(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.”
Friday, November 18, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
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…
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…
Friday, November 4, 2011
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.”
*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.”
Thursday, November 3, 2011
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 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.
/
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