Cheetos, Chariots and Chets.

On the journey to Hebrew School I often felt nauseated. Some of the nausea might have had something to do with the fact that I hated Hebrew School, but most of it had to do with the vile chariot that transported me there. Twice a week after regular school from the age of 9 until dropping out at 12 I was transported over hill and freeway overpass to my synagogue to learn Hebrew, and apparently the woman who drove me had religious objections to cleaning her car. And, mind you, this is a complaint coming from the individual who proudly (hell yeah!) didn’t wash her car for over a year and a half. Verily I tell you, the amount of crushed Cheetos in her seat cushions could have fed all of Minnesota for about five years, or at least they COULD have had they not been rotting. Hell, I didn’t even know Cheetos were capable of rotting since until that point I hadn’t been entirely convinced that they were actually made out of food.

Shit man, this journey to Hebrew School was so educational. There was more learning going on in the backseat of this car than goes on on The Learning Channel. You know what else goes bad that I didn’t know goes bad? Water. Did you know water has an expiry date? Well it does, and this woman had cases of water in her backseat, and all were expired. And they smelled RANK.

To top it off, I quite vividly remember finding a half-eaten moldy sandwich in that seatback pocket where (in normal cars) you would find crumpled maps, expired coupons and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys from the late 80s, and I feel like the armrest was some sort of a time/space vortex of rotten food, because every time I opened it I would find different horrifically expired food items. Though the food was different each week, it clearly hadn’t just been rotting since my peek last week. Let me try to explain that better: one week I’d open it up and see a black sandwich. The next week I’d open it up and see a cupcake with such intense mold that it HAD to have been rotting for longer than a week. Meaning, either some funky time hole thing involving the Doctor was going on where this was food from the future being transported back in moldy state or something, or this crazy bitch was INTENTIONALLY putting rotten food in her car. Then again, I think I’m the even crazier bitch for opening this armrest every week.

Again though, I’m not squeamish about a bit of mess or dirt involving food. If you ask me whether or not I have ever eaten from the floor a Skittle that someone had quite clearly stepped on, I will answer, “I plead the Fifth.” With that in mind, imagine the level of filth this car must have reached if it grossed even me out.

If you are retarded enough that I still have to explain that this car smelled like shit, you should probably stop reading and just go sit in the corner right now. No, accept it as a given that this car smelled like shit, but specifically it smelled like the taste you would get from eating chocolate and lemon together, and then having acid reflux. The worst part of all of it was when we would turn on the air conditioning (a necessity in LA!), and then directly into our poor, innocent faces it would spew out flavored air conditioning. Specifically, ass-flavored.

I don’t normally get carsick, but I used to get so sick from hurtling down the freeway in what smelled like the men’s bathroom at a curry restaurant. Even though I hated Hebrew School, once we arrived at our brick temple I would leap out of the car and run up the stairs, not giving one solitary shit that my school uniform skirt was flying up and flashing everyone in my desperate bid to get away from the Manky Mercedes. I’d pause in the hallway and try to steady myself, feeling as though if the teacher asked me to read a Chet (the “Khhhh” noise) then I would have no choice but to violently vomit over everyone.

Once the car-induced nausea wore down and I remembered that I was, once again and like every week, the only jackass(besides my brother) wearing a school uniform, the other kind of nausea would set in.

Yet another subject I suck at teaching

(from yesterday)

In addition to being the worst geography teacher ever, I found out today that I’m the worst food tech teacher (home ec teacher for Americans) in the history of English education. Not because I don’t know any proper information about food (well, I don’t), but because I am a firm believer in bowl-licking. Should I ever become a mother, I will probably be one of the few in the history of the modern world that would not shriek, “BUT YOU’LL GET SALMONELLA!” when I catch my children eating more brownie mix than they’ve poured into a baking dish. No, I’ll say, “Eat up!”

And all 28 of my theoretical children will die of salmonella.

So today in food tech we were working with cake icing—salmonella was not an issue here as icing is just sugar and butter. However, as a teaching assistant for today’s six lessons I was expected to figuratively slap the hands of the little devils who stuck their hands into their bowls of icing for a cheeky little taste. And THIS has proven to be my most challenging task as a teacher. Because I can’t blame them for it. I mean, fuck me, if I weren’t 23 and a trainee teacher I’d be fighting those kids tooth and nail for a share of their icing. God bless ‘em, lick away, the time when that will no longer be socially acceptable is fast approaching for people their age. Lick away, children.

On a related note, I hated that the proper teachers made one class leave their cupcakes for later because the kids had gym immediately afterwards and would get sick. That’s the whole fucking point. If you eat yourself sick after the age of 18 you’re a pig, but under 18 and you’re just a kid. Let kids be kids, I say.

But back to my main point: licking the bowl. It’s hard to tell the kids off for something I don’t think is all that wrong (yeah, I know it’s not hygienic in general, but in this instance it was a private bowl of icing, not for public consumption). To me it’d be like telling the kids off for liking Doctor Who or wanting to learn Hebrew. Some of the poor dears didn’t want to be naughty and asked me, “Can I lick the bowl?” And I had a burning desire to yell, “FUCK YEAH!” and triumphantly pump my fist in the air.

Realizing that if I acknowledged their question I would have to tell them no and kill a part of my soul, I chose to tactfully ignore the question. After their question I would let my eyes suddenly glaze over and act as though, “Oh wow, something absolutely fascinating just happened out the window and I’m going to walk away from you now to go check it out.” And then I secretly hoped that they would take the opportunity to go ahead, embrace their joyful youth, and shove a hearty thumbful of pink frosting into their mouths while none of the teachers were looking.

The problem is that towards the end of every lesson the kids got wise, and those mischievous surreptitious dips into their bowls of frosting gradually turned into blatant icing feasts. Which, let me clarify, I do not give one solitary shit about. The other teachers, however, kept glaring at me whenever a child would snarf some icing and I said nothing to the child in question.

Finally this one kid was quite overtly piping frosting directly into his mouth. I thought this was the greatest thing I’d seen all day, as this kid was clearly the happiest kid on the planet, with his head tipped all the way back and the piping bag in the air guiding a steady supply of blue heaven into his mouth. He just looked absolutely thrilled, with that look of joy on his face that you rarely see in children at school. Part of me wanted to give him a nod of solidarity, as if to say, “I’m with you in spirit, buddy. If you fuckers weren’t in this room with me I’d definitely give that a go.” But responsibility kicked in.

Not wanting to be too much of a hypocrite, I chose to say something friendly, something like, “You know, that icing would taste much better if you put it on the cupcake you’re decorating first.”

And this boy briefly put his bag of diabetes down and let the mirth disappear from his face. Suddenly he became very serious as he told me, “No, it wouldn’t, Miss.” He wasn’t trying to be cheeky, he was just speaking the truth.

All I could do was look at him, smile, and say, “You’re right.”

So basically I am the worst geography teacher ever.

The other day I got to sit in on a Year 7/6th Grade Geography lesson to familiarize myself with the class before I have to start teaching them in the coming weeks. Yeah, my specialty is religion (and just barely), and yeah, I only really realized that Weather and Climate are two distinct concepts last week, but for some ridiculous reason I’m supposed to be teaching children about Geography.

During this first class the teacher made the foolish assumption that I can in any way be trusted to answer questions about maps as she announced to the class that “Miss X--- (me) is more than capable of helping you if I can’t get to you.” This invited an army of small children to wave their hands at me for help.

To complicate the matter of my inability to give meaningful analysis of a map, I also zoned out while the teacher was giving out instructions on what information to draw from the map and put into a table. So then I ended up with the lethal combination on my hands of having no fucking clue how to find any information nor any idea what to do with said information even if eventually and miraculously found. What compounded my embarrassment was this: after the teacher had finished giving the instructions and while I was sitting there thinking, “Oh Jesus, I’ve really fucked myself over again by daydreaming again, there’s no recovering from this one…,” the teacher asked some little dude with glasses in the front row to repeat the instructions for the rest of the class.

See, there was a glorious little moment where I thought, “Thank God, another chance!” and I heard the little nerd say as much as “Well…” before I caught a glance of the field outside the window and started thinking about what a heartbreakingly old country England is, and I started imagining Victorians ambling through the field being ashamed of their legs, and peasants in the Middle Ages walking through the field trying to catch the plague, and various blue pagan peoples running around centuries before that, and then I started thinking about dinosaurs. Specifically about cavemen riding dinosaurs through this field. Yes, I know cavemen never rode dinosaurs, but this is why I teach religion as opposed to science/history. Well, by the time I woke up from my mini coma all I heard was the teacher saying, “Yes, well done, thank you.” And then all you could hear in my head was a very loud “SHIT. ON. IT.”

I have to say, even after “helping” kids with this activity for a solid 40 minutes I still genuinely have no idea what they were supposed to be doing. However, I’m pretty proud of how well I managed to cover my complete ineptitude. The kids would ask me, “Miss, I’m having trouble finding things to put in my chart, can you help?” And I’d take their maps in my hand, stroke my chin very meaningfully, and silently shit my pants. The kids didn’t realize I was having a panic attack because I’d cover it with a very solemn “Ah, mmhhmm” and a bit of a nod. Then I’d hand them back their map and say in my most teacherly way, “Well, take a look at the map and why don’t you just describe to me what you see? Then I’ll come back in a few minutes and you can let me know how you’re getting on.”

The response of most of the children to my utter uselessness was to simply give me a suspicious look and get on with their work, but some little jerks who actually wanted to learn gave me some follow-up questions. One asked, “Is this a hill?” He pointed at a bunch of squiggles and dots that seemed to be completely indistinguishable from the thousands of other squiggles and dots on the damn thing. To my untrained eyes, if that one spot he pointed at was indeed a hill then clearly the rest of the map had to be just one massive hill. And, for that matter, ALL OF ENGLAND was a hill. So I once again took the map, pretended to give it a meaningful glance and intellectual frown, shat myself, and then calmly abandoned all responsibility: “That’s a great question. Why don’t you discuss it with your neighbor and then let me know what you guys decide, okay?”

I know that as a teacher you shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that you don’t know the answer to something. But surely there’s a limit to how many times you can say, “I have no idea” in any given lesson before the kids start to suspect (quite correctly) that you are a shit teacher.

Another child pointed at a line and asked, “I don’t know what this is. Is it a railway?” This child, too, was assured that he had asked a great question, and then told, “What do YOU think?” His response was to look at me as though I were completely drunk, because this is a Religious Education teacher question. “What do you think?” is my default question for getting kids to share their own thoughts and opinions about questions with no wrong answer. Well, I say that like it’s some kind of carefully crafted weapon in my pedagogical arsenal, but actually I usually only use it as a response when I in no way understood what the hell the student just asked me. The key thing though is that it invites an extremely open-ended response. However, in geography it either IS a fucking railway or it isn’t. You can’t sort of be a railway.

So, long story short, I’m so far proving to be an absolutely useless geography teacher.

Don’t get too worried though—it wasn’t all bad. To put it mildly, the kids think I am a certified badass. Not because any aspect of my personality is in any way actually badass, but rather because they think my accent is basically miraculous. To them, when I open my mouth a combination of gold and Katy Perry music streams out. When I spoke to a small group of kids for the first time this one kid actually looked like he was so overwhelmed by my awesomeness that (if he remains in such awe) he might just have to consider investing in Depends for my classes. Liberated by his certain loss of control over his bladder, he called out in a voice filled with reverent wonder, “HOW DID YOU GET THAT ACCENT?” Umm, well, 22 out of your 23 years lived in the US tends to do it, but I wish I had asked him to give me his own hypothesis. Maybe I’m really from Essex but this is the teacher voice I put on? Maybe I had a stroke?

Do you think I’m sad that I am loved solely for my accent? Bitch please, I am sooooo gonna milk this. While I may be a completely inept geography teacher, at least my ego remains as inflated as ever. Thank God for that.

The Hokey Pokey Army

Again, too tired to actually write something new. There is a post in progress about how ridiculously unqualified I am to teach geography, but until then I hope you enjoy an EPICALLY LONG post from the past, written in 2009 while I was living in Israel and still in the process of dealing with the Israeli army:


Probably the worst thing about the army enlistment process (okay, army drafting process…) is the fact that at any given moment you have no idea what’s going on. I feel like most of the process involves being buffeted helplessly from station to station, from interview to interview, from test to test…it’s a bit like being Aeneas, except at the end of the process you don’t get to establish the foundations of Ancient Rome. You just get some boring two-year job.

What can you expect? You can expect, on several occasions, to get calls from random army human resources divisions (they’ll introduce themselves immediately after you say, “hello,” and they’ll speak so quickly that you have no idea what their name is or what division they work for). They’ll then quickly tell you that you have to be at X spot on Y date—they’ll say this information so quickly that it’s more like vomiting than speaking. You’ll ask specifically what it’s for, and you’ll get the same vague, generic answer: “It’s connected to your army placement.”

Well what the hell does that mean? The pee test I did in the army enlistment center was connected to my army placement, as was the mile I had to run at the combat gibush (*basically a combat audition), as were the computer tests I took at the jobnik test day. So how the hell am I supposed to prepare for this latest labor? Should I assume it’ll be a three-for-one test, and prepare to pee, run and test my brains all in the same day?

Today was one such mystery task “connected to my army placement.” All I knew was that I had to be in a specific building in a specific city at a specific time. And I was told, “God help you if you are late!”

So I got there about ten minutes before my scheduled appointment time. I rang a bell on a door, and after a few minutes a non-descript man answered the door. Really, the best way I can describe this guy is to say that there wasn’t anything about him worth describing. Bland features, bland voice….whatever. He ushered me into the waiting room and then told me that he would be with me in 30 minutes. So much for “God help you if you are late!”

And so I was left completely alone in this waiting room. Kind of freaked out and still not entirely sure what I was going to have to do at this latest army task, I cautiously made my way to one of 13 enormous chairs. I sat, completely alone in this absolutely gargantuan waiting room, filled with empty chairs, and started looking around. The walls were absolutely white—not just white, but a harsh white that, when combined with the harsh fluorescent lighting from the ceiling, made me feel like my eyes were about to shrivel up and die. “I’m melting! What a world, what a world….” It gave the room a sort of sterile, hospital-like feeling, minus the unsanitary fact that on each of the unoccupied chairs there were hairs and footprints and flakes of dead skin. This proof of the existence of other people in my shoes was both comforting and disgusting at the same time.

I settled down in my seat and tried to wait patiently. In complete silence. I swear, the color white makes a sound. So I’m sitting there, the walls are droning on in the background, saying, “WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITE.” And the air conditioning is humming, and the loudest thing in the room, drowning out the white walls and the AC, is my breathing. Deafening. It sounded like the breathing you hear in trailers for horror films. Like, “BREATHE…..Is the monster gone? BREATHE…..BREATHE…..Aaaaaaaa!!!!!!!” If that makes any sense.(If you’re still reading my blog that sort of thing MUST make sense to you.)

After about 10 minutes of complete boredom I got the idea that maybe sitting in this oppressively white, abandoned and bare room was in itself the test. I tried to slyly look for hidden camera, but after about five minutes of looking I realized that I’m probably not interesting enough to the army to be subjected to weird tests like this. So I made a mental note to not pick my nose, just in case, but stopped looking for hidden cameras.

I might just have to mention something really gross right now….when I get nervous, I pee. A lot. So obviously while waiting in this room it dawned on me that I needed to pee before going into my latest army task. Normally I’d ask permission to use a private office’s private bathroom, but in this case there was no one to ask. I was completely alone in this large waiting room. The exit door was locked, as was the door to what I figured was the main office. I turned a corner, passing through an extremely bare kitchen (just a sink and four small jars of coffee/cocoa powder—no spoons or even cups!), and came into a tiny toilet closet. I did my business, then flushed….and

WOOOOOOOSH

A deafening roar comes out of the toilet. Like, not a flush, but a noise that lets you know that you have done something irreversibly horrible to the toilet. The toilet growls, like it’s angry for revenge or something. I spend the next 10 minutes standing next to the screaming toilet, with my finger to my lips as I whisper, “Shhhhhh!” like it’s an upset baby instead of a toilet noisily demanding justice. I keep quietly repeating to myself, “All I did was pee! Shhhhh! Shhhh!”

Finally, over the angry growl of the toilet I heard the guy in charge start to come out of his office, so I rushed out to the waiting area to act as if I had been there the entire time. He doesn’t seem to notice the sonic boom coming out of the toilet…

Once inside the office (almost as bare as the waiting room—just a plain desk, two chairs, a telephone, a wilting plant, a pen, and a binder) , he asks me about some of my details. What is my name? What is my ID number? What is my phone number? I answer all these questions in my goofy Hebrew, and then he explains to me what this day is. It’s basically just another interview where he’s going to ask me about myself, and he’s going to ask about jobs in the army, and if there’s something I want to ask for I can do it now. And so the interview starts:

“Tell me about yourself.”

How the hell am I supposed to answer that? What does he want to know about me? Does he want facts about me? Like a biography or something? Does he want to know my philosophical beliefs? How detailed am I supposed to be?

Instead of answering, I just sort of cough and fidget uncomfortably, saying, “Ummmmm,” quite a bit, hoping that this will encourage him to follow up with a more specific question. But I get nothing. So then I said something like, “Look, I’m fine with telling you about anything, but I just don’t know what specifically you want to know.” This made the interviewer reflect for a moment, and then he issued a new demand:

“Okay. Tell me about school.”

Again I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and wondered what I was supposed to tell him. Did he want to know about my grades? What subjects I liked? My social life? My extracurricular activities? The various times I jumped out of windows or ran away from teachers?

But as I tried to form the right kind of answer in my head, I looked up at the interviewer. Big mistake.

This guy brought eye contact to a new level. This was not normal eye contact; this was a staring contest that the guy didn’t seem to realize I had already forfeited. I thought to myself that this must be what it’s like for Cyclops from X-Men to look at you without his protective glasses, that same intense burning sensation. I thought maybe he was trying to achieve some kind of telepathy with me, and I wanted to tell him, “Sir, no matter how hard you stare, you’re still not going to be able to read my mind.”

Anyway, somehow I got past the fact that apparently the interviewer didn’t need to blink like most humans do, and I found it a little bit easier to open up to his questions.

It did get really confusing though because I mentioned that I like to write stories about people I encounter. When he asked me to explain how I saw myself, how I would write about myself in one of these stories, and I said that I’m not all that exciting, I’m just an observer. He asked what I meant, and I said that I personally am quite boring, but my life just happens to intersect with the lives of interesting people, and I like to write about them. He asked for an example, and I brought up the Hokey Pokey Man.

The Hokey Pokey Man is a man that became sort of a legend of my childhood. I was a little girl, standing outside the White House with a school group, waiting to go inside for a tour. It was freezing, we had been waiting for what seemed like five years, and we were all miserable, when suddenly and completely out of the blue, we hear a loud voice singing the Hokey Pokey. We all looked around for the source of this sound, and down the street we found him. The Hokey Pokey Man. A man who dressed 100% like the respectable businessman or lawyer or whatever that he was, but who also wore enormous, bright yellow DJ headphones. I could say he was running down the street, but I think the word “prancing” would be more fitting. So this man pranced down the street in his sharp business suit, belting the Hokey Pokey at the top of his lungs, and flinging his arms into the air in time with the music. As all eyes waiting in line at the White House turned towards the Hokey Pokey Man, he seemed to be completely oblivious….still skipping and twirling down the street in his immaculately kept business suit and singing and dancing to the Hokey Pokey. And off he danced into the distance, like some kind of flamboyantly gay cowboy riding off into the rhinestone sunset.

The interviewer asked me how this story shows how I am, and I explained my telling him this story in itself is telling him about myself. While my classmates may only vaguely remember the Hokey Pokey Man, I’m the only one who is going to keep telling the story, who’s going to write about it, and who is going to spend great chunks of time for the rest of her life wondering what ever became of him, wondering if he’s still dancing the Hokey Pokey down the street in DC or if he’s made to a different state or different song by now.

The Methodists Effing Love Me

So this is not to insult any Methodists I may know and love, but the Methodist service I experienced this morning was quite possibly the most somber and awful hour of my life—which was then followed by the most socially intense and terrifying 15 minutes of my life.

THE HYMNS
To start, I didn’t get the memo that only Grandma and her bridge partners attend the 10:30 a.m. service, giving me such a level of self-consciousness that I actually found myself starting to pray to instantaneously develop wrinkles. What I did find delightful/depressing though was that, as an older crowd, they didn’t immediately stand up for the hymns. For each hymn the leader would say, “Please stand for Hymn ____” and then there’d be like an hour or so where everyone would contemplate how to get away with not actually standing, and finally (about halfway through the hymn) they’d realize that they had no choice but to just stand for the damn thing. Their general sentiment was one of “Aw eff, gimme a minute…,” the same feeling of defeat that requires people to make two attempts at getting off the couch.

Then there was the issue of hymn choice. As soon as I had arrived and opened their book of hymns, I got really excited that they had “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” That’s the first thing I do in any church, and I immediately judge any church whose hymnbook doesn’t have it—I recognize that this is completely irrational and also that as a Jew I have no right to dictate what makes a good hymnal, but this doesn’t stop me from judging up a storm whenever I come into a church.

Anyway, I thought any church that has “Come Thou Fount” can’t be half bad. But then instead of the glory of “Come Thou Fount” they chose to sing “Rejoice in the Lord,” which I would describe as a cheerful funeral dirge. Hell, even “Come Thou Fount” aside, the hymn right above “Rejoice in the Lord” in the book was the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which is undoubtedly the most epic song—religious or otherwise—EVER. And to confess something embarrassing, sometimes I like to sing it to myself when I’m feeling particularly smug and self-righteous about something I’ve just done. So my question here is, WHY WOULD YOU CHOOSE THIS PILE OF SHIT WHEN THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC IS RIGHT ABOVE IT? It’s just racist is what it is.

No, instead of badass war songs about how God is trampling shit we had to sing the sort of crap we used to have to sing at elementary school concerts, accompanied by the muzak-y Nordstrom’s piano. I felt that same sense of “Fuuuuuuck, this song is so shit it almost isn’t even worth the math lesson I get to miss to perform it.”

THE PASTOR
All I know is that this lady seemed to be pissed off about something. The sermon wasn’t a sermon, it was a scolding from my mom. If my mom were Scottish. And if my mom were in any way capable of being stern and awful, for that matter. See, it wasn’t even a sermon about how we should all be better people, which would at least make her chastising tone at least a little understandable. No, it was basically Mom standing there with her arms crossed, saying in a stern, angry and disappointed voice, “So Jesus is going to return in all his glory and I want you all to sit and just think about what you’ve done.” “Once in Heaven we will all know perfect peace with God and you should be ashamed of yourself, young lady.” “Nothing comes close to the joy we will feel at the return of Jesus and I am severely disappointed in you, I really expected better from you.

Just to emphasize how incredibly ashamed of itself the congregation should be, the pastor littered her speech with pregnant pauses. Like, literally pregnant, as in they would last for nine months. They lasted so long that there were several moments where I thought maybe the meeting had devolved into a Quaker meeting, and then I’d very suddenly be startled back into reality when this crazy bitch remembered to continue with her train of thought.
Damn, that’s some good sermoning.

THE CONGREGATION
I did find the people to be delightful. I particularly liked the woman sitting next to me, who would respond with an enthusiastic “YES” whenever she agreed with something someone had said. Which, being a Methodist in a room filled with Methodists saying Methodisty things, happened quite frequently. I wish I could have seen how she responds when someone says something she disagrees with. Does she give it a “NO” or does she go for the more emphatic “FALSE”?

My God though, I think Methodists are too friendly.
So friendly were these Methodists that at the end of the service I felt like Simba in the Lion King when he’s caught up in that stampede of wildebeests as this horde of Methodists descended upon me. After tackling each other and breaking hips in their desperate rush to shake my hand, the herd of grandmas would then tell me EVERYTHING THAT IS GOING ON IN THE CHURCH EVER. I thought I had nearly escaped, but as I started to pull the exit open an old man literally blocked my path so that he could speak to me. And as he spoke to me yet another receiving line of eager Methodists formed, and I was once again welcomed and told of EVERYTHING THAT IS GOING ON IN THE CHURCH EVER.

So friendly were these Methodists that I’m pretty convinced that, should I ever return to this church, everyone will immediately throw themselves to lie prostrate on the floor as they offer up prayers of thanksgiving to God for my return. The congregation will weep tears of joy, and once they’ve blown their noses they will start planning a parade in my honor. The level of excitement for my Second Coming will match or maybe even exceed their excitement for Christ’s.

So friendly were these Methodists that I considered staying for coffee, simply because I thought my slipping out before fellowship coffee might actually cause some of them to commit suicide with Dido-like levels of flamboyance. Gosh though, never thought I’d miss the days of unfriendly and unwelcoming cliques at Hillel Shabbat services…

And then Julia went home and sobbed quietly as she hugged her knees on the floor of the shower

Our last education lecture can only be described as a machinegun fire of awkward, uncomfortable and just generally unfunny jokes and comments. A couple times a week all 180 of us are locked into a claustrophobe’s nightmare, this horrific lecture theater with rows so tight that, come Hell or high water or the Apocalypse, once you’re in you’re in it until everyone else in your row decides to leave, and we are forced to listen to someone drone on and on for a little over an hour about how to deal with kids with problems*. Because apparently there are absolutely no healthy or “normal” children in the entire county.

*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”

Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.

See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.

I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”

That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”

What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”

And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”

So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”

This one time, this dude totally fell asleep in intro to hinduism

At some point we’re going to need a serious post about the fact that a member of staff just casually dropped an anti-Semitic remark like it ain’t no thang. I am, however, feeling a little ill (I wish I could claim that the shock of the remark on my Jew-soul gave me this cold, but unfortunately I’ve been sick for a couple days now), so instead I give you an edited version of a previous bit of writing I did.

I thought about it yesterday when I fell asleep during a lecture. In a normal lecture with the about 180 members of my program this wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this particular lecture was with 18 students only. When I woke up I thought maybe I’d gotten away with it, but when I made eye-contact with the lecturer she gave me a pretty undeniable glare.

With that I give you: THIS ONE TIME THIS DUDE TOTALLY FELL ASLEEP IN INTRO TO HINDUISM



Today during lecture--given by an Italian guy that I like to think of as Professor Mario Brothers--I noticed that my neighbor had fallen asleep on the shoulder of his other neighbor. She seemed slightly annoyed by it, but they were acquaintances so she wasn't too upset by it. I laughed, thankful for myself and amused at someone else's misfortune. I also liked that we were in the second row, the Splash Zone if you will, since you're so close to the professor that if he spits when he talks you will get wet. It's like the first few rows at Sea World or a Gallagher performance. Anyway, if you ask me (and you are asking me because this is my blog), to fall asleep within any professor's Splash Zone takes chutzpa to a new level. Instead of discretely dozing off in the back few rows of a huge lecture hall where the professor's weak eyes won't notice your closed ones, you choose to position yourself close enough to the professor that his lapel microphone can pick up your snoring.

Anyway, after a lengthy mental digression, my thoughts returned to the subject of the lecture. Well, actually my thoughts returned to their normal subject during that class--noting which words the professor has trouble pronouncing. But then something horrible happened. I sensed my neighbor shift in his seat. And then, horror of horrors, I noticed his head sleepily traveling from his other neighbor's shoulder towards me.

For any stranger reading this blog, you have to understand that I don't like being touched. It's not about germaphobia....I don't know if I have OCD or if I'm just weird, all I know is that I don't like being hugged, I don't even like handshakes, and I just generally do not like people who get too close to me. I usually make a genuine effort to forget about this problem when I'm around friends and family, but even with my own brother I would get very upset when he would fall asleep on my shoulder during car trips. So you can imagine how horrifying it was to see a stranger's head approaching and looking to do that very thing.

In fact, here's the theme from Jaws to provide a soundtrack for what I'll write next:


And so his head slowly advanced towards my shoulder. No no no, I prayed silently, please dear God....Buddha....Jesus....Krishna....whoever. Please for the love of all that is holy do not let him reach my shoulder. But my prayers fell on deaf ears. I had to come up with an escape and quickly, because I only had seconds left before his head made contact with my shoulder. Realizing that I was sitting in an aisle seat, I figured I could just lean out of my seat towards the aisle. Surely his head would stop its journey eventually, and I could just sort of huddle in my corner. And so I leaned out....and his head kept coming. So I leaned out more.....and his head kept coming. Eventually it got to the point where I was leaning so far out over my armrest that I resembled a damp towel on a clothesline....or like a fat, dead fish just kind of flopped out, with my fat bulging over the sides of the armrest. This was as far as I could go without flipping over my armrest. And trust me, I considered it. I wasn't sure if the armrest could hold my fat, but I just held on and prayed that the advancing head would stop.

But it didn't. The head finally landed on my shoulder. Actually at this point, because of my sort of weird crouched/reclined posture it landed on my hip/arm. But whatever, all that matters was that a stranger was now sleeping on me. There were a few minutes where I silently thought about what to do, if I had to wake him up or if I would just have to suffer through class, when suddenly and completely involuntarily my body, as if deciding to take matters into its own hands, just had a spasm. It was the sort of spasm that wasn't dramatic enough for the people around me to notice, but it was strong enough to wake up Sleeping Beauty, who suddenly bolted upright, snorted and said something like, "Huh? What?"

And then about two seconds later he had conked out once more. Thankfully he didn't use my shoulder as a pillow again, but I kept a wary eye on him for the rest of class just in case. It became apparent, however, that this guy was incapable of sleeping without a shoulder-pillow, because for the rest of class he would sort of doze off....his head would sort of drift backwards...and then BOOM! His whole body would seize--like literally the whole body would seize, and his arms and head would flail around--and he'd sit upright, completely startled and awake. And then within a few seconds the process would repeat itself. I spent a few minutes watching his cycle of falling asleep, then suddenly completely spazzing out, trying to stay awake, and falling asleep again, and I imagined he was probably thinking to himself, ZzzzZzzZzzzz *SNORT!* HUH??? Where am I? Oh shit, was I sleeping in class? Okay, I can't fall asleep again, I gotta stay awake....but....but maybe it'll help me concentrate if I just sorta tilt my head back and....zzZzzZzzzzZZZzzzz."

While this cycle took a few minutes for each revolution during the beginning of class, by the end of class it was happening every couple of seconds. Honestly, I even entertained the thought that he was having a seizure. But once I realized that he was indeed still just falling asleep and waking up repeatedly, I started laughing. In the middle of lecture. Which was about burning widows on pyres in Hinduism.

I looked around me and realized that no one in this 100 person lecture even noticed the guy who was having what looked like seizures every couple of seconds. If you ask me, not noticing stuff like that is a waste of coming to lecture.

/

I think I'm too immature to get to Heaven.

Well, the good news is that I did finally venture out of the library. This morning your favorite (yeah, I said it. What of it?) field anthropologist ended up attending mass, and in terms of having a meaningful experience I think I would have to call it an indisputable failure. And, as always, that was my own damn fault. True, it wasn’t as bad as the time I spent almost all of a Quaker meeting thinking about what would happen if someone were to fart (would they just stand up and claim it as divine inspiration?), but it wasn’t much better.

Usually when I venture into mass or any other service I tend to use it as an opportunity for a nice think, since I’m not much of a participant. Sometimes it turns into a great experience, as if it’s meditation for stuffy Republicans like me, but other times…like today…it’s basically an hour of me trying to block out inappropriate thoughts. And no, you filthy perverts, when I say “inappropriate thoughts” I don’t mean vulgar mental images. Today “inappropriate thoughts” means, “What is the worst song I could possibly start belting right now in the middle of mass?”

This is my version of a Koan, I guess.

Think about it. You are in a large church, surrounded by priests, people training for the priesthood, and the saintly people they know and love. It’s an incredibly important service, there’s a sacrament in it and everything, and my God is there a lot of solemn kneeling in prayer. You’ve given it a lot of thought and you’ve concluded that you’ll probably only be able to get a few bars in before one of the acolytes tackles you into submission—so which song is it? Which song is the most hideously inappropriate thing you could possibly imagine belting during the middle of mass?

What got me thinking about this was all the special clothing they put on for services. Observing the cassock and cotta-fest that is mass made me think of muumuus. Thinking of muumuus made me think of fat ladies. Thinking of fat ladies made me think of the busty black women who sing, “It’s Raining Men.” Which, obviously, gave me the urge to stand on top of my chair and start belting “It’s Raining Men.”

As soon as I became conscious of that thought I conceded defeat. Trying to have a proper think during today’s mass would be an exercise in futility, so I might as well devote the next hour or so to coming up with an even worse thought than singing “It’s Raining Men” instead of “Agnus Dei.”

I decided that “It’s Raining Men” clearly wasn’t beaten by such favorites as Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb” or Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl,” but it was definitively trumped by anything produced by the Village People, particularly the YMCA. (Though, once the fog machine that is the thurible really gets going, what is the church if not a massive and cheesy bar mitzvah? Get some cheap DJ lighting in there to play on the fog and you got yourself a Jewish rite of passage.)

The ready-made ridiculous dance moves (and I don’t just mean the wacky arm movements—yes, I mean the embarrassing pelvic thrusting, too) that come with the territory made the YMCA a strong candidate, but thinking about bar mitzvahs made me consider the potential of music from other faiths. The obvious choice was the Islamic call to prayer, but that seemed less ridiculous and more dickish. Simply drowning out one statement of faith with another would be turning a bit of fantasy into a bit of jihad, and that just ain’t my style.  

What about the song “Chai”? 

We had to learn how to dance to this travesty in religious school. I have to imagine that Israeli dancing is probably the most offensive thing you could possibly do in a church; not because it’s offensive to the church in particular, but just because Israeli dancing is simply offensive in all contexts. I should probably provide full disclosure though: the fact that my uncoordinated ass was forced to dance in circles as a crucial part of my religious education from the age of 3 until I was 12 might have something to do with my dislike of Israeli dance. So maybe singing and dancing to “Chai” in the middle of mass is not objectively all that awful, when compared with the option of the YMCA.

But I don’t want to rule out all faith-related musical inappropriateness. Although, to be honest, the worst thing you could possibly sing in the middle of a mass in a high church setting probably comes from the Christian tradition itself:

The Eighteenth Wheel

I’m in the library studying theology. Aw crap, you caught me. I’m actually hiding in the library (with an open theology book, mind you) because I’m too afraid to go downstairs for lunch. The college is hosting an Open Day for prospective ordinands, and so the dining hall is packed with priests, future priests, and potential future priests. I didn't really want to be the only person in the room who's destined for Hell. Not gonna lie, it’s a little intimidating. So intimidating, in fact, that I’m even giving up a free lunch [*gasp!*].

To be fair, even when it’s me among just this year’s bunch of ordinands I feel a little intimidated. I’m not sure “intimidated” is quite the right word, as on those occasions when I’m the only non-ordinand among ordinands I feel less intimidated and more like the third wheel on a 17-person date. They all lean into each other to share intimate conversations about church politics or which tune they’re going to use for the “Magnificat” at Evensong, and every now and then their intimacy is shattered by my feeling the need to laugh with a ridiculously loud volume at a joke about Giles Fraser just to prove that “HEY FOR ONCE I HAVE A FAINT IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!” Those rare moments where I am even capable of doing an honest but deafening guffaw of recognition, however, are vastly outnumbered by moments of those weak smiles of someone trying to hide the fact that they are, relatively speaking, a dipshit. Most of the time I have genuinely no fucking clue what anyone is talking about, and I feel as though I crashed the house party of the Elect.

But this isn’t to bitch about the ordinands, the poor dears. They're all lovely people and those rare moments when I do understand what the hell they're talking about make all the moments of confusion worthwhile. Besides, it’s only natural to be very close to people going through the same program, and to be honest I think the people in my own program are more cult-like. Try sitting in on a conversation between a group of student-teachers and see how lost you feel—it’s like we vomit up a never-ending fountain of incomprehensible acronyms and “my pupils are shitter than your pupils” trump stories.

Still though. I think I’ll stay in the library just to be safe.

Paul's Letter to Philemon...as read by me.

NB/CAVEAT EMPTOR/CAVE CANEM/CARPE DIEM: Just remember that you’re reading this blog by choice. Since I’m not forcing anyone to read this I feel free to write poorly and write offensively. So having said that, I just want to stress that if you’re religious—particularly Christian and religious—you might want to give this post (and all of my posts) a miss. To be fair, you might even consider giving me a miss.

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS…AND PROFANITY. AND ALSO A BIT OF BLASPHEMY.

(written last night)
I had another one of those moments today where I realized that I’m foreign. And no, I don’t mean foreign in the nationality sense, which is pretty much a constant revelation, I mean foreign as in I clearly belong on another planet. See, today I was in the library reading Paul’s letter to Philemon, and I came across the sentence, “When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because…” (followed by several verses of Paul rambling on as Paul is wont to do).

I just had to push my chair back and chuckle like a fat person at Thanksgiving. Maybe since I’ve been in a slightly down mood this week I’m desperate to cling to anything even remotely giggle-worthy, but I was vastly amused by what was implied in that “when.”

“WHEN I remember you in my prayers…”

It suggests that there are specific instances when Paul includes Philemon in his prayers, while other times Philemon goes un-prayed for. I liked to imagine that sometimes Philemon pisses Paul off so much that he leaves the slave-owning bastard out of his prayers purely out of spite. Kneeling by his bedside in the evening, sometimes Paul charitably prays for Philemon, while other times he says, “…and please Lord bless the Romans, the Corinthians, maybe even the Hebrews—but forget about Philemon because that guy’s a dick!” Maybe (no, definitely) it’s inappropriate to use this kind of language when talking about the Bible, but I really liked the passive-aggressive “FUCK YOU” that was captured in that “when.”

Now exploding with shamefully nerdy laughter, I rushed across the library to see what the original Greek said. The word “devastated” does not even begin to cover how I felt when I discovered that this delightful “when” was nowhere to be found in the hideous jumble of strange shapes and syntax that is Greek.

When I felt my face fall I realized that I am foreign. I’m sitting in a library laughing at the Bible while everyone else in my program is out getting shitfaced to celebrate that our week has finished. And it’s not like I wasn’t invited—I was, I just chose to hang out in the library and giggle over my interpretation of an English rendering of Paul’s word choice instead. I’m perfectly happy sitting in the Arctic library by myself at night with the understanding that the rest of the world is out being awesome, but surely my comfort with that is weird. Even the poor bastards training for the priesthood had cleared out of the library, having probably effed off to the pub ages ago because everyone in this country is always effing off to the pub.

To be fair, today’s realization that I’m clearly a weirdo started developing earlier in the day when I become conscious of the fact that I had spent a solid 15 minutes staring at the way someone’s ears would sort of bounce when they talked. No fucking clue what they were talking about; all I got from that conversation was that they have bouncy ears. This raised the all-important question of “Are my ears that bouncy?”

I used to think that I had that facial recognition problem that people sometimes have, you know, where they can’t recognize anybody. See, I can know somebody but bump into them on the street and not have the faintest idea who they are. But I think the real problem is that I can have hour-long conversations with people and focus with religious dedication on one particular aspect of their face or one unique mannerism. At the end of the conversation I am intimately acquainted with the way their nose wiggles when they say certain sounds or the way their top lip curls up like a growling dog when they laugh or the particular way in which they wring their hands when listening—but I’ll miss out on more obvious aspects of their appearance, like the fact that their hair is blonde or that they are missing an ear.

Still though, I’ve had a truly lovely day of giggling over Greek (I learned how to say “_____ begat _____” in Greek today), the Bible, wiggling ears, and everything in between. If that is foreign, I don’t want to be native. Because, as the song goes, “Damn it feels good to be me.”

Dead Anglican Monk Ghosts

The other day I had print something, so obviously I went to the mortuary chapel to take care of that. I should probably explain that my college used to be a monastery, and apparently all the old monks used to go to one wing of the complex to die. Once dead they’d be carted down the hall to the mortuary chapel, which is now our computer room.

To be honest, I have to question how much of this is true. I know I heard the story from a priest, and when has a priest ever lied, but I can’t help feeling like the whole thing was made up for shock value. You know, the other colleges have stories like, “JRR Tolkien used to sit at this very chair!” or “And in this room, CS Lewis probably took a dump!” Tourists and students alike faint with excitement at the mere suggestion of historical connections, no matter how tenuous. And, as much as I like Fort Jesus, we just don’t have that kind of history. Because “people used to die in our college” is kind of the trump card of the desperate, the Helen Keller or Hitler card in “Apples to Apples” if you will.

Still, just in case, I insist on propping the door open when I’m in there alone at night. While not entirely sure if the suggestion of death has made me perceive an aura of death in that hallway or if there is a genuine aura of death there, I don’t like to take any chances. I figure if I prop the door open the chances of the ghost of some dead Anglican monk coming out of the walls and killing me for being Jewish are significantly lower than if I were to close the door.

So last night I was in this creepy chapel that smells of death (that is, if death smells of printer toner and faint body odor) when all of the sudden the door facing the open computer room door opened. Out from the darkened room stepped a girl, maybe about 8 or 9, who made intense eye contact with me. She gave me that look that you always get from your roommate’s friends. I’m not referring to any roommate in particular, I just mean that it’s a universal truth that if your roommate has friends over and you enter the room, all of the friends will turn to stare and give you a look that says, “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?” After they’ve met you their look drops the “Who are you” part, but they will always give you the “What the fuck are you doing here?” part. I’m genuinely fascinated by this look because I’m deeply curious to know what they could possibly think I was doing in my own apartment. I want to respond to their silent “What the fuck are you doing here” look with a casual shrug and an “Um, living.”

Anyway, this little girl gave me that look, probably minus the “fuck” because she isn’t even aware of that word yet, being 8 or 9. We had an intense minute or so of just staring at each other, a minute in which I had to fight the urge to shout a word, any random word, just because I felt so uncomfortable. Luckily before I could shout “CHESTNUTS!” the little girl peered round the corner of her door and started shouting at someone down the hall. I know it wasn’t in English, maybe it was French. Yeah, I know it’s terrifying that I did a bazillion years of French and the best description of this kid’s language that I can give you is, “Maybe it was French.” But get over it. Most of my brainpower at that moment was being devoted to planning escape routes for various horrific hypothetical scenarios involving the ghosts of dead Anglican monks.

So what’s your computer room like?

The Fiiiinaaaaall COUNTDOWN

Yesterday the song “The Final Countdown” came up on my iPod, and I immediately thought of my brother.


Before I continue, please get this video going. And turn up your speakers. Turn them up as loud as they will go.

My brother’s 14 months older than me, and when we were in 11th and 12th grade (Year 12 and 13) we had finally reached the age when having a sibling so close in age finally stops sucking so much. Instead of acting like total little bitches and tattling on each other from the backseat, now we were old enough to peaceably have the car to ourselves, and we were in total agreement about one thing in particular—every single afternoon, as soon as we started to pull out of the school parking lot, “The Final Countdown” had to be blasted.

I almost mean “blasted” in the literal sense. The force of the music beating out from the speakers felt like hundreds of small explosions, to the point where we would roll down the windows for fear that the sheer force of the volume would blow them all out, and the bass would rumble out with the intensity that jostles your internal organs out of place. I’m pretty sure that this daily ritual is entirely responsible for any hearing loss I may currently be suffering from. Hell, even if I ever get cancer I’m sure that it’d be somehow directly linked to this epically loud music.

I don’t really have a point in sharing all of this. Well, I guess my point is that I’m feeling a little nostalgic. It felt strange—and a little fantastic--to think that I’m studying to be a teacher and living in an Anglican seminary in England while he’s studying in a Lubavitch rabbinical school in the US, and I had to wonder how the hell we got to those places from that car blasting “The Final Countdown” in a high school parking lot in Los Angeles.

The adhan is looking like a preferable alternative

I know I haven’t even been here for two full months yet, but I’ve already grown to hate somebody. And when I say somebody I actually mean an inanimate object that I’m convinced is determined to ruin me—and obviously if something is conscious enough to have a vendetta against me, it is a “somebody” as opposed to a “something.” Clearly I’m referring to my college’s chapel bell.

Being me, I don’t have the normal complaint that some non-future-priests in this college have, namely that the bell wakes them up. To be honest, the first time since my arrival on September 12th that I have ever been woken by this bell was this morning, when it went off at the buttcrack of dawn (okay, it went off at around 8:30).

No, my major complaint about this bell is that I think it is trying to make me crap my pants in complete and utter terror. Before I tell you how, you have to understand how skittish I am: the other day someone came through a doorway a little too quickly and I literally fell over with fright.

Okay, so now for this bell. Each morning I stumble, half-asleep and freezing cold, across the garden to the dining hall so I can have some breakfast. I’m sleepy to the point of disorientation, to the point where even remembering if I put pants on that morning is an intellectual challenge. The entire college is in silence, silence so powerful that you can probably hear the likely disgusting noise snails make as they ooze along. And each morning, just as I reach the most acoustically ideal place in the entire garden, the bell lets out a hearty:

BONG!!!!!

And just in case you didn’t hear that first earth-shattering BONG! the bell follows it up with about 30 more BONG!s in quick succession, like it’s the jackhammer of church bells. Like it's rubbing it in. My understanding is that the bell tells people when services are about to start, so I used to think that the bell was yelling at the ordinands, “GET YOUR LAZY ASSES OUT OF BED AND INTO CHAPEL!” (Note: I’m not suggesting that the ordinands are lazy, but rather that this asshole of a bell thinks that they are.)

Now though I’m pretty convinced that the first BONG! is actually a “BOO!” and the bazillion follow-up BONG!s roughly translate to “hahahahahahahahahahaha!”

Why is it laughing, you may well ask. Well, because after the first deafening BONG! I usually react pretty strongly. Sometimes I do a subtle flinch, like someone has just raised a hand to slap me. But sometimes I react in more obvious ways, like screaming “JESUS!” (always welcome in a seminary), or involuntarily flinging everything I’m carrying as if in self-defense, or sometimes I just fall over. Maybe I've made it obvious, but the terror I feel at hearing this bell is immense. The absolute terror I feel after hearing such a sudden BONG! shattering the sleepy silence is the sort of thing that, on a good day, makes me require a hug afterwards and that, on a bad day, makes me question the existence of God. I won't explicitly tell you how much of this is exaggeration for an effect, though if you've known me long enough you'll know that this likely isn't much of a stretch of the truth.

The obvious conclusion here is that this bell is an asshole who won’t stop his campaign of terror until I piss myself with fright .But I refuse to change what time I leave my apartment for breakfast so as to miss the bell. If we change our normal routines because we fear a terrorist will kill us make us pee our pants, then the terrorists have already won.

RE according to Sam

After Friday you should expect a massive post about my first taste of teaching (it’s in the works, I just can’t be bothered to finish it until I turn in my paper on Friday), but in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about this paper. If you’re not part of the Religious Education Massive*, then I should probably explain that we need to plan how to teach Christianity to middle schoolers (Key Stage 3) over six weeks. So basically I have six lessons to teach all of Christianity. Whatever, no big deal.

(*I learned the word “Massive” the other week, and apparently it’s like a gang…and now I can’t stop using it for everything. I’ve even started using it to refer to certain items of clothing, like my underwear is no longer my underwear but rather the “TOP DRAWER MASSIVE.”)

What I hate about this assignment is that I have to make the lesson plan that looks good, not the lesson plan that I would desperately like to do. The lesson plan I have to do is carefully justified with education policy documents and research into how kids learn. The lesson plan I would LIKE to do is justified with “because I feel like it.”

Actually, my justification would be in the form of song. I’d sing “because” to the tune of “We’re Off To See The Wizard” from “The Wizard of Oz.” So it’d be like, “Because because because because becaaaaaauuuuuuuse….” And then say, “Because I said so.” It’s the sort of thing that makes me think I’ll be a fantastic parent one day.

Anyway, what is this fantasy scheme of work? Well, basically we’d just sort of walk around—my God would there be a lot of walking. And we’d listen to Christian pop and haredi techno and Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” and it’d be fine. Occasionally we’d feed ducks and talk about it, and when we felt like it we would spend hours with our noses in the Bible, looking for something to laugh about. You know, the sort of thing that gives me the giggles during services (“These men are not drunk as you assume—it’s only 9 in the morning!”).

When we got bored we’d make fun of Midrash and then, if we were still bored, we’d invent the field of Christian Midrash just for laughs. We’d make fun of the Talmud for obsessing over minutiae that God Himself doesn’t have time to worry about, and after we finished we’d put together a “WHO WORE IT BEST?” fashion magazine spread for various popes.

We’d make frequent visits to churches, mosques, synagogues, cult centers, whatever, and for once in my whole method I’d lay down the law and I’d beat any kid who set one foot out of line. Unless someone farted, in which case the children would be encouraged first to laugh and then to loudly debate which member of the congregation dealt it. And rank the church on The List.

As I have completely unpredictable whims, one moment we’d be kumaya-ing it up and looking at squirrels somewhere, and five minutes later I’d be screaming at them to sit their happy asses down, shut up and open their books. I very humbly believe that this system, my system, is the best system of education. Ever.

So this one time I died at Freshers' Fair

I feel like every single day of my life my sneaking suspicion that I’m not quite like everyone else gets confirmed. That’s not to say that I’m BETTER than everyone (though, come on, you know I am), it’s just that I seem to be on a slightly different frequency. Last week I had another fine example of this characteristic that defines me when I became convinced, while in line for Domino’s Pizza vouchers, that I had in fact died.

I suppose some context would be helpful. Because I like to collect flyers and other things that I’ll simply throw away later, I decided to go to the Freshers’ Fair, which (for my American readers) is the university’s activities fair. After carefully considering which clubs sounded the most appealing in my thoughtful and discriminating mind, I ended by signing up for any group that harassed me into giving them my e-mail address. So basically I’m now a member of everything. Of my own free will I signed up for the Doctor Who Club (run by people who, quite predictably, make me look like I have social skills), the Walking Club, and the Conservatives.

So anyway, towards the end there was a line where you could get coupons and vouchers for Domino’s Pizza. I didn’t even really want Domino’s Pizza because I’ve been eating so much cake that if I eat even one slice of pizza I think my pants are just going to concede defeat and split open. “You win this time, Sam’s Caloric Intake,” they’ll sigh as they wave the white flag of my underwear. But everyone else seemed so excited about the free pizza, and I so badly wanted to fit in…so I stood in line.

A pimply employee came down the line handing out vouchers, one for each student, while we waited in line to get to the main table. I saw him come down the line, closer and closer to me, handing a voucher to the person in front of me, walking right past me, then handing a voucher to the person behind me. Not wanting to make a big deal out of not receiving something I didn’t even want in the first place, I just shut up and continued to stand in line. But then two people walked in and, without even noticing my existence, cut the line right in front of me.

It was at this point that I realized that something was up. I appeared to be invisible. “Aw shit,” I calmly observed, “I’m dead, aren’t I.” Wracking my brain I tried to deduce how exactly I managed to die at Fresher’s Fair, I realized that I didn’t particularly give a shit how I died now that I was dead. To be honest, the five minutes in which I thought I was dead I was probably the least scared of death I’ve ever been in my life. Like, if this is how calm and relaxed I’ll be when the time actually comes, I mean, I’m good to go.

After a couple minutes of just standing around taking in my newfound mortality, my first plan of action as a dead person was to decide to go to the movie theater. I figured that I may be dead, but the awesome thing about this version of death, that is being an invisible person that still walks the Earth as a ghost or spirit or whatever, is that at least I can go to the movies for free now. I looked at my watch and wondered if I could make the matinee of “The Lion King.”

Taking my first steps as a confirmed dead person, I strode towards the door with the confidence of someone who knows that from now on clothing is optional—and I immediately bumped into someone. “Oh, pardon me,” he Englishly apologized on my behalf. At that point I rather loudly thought out loud, “Shit!” and the poor polite guy probably assumed that I was some kind of a nut who swears at people after colliding with them. But no, the truth is that I wasn’t pissed off at this guy for getting in my way. The truth was that I was just pissed off I wasn’t dead because now I have to pay 12 bucks to go see “The Lion King” in 3D.

"HELEN!!!!!!!!!!"

Say what you want about the teeth, the food, the constant drunkenness, and the unsettling obsession with ceremony, but the British have fantastic emergency exit signs. The United States of America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, where anybody can become president someday, and where clouds rain puppies—but I don’t think our emergency exit signs reflect our mission. For those of you who are not American I should explain that, unlike the mirthful British signs, the American signs say quite simply “EXIT” in the same, uniform lettering, and they usually glow a sinister red or green. They’re almost German in their efficiency.

Now for my American readers I should probably explain what emergency exit signs look like here.
Basically it is a silhouette man making a mad dash for the exit.

I’d like to imagine this poor silhouette man running from the flames in a state of complete, pants-shitting terror. “You guys, we have to get the fuck out of here!” he seems to say. “It’s gone all backdraft!” he seems to add. Forgetting all the fire drills they practiced in the land of silhouettes that exist on various signs, he makes a sprinting beeline for the exit and bowls over small children in the process. At this point the animalistic instinct to preserve his own life takes over, and he finds himself practically frothing at the mouth like a rabid beast and plowing through a crowd of silhouette people who have gotten between him and the exit, like he's one of the less classy men on the Titanic.

While being the first to admit that I usually read into things far too much, I’d like to hope that designers, like me, had a full backstory for the poor man on the sign fleeing the flames. Maybe he isn’t the selfish, fearful man that I think he is. Maybe he’s married to the silhouette woman from public restroom signs (yeah, you’d think she’s married to the men’s restroom silhouette man, but that’s because you’re such a racist), and he’s actually fleeing quickly because he wants to make sure his wife, who’s in another area of the building, is okay.

Although the silhouette man does find her eventually, she’s tragically trapped in an upper floor of the building. “Take care of the children, darling!” she calls out from the window, with a stoical look on her blank, silhouette face as the flames climb higher. “HELEN, NOOOOOO!” her husband screams as the silhouette firefighters usher him away. They try to wrap him in a blanket, and he throws it off, raving like a madsilhouetteman, “WHY? WHY? NOOOOO! HELEN! WHY, SILHOUETTE GOD? WHY?”

Hmm. Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into those signs.

“Religious Services: Come for the farts, stay for the God.”

Warning: it’s another immature one.

After the unrivalled success of “High School Graduation Bingo, 2006 Edition” (I got to call out “Bingo!” after hearing, for example, the words “journey,” “spread your wings,” “look to your left,” and a joke about doing laundry very poorly at college), I’ve decided to create a new version of Bingo for farts during religious services.

Obviously you’ll be wantin’ some instructions on how to play Church Fart Bingo: The way it’d work is that any time a participant went church surfing or synagogue chasing they’d bring their Bingo card with them. On it would be different services you could go to: mass, evensong, shacharit, maariv, kol nidre, Rosh Hashanah morning (1st day), Quaker meeting, zen meditation, etc. And then you’d just play the waiting game. Because, if you go to church/synagogue as often as I do, you’ll end up hearing enough farts to get Bingo eventually. And then, no matter if the cantor is in the middle of wailing away in Hebrew about how different people are going to die this year or if the priest is in the middle of turning wine into the blood of Christ, you would be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to scream out at the top of your lungs, “BINGOOOOO!”

So the reason I bring this up is that tonight I ended up at Kol Nidre. Partly because I’m training to teach religion and need to keep up with how different people are praying, partly because I still sometimes feel as though if I don’t go to services on Yom Kippur I’m going to get smote/smited/whatever the word is, and partly because I was missing some old, dear friends. I thought going to Kol Nidre would be a nice way to recall fond memories of getting the inappropriate giggles with friends during Yamei Kippur past, when someone farted during the morning service, when the old professor acting as cantor had a peculiar voice that a friend spent the following years imitating at completely random intervals, or when the cantor went ridiculously slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly and caused the fast to drag on for even longer than necessary.

Hearing all that Hebrew and hearing the familiar tunes made me think of old friends in LA, Chicago and Jerusalem, and I’ll completely unashamedly admit that my eyes started tearing up. It’s rather embarrassing to do this during Kol Nidre, because I’m sure crying while you’re begging God for forgiveness in Hebrew can only look to your neighbors as though you did something well and truly fucked up this year that needs some serious atoning for. I imagine neighbors would be thinking, “Bitch, you clearly need to prostrate yourself.” Not really in the mood for a hearty helping of homesickness, I started to regret coming to the service, repeatedly asking myself, “What the hell were you thinking when you came?”


And then someone in my row ripped a substantial fart.


Stifling a quick giggle, I brushed it off as just a squeaky chair or a shoe noise. But then an unmistakable odor filled the air and confirmed my suspicions. And, dear readers, surely at this point in our relationship you can correctly predict my immensely mature reaction. Yes, the correct answer is indeed a solid 20 minutes of silent giggles, tears streaming down my face, a lobster-red face, and my entire body shaking like I was having some kind of a seizure.

Being trapped in a crowded Yom Kippur service with the severe people of England only made my struggle worse, as my brain kept trying to convince my sense of humor that we needed to behave ourselves. It’s supposed to be the most serious night of the year and I’m laughing about flatulence. Typical Sam, I’m afraid.

I calmed down for a minute, but then reflected on the number of religious services I’ve been to in which a member of the congregation audibly cheesed. After realizing that the number is actually appallingly high, and that the Jews have (according to empirical data that I have compiled) been the worst offenders, I completely lost it again and was back to silently shaking with giggles. With these kinds of stats I feel like I should pass Tums around at religious services, though maybe I’ll wait to see what patterns emerge on the graphs before deciding on a course of action.

But I promise I do have a point in sharing my story of someone farting during Kol Nidre. See, this is what I love about my life. At the very moment when I was feeling my lowest, like I made a huge mistake, like everything was now totally shit…at that very moment what I think is the single funniest thing in the world that could possibly happen ACTUALLY HAPPENED. If that’s not unquestionable proof that God exists and is a loving god, I don’t know what is.

Aw crap though, I’ve started using farts as proof of God’s existence. What would Anselm say?

Hanging out with a cat.

From 10/4/11 and 10/3/11
So I pretty much sat next to Lauren Cooper today. And, much like the adults in those sketches, I had not the faintest idea how to get young Lauren to shut the fuck up. But that truly deserves its own blog post, and I can only write about it after the homicidal urges have subsided. And when I say homicidal urges I actually mean the urge to drown my sorrows with cheesecake. Which I am doing right now.

Instead today I’d like to talk about a cat called Gemma that I became friends with on Monday. Being the socially awkward and inept person that I am, she might very well have been the ONLY friend I made on Monday. I’d like to think that the fact that I am fully aware of my awkwardness kind of puts me one step ahead of, say, PhD students, but this might be a purely theoretical distinction.

Anyway: Gemma. The chilliest cat in all of England. So basically I just sat with her outside for about half an hour. To be honest it wasn’t all that interesting. And quite frankly the only reason I sat with her in the first place was that I just thought she was ill. Mostly because I think all cats look ill. Probably because they’re not dogs.

So I was just chilling—okay, I have to interrupt myself here and say that the English people I’ve met have overwhelmingly used the word “chillaxing,” which is something I thought only dweeby 14-year-olds in the Midwest still said because they thought it was still the done thing in California. But apparently it’s still going strong here. Anyway. So I was just chilling with Gemma, waiting for someone who knew cats better than I did (basically anybody) to walk by, but no one came. So it was just me sitting with this cat who was making this weird moaning sound that I assumed at the time was a cat swan song but that I guess in retrospect is just extremely posh meowing that apparently American cats don’t do.

And my response was to just stroke her. Every now and then I’d stop stroking her because I was afraid she was dying and I really just didn’t want to turn today into a day in which I stroked a dead cat. But then I thought that would be really uncharitable of me, and the key word of the house today seemed to be “charity” (well, that and “cake”), so I continued stroking her and desperately prayed that she wouldn’t die. At least not while I was touching her.

I kept talking to her, calling “Gemma!” quite a bit, because I figured that when you do that to dying people they hang on a little longer. (“Gemma, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to see Venice, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how you wanted to see Venice, Gemma? You just gotta hang on.”) While remaining slightly doubtful as to whether or not it works on cats, I thought it couldn’t hurt. Having briefly considered whether or not meowing at her would be more productive, I decided that there was definitely a boundary of weirdness that even I wasn’t prepared to cross. So I just continued my little chat with quite possibly the worst conversation partner ever.

Finally someone did walk by and I asked him whose cat it was. Turns out she belongs to the professor who gave me my own copy of the New Testament in Greek a couple weeks ago. The same professor who, whenever he says so much as “Hello, Sam” in the hallway, causes me to cower in reverence and fear of his NT skills. This is his cat. (Urge to make “Magnificat” pun rising…)
Well, fuck. If his cat dies in my presence that’ll probably piss him off and then he’ll probably ask for the New Testament back. …HANG IN THERE, GEMMA!

The guy who came across my little makeshift vet office (Dr. Sam: I cure your pets with love and slightly squeamish stroking) seemed really unconcerned about Gemma, so she must be doing okay. And I’ll admit I didn’t really want to press the issue because he’s part of the ordinand crew, and they scare me somewhat for two reasons: 1) sometimes, particularly during mass, they wear dresses, and 2) I know they can just tell what an asshole I truly am, as most people can, but then they’re going to tell God about it, and then, well, I’m just totally fucked.

Casually waiting for the ordinand to round the corner, I started to get up, and as I did so I reflected on the fact that I just spent a sizeable fraction of an hour talking to a cat. And it was still probably the most productive thing I did all day.

But as I stood up and reflected a most horrific realization dawned on me: ooooooh Jesus have I been sitting in a bad spot. I’d been sitting Indian style right in front of the open door that leads straight to the kitchen. The way I was sitting you couldn’t see from the kitchen that I was with a cat. SO basically it just looked like I was camping out in front of the kitchen.

Look, I don’t mind if the cook thinks I’m just a hungry fatass who is sitting in front of the kitchen at 1 in the afternoon because she wants to be first in line for dinner at 7—in fact, I’d prefer that. But unfortunately I’m pretty sure that even before this incident I’d already managed to accidentally convince the cook here that I have some kind of an unhealthy obsession with him. To be fair, my passionate and extremely loud declaration of love for him when he served me my first taste of Indian food probably sent mixed signals.

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

So I think I made one terrible mistake coming here. And by that I mean I have accidentally passed up my one obvious opportunity in life to reinvent myself. No one here knew me when I first arrived. See, I’ve just been portraying myself as Sam, the RE student-teacher who likes Doctor Who, aspires to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, and dances to the Footloose soundtrack alone in her room. Which is fine I guess, because it’s a more or less accurate description of me. But I can’t help feeling like I missed out on a fantastic opportunity to introduce myself to everyone as Pocahontas.

Talk during Doctor Who and I'll have you put on the sex offenders register

Yesterday I watched the season finale of Doctor Who. I ended up camping out on the common room couch for some time beforehand just in case anyone would dare try to watch something besides Doctor Who. Then again, since England only has 1 ½ channels I’m not sure what else they’d be watching. Test patterns maybe?

Anyway, before Doctor Who there’s this terrifying show called “Strictly Come Dancing,” which I think is what the American “Dancing with the Stars” is based on. It’s terrifying because I don’t know all the endearing backstories of the celebrities because, coming from America, I’m used to actual celebrities. So instead of viewing their dancing from a sympathetic perspective, all I see are a bunch of old, sad tarts clad in sequin disasters being rather violently flung about on the dance floor by some eternally cheery young thing who has the almost impossible job of hiding his disbelief at how shit his partner is at dancing. And, frankly, it makes me fear old age. I don’t mind making an ass of myself, but I prefer KNOWING when I’m making an ass of myself. And it seems that when you’re old you lose your awareness of how ridiculous you are, and instead do a dance routine on national television in which you look like an overweight corgi chasing after dropped table scraps.

But I’m not here to talk about Strictly Come Dancing. I’m here to talk about child molesters. And by that I mean people who talk during Doctor Who. So I’m sitting there, practically pissing myself with excitement from watching the resolution of the huge mystery of the entire season, whether or not the Doctor does actually die, when suddenly an entire battalion of visitors to the college decided it needed to have a tea party in the common room RIGHT THEN. “Team, we need to have tea RIGHT NOW, and we need to very loudly and passionately discuss and sort out all of the world’s problems. RIGHT NOW. The world’s depending on us. And to show the world just how seriously we take our responsibility, we’re going to clink our cups and saucers loudly enough that even folks in Siberia are aware that this historic discussion is occurring.” …Sometimes I truly think universities should be made illegal and their students sentenced to 20 years hard labor in kibbutz laundry rooms. Whatever, I tell myself, that’s fine. I turn up the volume a bit and try to keep up with all the crazy shit that’s coming out of Matt Smith’s mouth, which is sometimes challenging enough even if you’re in a silent room…and you’re Stephen Hawking.

But then (and this person is so nice in every way, I just want to make that clear) someone decided to ask me about my day. A slight grunt was my response. Part of me felt so rude to not respond properly by reciprocating the question (or even simply responding with anything besides what was essentially a mouth fart), but the part of me that won out thought that anyone who talks during Doctor Who is clearly some kind of a pervert. And, dear readers, I just don’t have time for perverts.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m an awful person who prefers TV to human beings—the reality is that I’m an awful person who prefers Time Lords to human beings. And to be fair to myself, I may not have the patience to exchange pleasantries during Doctor Who, but if someone came to me desperately needing a sympathetic ear during Doctor Who I wouldn’t be angry. Hell, if it were something serious and urgent like, “Sam, I’m contemplating suicide,” I might even turn down the volume. A bit.

Sam's brush with greatness

Two days ago I had the surreal experience of showing a famous academic where the bathroom was. My college was hosting some conference on churches or theology or some other thing that presumably means something to God but not much to anyone else, and so our house was invaded by a sea of obese and religious Europeans. So as I’m wading through a crowd of well-fed Europeans so I can get to tea and cake on time and I’m silently cursing all of them for delaying my cake eating, a woman stops me and asks, “Do you know where the toilets are?”

I rather lazily pointed in the direction of the bathroom, and as I did I caught sight of her name tag. Holy crap. “Jane Doe.” I’ve read her stuff. My tutor has mentioned her almost as many times as he’s mentioned trees, and if you know anything about my tutor you’ll know the man loves himself some trees. OH MY GOD. Jane Doe said “toilets” to me! I helped Jane Doe have a (I’ll assume) successful bowel movement!

I wish I hadn’t just lazily pointed. I should have escorted her. I should have shown her Lambeth Palace, which is what I’ve started calling the handicapped bathroom that is about twice the size of my bedroom and that has fine soaps that the regular bathroom doesn’t have, which I guess is supposed to make people feel a little better about being handicapped. Then again, I’m fine with just lazily pointing. After all, bitch got between me and cake.

Writing is against my birthright.

So I’m still having trouble comprehending this whole issue of pens in UK schools. From my limited experience (observations in six schools—still prolly more classroom experience than Michael Gove), I’ve concluded that British children must be allergic to pens. At the start of every class period inevitably a small riot breaks out as the kids loudly inform Miss that they don’t have a pen or demand that Sir lend them one from the supply that he finds himself forced to bring with him.

I find it genuinely fascinating that it doesn’t occur to these children to bring their own goddamn pens to each lesson, and I often like to speculate on the thought process behind that one. I imagine that these children think that they are going to simply do interpretive dance all day at school and are then on a daily basis deeply shocked and offended to find that going to school usually involves writing at least a couple things down in your notebook—“Wait, we’re going to have to write things down? IN SCHOOL???”

I really just don’t get it. In my school people rarely forgot pens. And if you did you would very quickly have a quiet word with your neighbor to ask, completely humiliated and one step away from performing public self-flagellation, whether you could borrow a pen. And if that neighbor was me, you would then have to sign a contract. Because I was that desperate to not have any friends.

The kids’ aversion to pens is almost as confusing to me as British teachers’ obsession with having the kids underline things with rulers as opposed to simply letting the children do the terrifyingly bold and dangerous task of freehanding lines underneath entire words (dare I even imagine such a world?!), which seems like such a frustratingly massive waste of time that it might even earn itself its own blog post.

Remember thou art in England

Last night I partied chez the evangelicals. And when I say “partied” I really mean prayed. And when I say “prayed” I actually mean I just stood there, perhaps in a salute to my stern Presbyterian roots, with my lips sealed and my hands firmly stuck in my pockets.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun. Oh God no, I had the time of my lameass life. What I enjoyed so much is that it was completely unexpected. I mean, when I imagine the Church of England—even “evangelical” C of E—I imagine people in suits, women’s hats that seem to do their own interpretive dances, and a bunch of stiff people with posh accents saying, “Hallo.” You know, Queen Victoria, cricket, tuna and baked potatoes, and all that.

What I found at St Aldate’s, however, was a rock band, TV screens, and a crowd of people with their hands in the air. Old people were rockin out all over the places, and this one enormous gentleman who looked like Jeremy Clarkson only put his arms down once when he was very suddenly called by the Holy Spirit to rush off to the bathroom. To be honest, it was like being back at a miniature version of Willow Creek, my preferred megachurch back in the US. They had the same free-form prayers where every other word was “just” (“We’re just gonna take it down just a notch here and just pray, to just let Jesus know that we’re just thrilled that He could just be here tonight and just lead us to just know Him. Yeah, really just to know just how great He is.”), the live muzak during prayer intervals, the ubiquitous Australian teaching pastor who always seems on the verge of tears when he teaches, and the insanely hot member of the worship band—there’s always one.

The whole experience made me think of Roman triumphs, where the victorious general followed by a slave who has the job of being the dickhead who holds a wreath over the general’s head and reminds him, “Remember thou art mortal.” I just kept thinking that I need a dickhead like that to remind me, “Remember thou art in England.” Because I honestly didn’t believe it. Until last night it did not occur to me that actual, honest-to-goodness English people prayed like this. No, I kept telling myself, I am back in America. This is how Americans pray, not English people. The upside of all this is that I now know where to go when I’m feeling homesick.

Other than my initial shock at finding out that there are some English people (and a fair few!) who do enjoy rocking out while they pray, the service wasn’t all that different or weird from what I’ve seen before. Well, there was a sort of weird half an hour where I was convinced the guy giving the sermon had an Amish accent. I kept wracking my brain trying to figure out just how the hell an Amish guy ended up here and praying this way. Like, my family’s religious journey has been a weird one, but I think shaving off your chin beard and swapping your horse and buggy for a car kind of trumps everything…and then I realized that the guy was probably just from one of those Germanic or Scandinavian countries. But it was a lot more magical when I thought he was Amish.

Another thing that I love about this church, and about all evangelical churches really, is that they are constantly trying to pray for you. I mean, try getting evangelicals to NOT pray for you—Jesus Christ, there’s a miracle waiting to happen. All other churches you have to specifically ask for people to pray for you, which can often be really intimidating, but with evangelicals you have to beat them off with a stick if you don’t want them praying/preying on you. Evangelicals are kind of like benevolent zombies, lurching forward with their praying arms outstretched, groaning “Can we just pray for you?” instead of “BRAAAAAAAIIIINSSSS.”

Ah, it’s just so fabulous though. Knowing there’s a mini megachurch in my town, suddenly I feel a lot more enthusiastic about this year.

you knew this post was coming.

I’ve actually lost a bit of weight here—true, I still look like a manatee with glasses, but it has gotten to the point where pairs of once-tight pants (trousers, not underpants, if any Brits are reading this) have started slipping down, causing me to either rely on the one belt I own or frantically hike up the waistband every five steps like I’m doing a folk dance. Part of me is thrilled about the possibility of at some point no longer being the Fat American, but then the practical part of me is sort of panicked about how I will be able to afford new pants should this trend continue. I’m terrified that I’m going to be on my school placement and I’ll be known as that strange teacher who holds up her pants with hemp ropes like a sack of potatoes. “Do you know Sam?” “Ah yes, she’s that well-educated hobo, right?”

The problem is that British food is absolutely vile. Look, I love this country, I so very badly want to be able to smugly tell my friends back home that even the food here is fantastic, but unfortunately here in England I’m frequently confronted by plates of food that I could not, even in my vague liberal artsish way of fudging the boundaries of my knowledge, pretend to be able to identify.

Occasionally I CAN identify what I’m eating, and that’s even worse. For example, steak and kidney pie. WHY? And I don’t mean why in the curious, academic sense. I mean it in the aching religious sense, the crisis of faith sense, where you ask God from the very depths of your soul how an omnibenevolent being could possibly treat his creation so terribly in allowing man to invent steak and kidney pie. It really is The Problem of Evil. I honestly believe that there should be special death camps set aside for people who serve other people steak and kidney pies. And, being in theory a candidate for Hitler’s own death camps, I think I’m allowed to say things like that.

Sometimes the food isn’t bad, it’s just put into weird combinations. For example, I keep seeing restaurants that serve baked potatoes with tuna (instead of sour cream, chives, bacon and cheese—like a NORMAL baked potato). WHY WOULD YOU PUT TUNA IN A BAKED POTATO? What on God’s green earth could have possibly possessed you when you dreamt up that unholy union? I mean, Jesus Christ, no wonder you lost the Empire.

Then there’s the whole issue of baked beans. Apparently people here eat baked beans with their bacon and eggs in the morning. I personally don’t see what business beans have coming to breakfast. I want to look the beans right in the eye and ask, “Who the fuck invited you?”

It’s not all bad though. The sweets have been fantastic. Last week I was inducted into the world of biscuits, and I have now heard the Gospel of Trifle. I find myself running home from class each day, literally sprinting through the park and bowling over old women trudging along with their shopping who dare stand between me and cake, just so I can make it back in time for cake. (How twee and British is it that my college serves us cake every afternoon? But that’s something that deserves its own blog post.)

And also in fairness the non-British food I’ve had here has been pretty fantastic. I’m eating shawarma like I’m back in Israel, and I have so many kebab shop options near my apartment that I’ve decided that from now on I will not eat at kebab shops that cut the meat off with an electric turkey carver. No, I will insist my shawarma be cut off with one of those bigass knives that look like samurai swords. Come to think of it, I think I’ll insist on using a samurai sword for all knife functions. How fantastic would it be to spread strawberry jelly on toast with a knife so large you’d have to clear everyone out of the way beforehand? (“OH MY GOD, GET OUT OF THE WAY—SAM’S SPREADING MARGARINE!” “OH GOD NO, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” “AAAA!”) I think it’d lend a nice air of drama that is so sadly lacking at meals nowadays.