckin' killed it today. i just wish someone had a video of it. basically...i had this idea for a team cheer for last week's group, but it didn't work out because that batch of bitches kept trippin', and so i allowed them to make the whole thing up and put it on, without any assistance from me. they crashed, then burned. i told this week's group about that; they listened to me without any problems.
of course this wasn't the exact skit, but it was the inspiration for what we did. since i teach creative construction, we had hammers and saws and screwdrivers coming out of the blocks. of course there was a mushroom and fire flower, as well as coins. no star, though; we didn't have too much time to practice. we basically threw it together in about two hours. we even had the pause. if anyone has the video of it, please please please let me know.
that's what team cheer has come to be over the past year. we've turned it into an unofficial competition with each other to see who can be the most creative. of course everyone's a winner...but between you and me, i won...hard.
speaking of huey...i've gotten to know him a little more since we've been roommates. he's really an old soul. and i'm talking about REALLY an old soul. he's got this way of talking that makes him sound much older than he actually is. he says things like "frigedaire" instead of "refrigerator" (i do it as well...but i really am old). he adds those miscellaneous mysterious syllables to words, knowing good and well that they don't belong there. it's hilarious to me.
apparently we favor each other about the face. lots of "scholars" come to us and call us each other's name. i've been called huey and huey's been called wesley many many times since we've started this NYSP thing. so i started asking these kids some questions, and received some very interesting answers. as it is perceived by every single child here, huey and i favor each other about the face, and i look like a younger version of him. i find this extremely interesting, as well as entertaining...
me: how old do you think mr. huey is?
child: i don't know...old.
me: how old?
child: in his forties.
they were doing double takes left and right when i told them that i was actually much older than huey. huey is twenty-four, while i am thirty-three. they couldn't believe it. they still can't. but it's true.
i digress. the main point is that after dinner, we had recreation time. i was supposed to be doing basketball with kel (which upset my stomach a little bit), but things ended up changing. we ended up doing a kickball game with kids and grown folks. the way it was, kenan and i were on one team, and the other team had kel, barney, and stallone. kenan is quite the competitive person. i admit, i didn't know that about him until today.
the game was tied at one point, and he said we were losing. i told him it was tied, and he said if we weren't winning, we were losing. well, we ended up winning the game. kel tried to show off his "spectacular" kicking skills by kicking the ball damn near over the fence. kenan did him one better and tried to peg kel as he was running home. he blindly threw the ball in that direction, which just happened to be the direction of the very busy connecticut avenue. the ball went into the street, and all you could hear was the screech of a tire, followed by a rather loud bump sound. the ball suddenly was going in the opposite direction. kenan was able to get it; the cars slowed down for him. he managed to one-up himself later on by trying to be a superstar. a kid was running home and he tried to peg them from afar again. when you're shiftless like kenan, you don't really learn from mistakes the first time. it takes time after time after time.
he threw the ball and this time it went right into the group of kids waiting at home plate. it was like a cartoon moment when something really awful happens and the characters all turn around because they don't want to see it. i was not like those cartoon characters. i saw the whole thing myself. that ball hit this poor girl in his stomach. there were three kids directly in front of her, and they jumped out of the way at the last possible minute. it was the funniest thing i had ever seen. she went down and came back up like one of those training dummies. she said she was alright, so all was well.
and so went the game. kenan and kel spent the entire time trying to outdo each other. it's great to see two...guys...engaged in friendly competition. at one point, and he probably didn't even realize it, i snuck in move #62 on kel as he ran past me to second base. it was a quick maneuver. i caught him with an elevated spinning scissor kick that sent his entire body spinning around in place. he spun a good ten times before he continued to run. it happened so quickly that very few people saw it.
the game eventually ended up drifting into nothing, as kenan, kel, jerome, barney, and stallone went to play football. football, by the way, is not my game. i'm sticking with volleyball. jerome threw a ball to me earlier and i missed it...horribly. i can usually catch things, but throwing is a whole different story. for some reason, i just can't throw a football if my life depended on it. can't explain why. maybe i should learn.
someone teach me how to throw a damn football before i turn thirty-five,
-w
10 August 2011
everybody hates dookie...
first thing first...i'm off of my semicolon. turns out i've just been sick. i still can't really smell anything except for really strong odors, but for the most part it's hard to smell most things, which isn't necessarily bad. i've had the sniffles as well, which could also have been a factor in my less than normal mood. my kids this week have unfortunately gotten caught in the midst of all this. oh well, their fault for getting in the way.
speaking of not being able to smell anything...i was in my classroom this afternoon with the kids. the way it works around here, there are kids who stay in the place with us (residential scholars) and kids who don't (day scholars). the day scholars leave at five o'clock, and the residential scholars stay and we have an hour to hang out with other groups and just do teambuilding games and other ill sh*t.
we get paired with random groups every day, and thank my lucky stars that i was paired with jerome and his group. so we were in my room (because jerome's classroom is smaller than a breadbox) playing these games. on a sidenote, i've noticed that kids these days play the most violent games ever. here are the games we played: "mafia", "bang", "assassin", and "cops and killers." do you see a pattern here? i mean, what the hell ever happened to good old games like "tag" or "hide 'n' go seek" or "duck, duck, goose" or "red rover"? there's a certain level of violence that kids seem to have to have in order to remain entertained. back in my day, we didn't have a need for such violence. the most violence we had was making someone "it" in tag. things have changed since the 80s and 90s. my kids are gonna stick to the old school classics. bet.
i digress. so jerome's group and my group are in there playing these games. tamera had brought me a can of febreze earlier for some reason. foreshadowing, perhaps. i always welcome the opportunity to make something smell better, even if i can't smell it. i put a lot of stock in febreeze and glade and air wick and other smell goods. i sprayed it into the air conditioner so it could travel throughout the room. word gets out fast, because shirley came and borrowed it. anyway, while we were playing a game, jerome stepped out for something, and we kept playing. he came back into the room with an expression on his face that i hadn't seen in quite a while. he told me that a "scholar" (and at this point in the game, we have to use that word extremely sparingly) shat on herself in shirley's classroom, which is right next door. i just had to look at him with a crazy expression because these kids are fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. they are too damn old to be doing that. it did, however, explain why shirley had come into my room for the febreeze earlier. i told jerome that i couldn't believe it, and he told me to go and see for myself. i gathered myself and walked next door...
%$#@(&!$#
that was the only thing that went through my mouth. i just walked in laughing. shirley was looking at me, wondering why i was laughing...like she didn't know. you could literally smell both the febreeze and the dookie. it was like two strong odors battling for the title. if my nose was out of order before then, it sure opened up like the red sea after going into that room. the febreeze went into one nostril and the sh*t went into the other one. and the strangest thing was that the girl was apparently still sh*tty. as it was told to me, this happened at least a couple hours before.
PAUSE...
how the hell could a person go that long with dookie all up in the crack of her arse and not say anything about it. we must first analyze the facts. this is the national young scholars program. the kids have to be nominated by teachers or other rocks of their community to be here. that means that they are supposed to have common sense, good sense, book sense, and just be total nerds. that's the way it used to be around here. now they just let anyone in who has two thousand dollars. how the mighty have fallen. it's not the national young ruhtards program. it just doesn't add up.
we must then look at the fact that this girl is around ten years old. how could you do something like that and not be still sucking on your mother's breast and wearing diapers? ten is a little too old to still be doing this...and not be in somebody's special ed class.
then let's look at that fact that since this poor girl is a socially and academically competent person, she chose not to say anything. now, there is a maybe one millionth percent of a chance that she is the kind of person who is that shy. since she's been nominated to be in a program such as this, i doubt it. everybody here knows how to talk. even if she is "shy," she couldn't make the choice to go to the bathroom and at least wipe some of it off? insert gag here.
this is the kind of buffoonery with which we have to deal here. kids that don't have home training, kids that are ABT but whose parents are quick to claim ADHD, kids who need a belt put to their arses, kids who aren't playing with a full deck, kids who are overly immature, kids who are so big that they probably applied to work here but didn't get picked so they just decided to come as scholars, kids who are ignorantly ghetto, and kids who sh*t on themselves.
shirley, needless to say, has been put on the prayer list for the time being. she may have the rest of the febreeze from my room. i will not object to it at all...that is, unless some ignorant f*ck decides to try that in my class. that's when the sh*t will really hit the fan...pun intended.
the best week ever continues,
-w
speaking of not being able to smell anything...i was in my classroom this afternoon with the kids. the way it works around here, there are kids who stay in the place with us (residential scholars) and kids who don't (day scholars). the day scholars leave at five o'clock, and the residential scholars stay and we have an hour to hang out with other groups and just do teambuilding games and other ill sh*t.
we get paired with random groups every day, and thank my lucky stars that i was paired with jerome and his group. so we were in my room (because jerome's classroom is smaller than a breadbox) playing these games. on a sidenote, i've noticed that kids these days play the most violent games ever. here are the games we played: "mafia", "bang", "assassin", and "cops and killers." do you see a pattern here? i mean, what the hell ever happened to good old games like "tag" or "hide 'n' go seek" or "duck, duck, goose" or "red rover"? there's a certain level of violence that kids seem to have to have in order to remain entertained. back in my day, we didn't have a need for such violence. the most violence we had was making someone "it" in tag. things have changed since the 80s and 90s. my kids are gonna stick to the old school classics. bet.
i digress. so jerome's group and my group are in there playing these games. tamera had brought me a can of febreze earlier for some reason. foreshadowing, perhaps. i always welcome the opportunity to make something smell better, even if i can't smell it. i put a lot of stock in febreeze and glade and air wick and other smell goods. i sprayed it into the air conditioner so it could travel throughout the room. word gets out fast, because shirley came and borrowed it. anyway, while we were playing a game, jerome stepped out for something, and we kept playing. he came back into the room with an expression on his face that i hadn't seen in quite a while. he told me that a "scholar" (and at this point in the game, we have to use that word extremely sparingly) shat on herself in shirley's classroom, which is right next door. i just had to look at him with a crazy expression because these kids are fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. they are too damn old to be doing that. it did, however, explain why shirley had come into my room for the febreeze earlier. i told jerome that i couldn't believe it, and he told me to go and see for myself. i gathered myself and walked next door...
%$#@(&!$#
that was the only thing that went through my mouth. i just walked in laughing. shirley was looking at me, wondering why i was laughing...like she didn't know. you could literally smell both the febreeze and the dookie. it was like two strong odors battling for the title. if my nose was out of order before then, it sure opened up like the red sea after going into that room. the febreeze went into one nostril and the sh*t went into the other one. and the strangest thing was that the girl was apparently still sh*tty. as it was told to me, this happened at least a couple hours before.
PAUSE...
how the hell could a person go that long with dookie all up in the crack of her arse and not say anything about it. we must first analyze the facts. this is the national young scholars program. the kids have to be nominated by teachers or other rocks of their community to be here. that means that they are supposed to have common sense, good sense, book sense, and just be total nerds. that's the way it used to be around here. now they just let anyone in who has two thousand dollars. how the mighty have fallen. it's not the national young ruhtards program. it just doesn't add up.
we must then look at the fact that this girl is around ten years old. how could you do something like that and not be still sucking on your mother's breast and wearing diapers? ten is a little too old to still be doing this...and not be in somebody's special ed class.
then let's look at that fact that since this poor girl is a socially and academically competent person, she chose not to say anything. now, there is a maybe one millionth percent of a chance that she is the kind of person who is that shy. since she's been nominated to be in a program such as this, i doubt it. everybody here knows how to talk. even if she is "shy," she couldn't make the choice to go to the bathroom and at least wipe some of it off? insert gag here.
this is the kind of buffoonery with which we have to deal here. kids that don't have home training, kids that are ABT but whose parents are quick to claim ADHD, kids who need a belt put to their arses, kids who aren't playing with a full deck, kids who are overly immature, kids who are so big that they probably applied to work here but didn't get picked so they just decided to come as scholars, kids who are ignorantly ghetto, and kids who sh*t on themselves.
shirley, needless to say, has been put on the prayer list for the time being. she may have the rest of the febreeze from my room. i will not object to it at all...that is, unless some ignorant f*ck decides to try that in my class. that's when the sh*t will really hit the fan...pun intended.
the best week ever continues,
-w
07 August 2011
everybody hates semicolons...
i'm on my semicolon.
for those of you not in the know, a semicolon is the closest thing to what might be referred to as a period...except it's for men. it's a period...with a penis. a semicolon. it doesn't happen monthly, though. the semicolon can happen at any given moment for any given amount of time, and can be caused by any given reason for any given person. i don't usually go on a semicolon unless a certain number of things don't go the way they're supposed to go consecutively. i can usually resolve one rather quickly, but every now and then they seem to last forever. for example, i had one last wednesday and it lasted a couple days. no big deal; it was caused by the kids i had that week.
i woke up feeling very strange this morning. as it turns out, i'm kind of a psychic when it comes to misfortune. perhaps it's because my middle name is schadenfreude. it's a word that describes a person who for some reason takes delight in others' misfortunes. so i guess it makes sense that i can sometimes see bad things coming. the trade off, though, is that i can't foresee them in enough time to do anything about them, so they end up happening anyway. so that's me, mr. schadenfreude. turns out, a few things are going on back in dallas that have me on edge and feeling uneasy. i won't depress you with details, but let's just say that things aren't the way they need to be right now. a combination of problems have brought about a semicolon. this one's gonna take a while to sort out, but i don't doubt that things will work out. they always do.
speaking of hoping that things work out...
today marks the last week that i'll be here in chevy chase. then i'll be back on my way to dallas. twenty-one hours lie ahead of me. that will give me lots of time to think about life, and all that jazz. anyway, some people left and aren't going to be here this week. tyrone and laura lee are gone. laverne was gone, as was "la-rwanda" (another new face this year...crazy but cool), but they're back this week. laverne, who if you remember is friends with shirley, is overly bubbly and what i could term the opposite of me. i'm a pessimist by nature; she is an optimist. she's always getting on me about not having anything positive to say. although i do have so many things about which to be positive, she always just happens to catch me right after i've said something nice. i usually feel the urge to cancel out a positive with a negative. that creates neutrality, which is me all day.
well, we were having a meeting earlier this evening and laverne suggested that we all go around and tell why this is going to be the best week ever, starting with reasons that today is the best day ever. it got to me last, and all the good answers that i could've said were already taken. what else was there? i don't even remember what i said. oh wait, it was something about having clean clothes. if anyone has any suggestions on how the next five days are going to be the best days ever, please comment and let me know. i'm going to need all the help i can get. but i figure that if i never bring it up, she might forget about it. laverne is peppy.
with five days left here, i'm getting mentally ready to return to my regular life in texas. of course i'll see jerome again (we're both dallasites), but no more of anyone else, at least not until next year (if i decide to do this again). leaving is bittersweet, but since i'm not leaving right now, it's a non-issue.
something strange is happening here, meanwhile. i'm currently at about a seventy-eight percent understanding, but i think i have an idea. it has to do with the food here. this morning i was completely prepared to skip lunch and go get real food, but tootie and amanda called and told me that it was self-serve lunch. i went in and there was bacon as far as the eye could see. at first i wasn't too excited because i think i chipped a tooth behind their damn bacon last week, but it looked different. turns out it was the good bacon that they use to lure people into a false sense of security. they want us to think that the food here will be really good, but of course... for dinner they had peppersteak...which tested my gag reflex. i failed the test...miserably.
my batch of kids this week, if i'm predicting this correctly, is gonna possibly be this week's GBC. that stands for "ghetto boo crew." it's when you get a group of kids that act straight out the hood and off the streets. i got one boy who had a couple of the girls messing with him a bit. i told him, "looks like you got a couple girlfriends over there." he took a couple seconds to think about that, then came back with..."and i got a couple more back at home...i'm a playa." i was done right then and there. maybe it'll be good for something.
kel took a couple shots back today and almost made contact. it was...odd...but...i think i'm gonna miss him the most out of everybody here. that makes the most sense to me. i just felt i had to throw in a kel reference somewhere in here. after all, the war will end in five days...the blackest night...ragnarok...
i'm a blue lantern for the time being,
-w
for those of you not in the know, a semicolon is the closest thing to what might be referred to as a period...except it's for men. it's a period...with a penis. a semicolon. it doesn't happen monthly, though. the semicolon can happen at any given moment for any given amount of time, and can be caused by any given reason for any given person. i don't usually go on a semicolon unless a certain number of things don't go the way they're supposed to go consecutively. i can usually resolve one rather quickly, but every now and then they seem to last forever. for example, i had one last wednesday and it lasted a couple days. no big deal; it was caused by the kids i had that week.
i woke up feeling very strange this morning. as it turns out, i'm kind of a psychic when it comes to misfortune. perhaps it's because my middle name is schadenfreude. it's a word that describes a person who for some reason takes delight in others' misfortunes. so i guess it makes sense that i can sometimes see bad things coming. the trade off, though, is that i can't foresee them in enough time to do anything about them, so they end up happening anyway. so that's me, mr. schadenfreude. turns out, a few things are going on back in dallas that have me on edge and feeling uneasy. i won't depress you with details, but let's just say that things aren't the way they need to be right now. a combination of problems have brought about a semicolon. this one's gonna take a while to sort out, but i don't doubt that things will work out. they always do.
speaking of hoping that things work out...
today marks the last week that i'll be here in chevy chase. then i'll be back on my way to dallas. twenty-one hours lie ahead of me. that will give me lots of time to think about life, and all that jazz. anyway, some people left and aren't going to be here this week. tyrone and laura lee are gone. laverne was gone, as was "la-rwanda" (another new face this year...crazy but cool), but they're back this week. laverne, who if you remember is friends with shirley, is overly bubbly and what i could term the opposite of me. i'm a pessimist by nature; she is an optimist. she's always getting on me about not having anything positive to say. although i do have so many things about which to be positive, she always just happens to catch me right after i've said something nice. i usually feel the urge to cancel out a positive with a negative. that creates neutrality, which is me all day.
well, we were having a meeting earlier this evening and laverne suggested that we all go around and tell why this is going to be the best week ever, starting with reasons that today is the best day ever. it got to me last, and all the good answers that i could've said were already taken. what else was there? i don't even remember what i said. oh wait, it was something about having clean clothes. if anyone has any suggestions on how the next five days are going to be the best days ever, please comment and let me know. i'm going to need all the help i can get. but i figure that if i never bring it up, she might forget about it. laverne is peppy.
with five days left here, i'm getting mentally ready to return to my regular life in texas. of course i'll see jerome again (we're both dallasites), but no more of anyone else, at least not until next year (if i decide to do this again). leaving is bittersweet, but since i'm not leaving right now, it's a non-issue.
something strange is happening here, meanwhile. i'm currently at about a seventy-eight percent understanding, but i think i have an idea. it has to do with the food here. this morning i was completely prepared to skip lunch and go get real food, but tootie and amanda called and told me that it was self-serve lunch. i went in and there was bacon as far as the eye could see. at first i wasn't too excited because i think i chipped a tooth behind their damn bacon last week, but it looked different. turns out it was the good bacon that they use to lure people into a false sense of security. they want us to think that the food here will be really good, but of course... for dinner they had peppersteak...which tested my gag reflex. i failed the test...miserably.
my batch of kids this week, if i'm predicting this correctly, is gonna possibly be this week's GBC. that stands for "ghetto boo crew." it's when you get a group of kids that act straight out the hood and off the streets. i got one boy who had a couple of the girls messing with him a bit. i told him, "looks like you got a couple girlfriends over there." he took a couple seconds to think about that, then came back with..."and i got a couple more back at home...i'm a playa." i was done right then and there. maybe it'll be good for something.
kel took a couple shots back today and almost made contact. it was...odd...but...i think i'm gonna miss him the most out of everybody here. that makes the most sense to me. i just felt i had to throw in a kel reference somewhere in here. after all, the war will end in five days...the blackest night...ragnarok...
i'm a blue lantern for the time being,
-w
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