Today I went to an ordination. This being the first ordination I've ever attended, maybe you're expecting a thoughtful reflection on what ordination is, or about the work of a deacon, or about service in the church, or maybe about vocation.
Well, I am going to talk about vocation. Specifically, about the vocation of the guy sitting behind me, whose vocation was apparently singing "Alleluia sing to Jesus" loudly enough in Christ Church Cathedral (Oxford, England) that my family back in Los Angeles could appreciate it.
Put that video on full blast, and you still cannot appreciate the volume. It was like all the voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir combined, became Anglican, and were being channeled by a single man in a clerical collar. The only other time I hear singing that loud is when I'm alone in my car, driving along a mountain road with treacherous curves, and Ringo Starr's "Photograph" comes on the radio.
Now this isn't a complaint, mind you. No, I salute this man. I'm so embarrassed by my own singing that literally eating myself is a less terrifying prospect than singing in front of other people. When I look back at some of the most embarrassing moments of my life, such as peeing myself at age 12, or (falsely) coming out as a lesbian to my 10th grade students, or accidentally correcting someone's pronunciation of a word when actually they had a lisp, or the time I had to give an impromptu speech in Hebrew in front of a room full of executives about a project that I had not actually done, or the time my friend pantsed me outside Gelsons and I ended up mooning some poor old woman who was out doing her shopping, or the time I was 8 and I played a brick in a musical and had to dance around onstage in a bright yellow unitard ...when I look back on those moments, I thank God that at least I wasn't singing. At least when I was the unitard-clad brick I was only pretending to sing.
It looked a bit like this, except mine had the added asthetic benefits of childhood obesity.
And yet here's this man, surrounded by Englishmen in suits and some women who are dressed vaguely like the Queen, and he's singing this hymn with the same amount of gusto that primary school children have for totally random topics, like whales or cacti. I wanted to turn around to give him a thumbs up and a "you go, girlfriend!" But I figured that might make him stop.
Instead I post this silly bit of writing as a tribute to this man, whose enthusiasm for Jesus manifests itself in singing hymns louder than the drunken idiots sing soccer chants on the street outside my window at 3 am on school nights. And, may I say, YOU GO, GIRLFRIEND!
Let’s get one thing straight, since so many people pity me
when they hear I’m a lone tourist. I love it. Until I find a traveling
companion who is just as vile as me, I prefer walking around foreign cities by
myself because it’s the only time I can walk around publicly belching like a
cheap prostitute without consequences. And people who burden me with oppressive
hospitality rob me of this joy.
You know what I mean by oppressive hospitality—the most I
want from you for breakfast is a finger pointing me to the nearest McDonald’s
still serving breakfast. I appreciate your effort, but your three-course
breakfast that you watch me exhaustedly cram into my mouth like a chore under
your eager, almost evangelical eyes is about as welcome to me as an extended
tutorial with my professor who wants to talk about nothing but the golden age
of British bus travel.
This is how I ended up spending 5 ½ hours alone with a 40
year old on an internship. See, I was in Geneva for a job interview. My host
(and potential boss) had offered to find someone to show me around Geneva on my
free day, and not wanting to seem like the anti-social bitch that I actually
am, I pretended that this was a fantastic idea—thinking it’d be a brief lunch
and visit to a church or museum or whatever it is you’re supposed to see in
Geneva. Instead, in an act that gets the award for Most Misguided Act of
Hospitality of the Year (Runner Up: Not allowing me to withdraw cash from the
cash machine), my host arranged for me to spend the entire day with a complete
stranger, and a weird one at that. A man whose first stop on our tour was an
English language bookstore, so that he could spend an hour looking for a French
dictionary for himself.
And I didn’t even get the job.
When I first met him there was a glimmer of hope when I
detected his Midwestern accent. This hope dissipated, about as quickly as a
fart caught in the early stages by lowered car windows on a freeway, when I
realized his accent didn’t have the same, almost Swedish, sing-songy quality of
most Midwesterners, perhaps the chattiest folk in America. Instead it was the
gruff, monotone mumble of a defective Midwesterner, like one with a flipper for
an arm. He reminded me of the impressions of Louie Andersen saying “Chicken,
donuts, cheesecake…” that my brother and I used to do.
I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the
conversation going for three hours, even with the occasional awkward silence,
particularly when I gave correct navigational instructions that he ignored in
favor of just wandering around like a retarded puppy, followed by a sullen me
who occasionally offered a weary, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we need to turn right.”
Followed by a passive aggressive, “…like I said.” But, as I said, we had three hours of the wonkiest
conversation even I’ve ever experienced. The last 2 ½ hours were covered by my
occasional murmurs of “Mm…this is a nice neighborhood. Is it known for
anything?” And his brief, otherworldly “Yeah.”s.
But no matter. At least I got a hug out of it at the end,
and you know how much I like hugs. This being a sweltering, sunny Geneva day,
filled with loads of walking, it’s safe to say the hug was a bit wet. So,
again, it’s not like I got nothing out of the day.
To be fair, the day wasn’t entirely horrible. I did quite
like the Museum of the Reformation, and in particular its depiction of Luther
burning in Hell. Also fantastic was seeing two teenagers clearly on a date,
passionately making out in front of a portrait of a reformer. I’d like to think
it was the boy’s idea to go to this museum on the date. “I’ll take her to the
Museum of the Reformation—bitches LOVE ecclesiastical reform!”
But most spectacularly eye-opening was the exhibit where you
could actually smell fragrances mentioned in the Bible. As I learned, all
Biblical perfumes smell surprisingly of shit mixed with harsh chemical
disinfectant. It makes me wonder how bad the ancient Middle East must have
smelled if THIS was considered a luxurious improvement. I mean, I lived in the
Middle East for a while, and I can tell you I’d rather be next to a sweaty Sephardi
man on a bus than a bottle of nard. They tell me that nard is what that famous woman in the New
Testament anointed DJ JC with, though perhaps given that nard smells of
asparagus-flavored piss this woman should be considered infamous. I can clearly
imagine her rubbing this vile, inexplicably expensive trash on Jesus’ feet and
the world’s dear savior screaming, “For the love of God, Mary (they were all
called Mary back then, weren’t they), get that off my feet!”
I also quite liked the cornball attempt to bring it all to
life. I was told at the beginning by some overly enthusiastic Swiss girl that
there would be a room with a dining room set up and OH MY GOODNESS if I’d only
press 300 on my audio guide then I could “listen in” on John Calvin’s dinner
conversations with other reformers. Needing to kill time as my tour guide, in
spite of this being his fifth trip to the museum, had decided that every tiny
label in the museum needed full, Talmud-length exegesis, I decided it wouldn’t
hurt to let 300 be the soundtrack of my sit. I suppose they had tried to make
it sound as realistic as possible by adding the sound of beverages being
poured, but it had the effect of making the first minute of the recording sound
as though I were eavesdropping on John Calvin having a particularly stubborn
morning pee in an echoey bathroom. Ah well, points for trying, Museum of the
Reformation.
Before we rounded off our day with a silent, hollow walk
back to my “hotel,” we visited something called the Maison Tavel, which (as far
as I can tell) is a museum. To what in particular, I’m still unsure even after
spending an hour in there. Armor? Pub signs? Wallpaper? Dead stuffed pigeons?
Who the fuck knows…
There was this one tiny room in Maison Tavel that was
especially memorable. It was this tiny sitting room, sort of in a tower. I
walked in and—I know I’ve talked about farts, belches, etc. already too many
times in this post and that I’ve exceeded the quota, but just bear with me—and I
caught a whiff of several hundred years’ worth of accumulated farts that have
soaked into the wallpaper and gone stale. I have trouble conveying to you in
words the strength of this smell, and the closest I can get is saying that it
was actually like something out of a fairy tale.
Just over 48 hours in Geneva, and that’s probably what I’ll
remember years from now when I look back on my weekend in Geneva. Foul smells.
Oh right. And having to start off my job interview by
leading the chaplain in what was probably the most appalling bit of freestyle
prayer he’s ever heard. But that’s a post for another day.
So I went back to the Methodists today. You may remember that
the last time I was there I was surrounded by old women who seemed to be under
the impression that failing to throw themselves upon me would cause the
universe to implode.
I figured I could use this nice break from my traditional
stomping grounds in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, though I was slightly
disappointed that the lack of incense exposure today would require me to take a
shower. (Oh my God, that is such an attempt at a joke. I know I’m vile but I’ll
have you know that I do wash biannually.)
And so, after wading through a sea of people eager to shake
my hands and talk to me about the fact that it’s wet and windy outside, I
finally made it to my seat. I swear to you I had the same conversation six
different times. It went a bit like this:
Extremely Earnest Methodist: “Hello, are you a visitor?”
Me: “Yup, I am!”
EEM: “Ah, well done for braving the weather!”
Me: “Ah, well, I don’t live too far from here, to be fair…”
EEM: “It’s quite cold out!”
Me: “Yes, it is, but it’s thankfully very warm in here.”
EEM: “Yes, we have a timed heater! See, we set it for a few
hours before church and then…[*insert detailed exploration of the heater’s
workings, thoughts and feelings.*]”
Me: “Um…gosh…it sounds like a pretty amazing heater.”
EEM: “Oh it is! Oh hi, [*Fellow Extremely Earnest Methodist
who has approached*], I was just telling this young lady about our heater!”
FEEMwha: “Oh yes, it’s set to a timer, you know!”
I promise you I had this conversation about six different
times, to the point where I’m strongly convinced
that Methodists are not actually a religious group but instead the love
children of an affair between John Wesley and a furnace.
But they are lovely people. Or lovely people-furnace
hybrids.
So anyway, I sat down in one of the chairs and waited for
the service to begin. And before the service they have someone playing on the
piano some hymns that sound a bit like what the piano player at Nordstrom always
sounds like. It’s like all the soul is sucked out of the song, as the notes
echo around the escalator atrium and bounce off the fake marble.
I can’t do a good job of explaining it. All I know is that
when I heard the Methodist hymn piano I wanted to buy clothing. Or rather, as I
normally do in Nordstrom, I wanted to make grumpy huffing noises as my mom
drags me around and—can you believe how awful this is—actually tries to buy me
nice things. (If my mom is reading this: I love you, Mommy!!!)
Right. So the piano. It was playing “How Great Thou Art”
I love the song, but now instead of getting my Methodist thang on, I was
imagining Fat Elvis walking around Nordstrom asking saleswomen if this rhinestone jumpsuit
comes in any larger sizes, and then inevitably being told by some
severe-looking foreign woman who works there that he might have better luck on
Nordstrom.com.
I sat in my seat, waiting for the service to begin, as the
Methodists continued to chat with each other and occasionally give me heart
palpitations by approaching me (“Oh God Oh God I don’t know if I can act excited
about the timed heater for a seventh time!!!!”). But then I heard this weird
noise. It sounded like Beaker from the Muppets. What the eff is that?
After a few squeaks the sound petered out. Maybe it was the
timed heater? But then it came back again. Wait a minute. Wait. A. Minute. The
squeaking is squealing along in time with the music. It is wordlessly quacking
along to “How Great Thou Art.” Oh my God. There is a woman who looks older than
Yoda sitting a few seats away and she is scat-ing along with the music, singing
what can only be transcribed as “neener neener neener.”
Eventually they stopped talking about the heater for long
enough to start the service, and we got to sing some hymns. And for some reason
that is completely beyond me, the singing sounded really deep and low. I would
have had a sneaking suspicion that the minister may have been Johnny Cash, but Johnny
Cash sounded like a soprano compared to this guy. There were only a couple of
other men in the congregation, but they too had terrifyingly low voices. Though
the congregation was overwhelmingly populated by old woman who sang like a
chorus of Beakers and sang earnestly (as that’s how Methodists do everything),
for some reason the singing sounded like a low dirge.
It really was terrifying. It was like a new dimension had
opened up. Oh my God. We are all going to die. I am surrounded by old women but
for some reason our singing sounds like a Roman slave galley filled with beefy
men from Gaul.
Thankfully though, we didn’t die. I made it off the slave
galley, and even got invited to coffee afterwards.
I have nothing to say to really end this, so I’ll just say
that I’ve also felt a bit low lately and a bit like Fat Elvis. And this blog post
has made me think of Elvis. So in honor of that, I bring you VIVA FAT ELVIS:
I’m beginning to realize that studying education at the graduate level is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Half the time I just do not give one solitary shit about what is being discussed. Maybe actually all of the time I do not give one solitary shit about it, but about 50% of the time I have genuinely no idea what anyone is talking about. At first I thought it was the accents. “Oh, don’t worry,” I thought to myself, “these people have trouble pronouncing the letter ‘R’ so of course you don’t understand it when they say things like ‘zone of proximal development.’” But now that I’m nearing the end of my program, I’m beginning to realize the flaw with that statement.
No, as it turns out, 50% of the time I don’t give a shit and the other 50% of the time I’m too stupid even to figure out if a shit is indeed given. What these statistics mean is that I’ve spent about 100% of my time during lectures and classes absent-mindedly drawing hand turkey after hand turkey. When people in America ask me what I learned over in England, I’m going to have to tell them that I learned only two things: 1) Public transportation is fabulous in Europe, and 2) My fingers are so fat they look like lumpy sausages when traced onto paper.
In my future as a teacher I’m not entirely sure where these two facts are going to help me. And I suppose that’s been my problem with this course; I don’t particularly want abstract knowledge about education—no, I want abstract knowledge about religion and theology, but when it comes to education I just want you to tell me quickly and simply how I can get the kids not to resort to cannibalism during my lessons. Instead of providing this information, however, the university forces us to sit through lecture after pointless lecture on how data is recorded, or how newly qualified teachers feel their learning is shaped, or different theories of education and whatnot.
Now let’s take a trip back to my classroom. See, I still have literally not a single clue what to do when a child asks me if they can go to the bathroom. I quite honestly worry about getting asked for bathroom permission during every lesson, because my hair falls out as I panic over whether or not the child asking me genuinely has to pee or if they are just trying to go off and do drugs in the toilet or run around in oncoming traffic or whatever it is children do when they leave classes when they’re not supposed to. And if they do genuinely have to pee, what if my not allowing them to results in a burst kidney and death or—even worse—wet pants? That would destroy the child’s social credibility, and I would probably feel so guilty that I’d develop such a bad drinking problem that even British people would think it was a drinking problem. SO PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME IF YOU CAN GO TO THE LOO, ENGLISH CHILD, BECAUSE I CANNOT HANDLE THIS LEVEL OF RESPONSIBILITY!!!
But no. No one tells me how to handle my students’ requests to use the restroom. Instead they give me endless metaphors about how I will feel during my NQT year, all of them involving sunflowers.
Today during our lecture I descended into depths of boredom not seen since my university biology lectures. After briefly considering resorting once more to forming yet another assembly-line-of-one for the production of hand turkeys, I realized that I could have much more fun during lecture by pretending to enjoy myself.
So instead of reclining in my seat to the point where my ass was nearly off the edge, I sat up straight, leaned forward, and tried to maintain a level of eye contact with the lecturer that suggested that I was sexually attracted to him. With every sentence he read in a monotone voice off his boring-ass slides, I nodded enthusiastically with a Disney princess smile on my face. Had he been right in front of me and not separated by about 20 rows of students, I would have reached out, grabbed him, and sung into his face, “PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES TO WHICH NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS ATTRIBUTE THEIR LEARNING!” Then there’d be a key change, the music would swell, and then I’d sing, “I AM SO ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT LEARNING ABOUT WHAT MAKES A GOOD CONTEXT FOR LEARNING AS A NEWLY QUALIFIED TEACHER!”
As it was, I was in the very last row of the lecture theater. And so I had to resort to swooning with delight with every word, and rushing to capture with my pen every single one of his many gems. He clicked his Powerpoint presentation and yet another picture of a sunflower popped up. “GASP!” I said, grabbing my desk for support. I fucking love sunflowers! I love learning about NQT feelings!!!
I wish that I hadn’t felt slightly sick to my stomach at the end of the presentation. I would have loved to have given him a standing ovation.
If you're in my curriculum group you probably think this blog post is going to be about how I got into an argument with our guest lecturer today over the disgusting ease with which he switched between sets of terms (Israel and the Palestinian Territories, vs The Occupiers and Palestine) depending on whether he was speaking to Palestinians or Israelis.
But no. I have an even greater injustice to speak out against.
So this guest speaker enters the room. I take a quick look at him--besides the tie that's slightly too loud for England he looks pretty normal. Typical man in a suit from an organization. However, as soon as he was invited to begin his talk, things quickly went downhill. With an ounce of hysteria in his voice, the first words out of his mouth were a desperate insistence that the windows be opened. As he threw off his jacket, tore off his tie, and rolled up his sleeves, I was starting to worry that he was having some kind of an extreme male menopausal hot flash that would result in us having a naked and crazed guest lecturer standing in front of us.
I froze in panic as some classmates hurried to the windows to allow cool air in. I know it must seem as though I'm making a bigger deal out of this man's uncomfortable warmth than perhaps I should, but I know that if I were in the same situation (a guest in unfamiliar territory who feels uncomfortably warm) I would just grin and bear the heat. I don't care if I'm dressed in more layers than a Victorian woman and the classroom's heat is so intense that the friction of pencils on paper causes small brush fires to break out--I don't give a shit. If I'm a guest speaker somewhere I'm STILL not going to perform the professional equivalent of a burlesque show by removing even a blazer.
My God, I thought. My God, this man must be crazy. The tie is off. And beneath his polite requests there is a palpable sense of urgency that seems to scream, "I AM SO WARM! I AM SO WARM! WE HAVE TO OPEN THE WINDOWS IMMEDIATELY!!!!"
With the opening of windows and speedy professional nudity this man's thirst for coolness was immediately quenched. For a second I was ready to forget the fact that this man was OH MY GOD SO WARM!, but then he turned his back to the class.
I saw it, and for a split second I continued my usual daydreaming. Today's reverie involved Robin Hood asking me to give up the whole teaching thing in favor of simply being a badass. This then morphed into imagining Robin Hood, St Stephen, and Ronald McDonald having a picnic together. They were just about to--WAIT. WAIT. Hold the phone. Stop the presses. Get into your nuclear bunker. What in the name of Hank F. Effington is attached to the back of that guy's head?
From the front he looked totally normal. Okay, maybe his mustache was slightly too big and slightly too ginger for his gray beard, but otherwise he looked average. Slight receding hairline, gray hair, glasses...nothing too weird here. I found myself employing my Jedi powers to get him to turn again so I could catch sight of it. Come on...come on...
BINGO!
I took a moment to just stare at it in all of its rattail glory. I've really never seen anything like it. It looked like if he grew it out for another couple of months he could tuck it into his belt loop and use it as an alternative to suspenders. It was so long, a nearly never-ending braid, and my God was it tiny. At its widest it was about the width of my pinky, but it quickly withered away into a tiny braid that would make a fine toupee for a fetus. Such a tiny braid, how could he do it himself? Does his wife braid it every morning as she silently dies inside? Can such a man even attract a wife?
I briefly got a hold of myself and turned away from the hypnotic hairdo, but unfortunately I made eye contact with one of my classmates. And we just knew. We just knew. This man has a goddamn RATTAIL.
Well fuck, I thought to myself. I came here today to learn, but there goes any hope of me not having at least three inappropriate and uncontrollable giggles today. All of them hair-related. As it happened, I did manage to control my giggles (though I did have a couple of spontaneous fits of shaking). I did, however, find myself unable to stop myself from imagining what it would be like to pull on it. Not just a slight tug. I mean a serious yank that throws the man around the room like a rag doll tied to a ceiling fan. I wanted to grab hold of that rattail and drag the man around the room. I wanted to use that rattail to turn that man into a human hammer like Miss Trunchbull does. How much force would I need to apply to floor him simply by tugging on his hair? I wondered to myself. Could it be used like a leash? When he gives horsey rides to his children (assuming he has any I think we can safely assume they all--even the girls--have rattails), do they use it as a whip?
But enough about this man's hair. There's one more thing that must be addressed:
The Snort.
Look, I know what it's like to laugh. Sometimes you get a little carried away and you might snort a little bit. But provided you commit ritual suicide immediately afterwards, this snort is completely forgivable. This man, however, apparently thought he'd forgo the laughter that accompanies this embarrassing and unholy noise and simply have a snort in a vacuum.
What am I talking about?
Here's a normal snort laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*]
Hahahahahhaha--SNORK--HaOMGthatwassoembarrassinghahahah
Here's this guy's laughter:
[*Punchline of a joke*] SNORK!
I'm sorry, but simply making a snort noise is not an acceptable alternative to laughter. I can forgive his gross political views, his hot flashes, and even his rattail. But I feel that snort laughing without actually laughing is a character flaw that should be grounds for immediate termination. And I don't mean firing him.
I was watching the news in Hebrew, and suddenly they were having an interview with a guy. The guy was being filmed in his room at home or something. And in the background on the guy’s walls there were pictures of wolves EVERYWHERE. Like, at least 8 that I could see. Just pictures of wolves crammed in to every free space on the wall. And then to top it off, the guy was wearing a t-shirt with a huge picture of a--yes, you guessed it: wolf. Like, obviously someone really likes wolves. Like, a lot. Can you imagine this guy at dinner parties? “Hi, my name is Avi [I don’t remember his real name, but this is a good guess since we’re in Israel]. I’m really interested in wolves.” I could just imagine him, sipping champagne in the corner. He’d be wearing one of his many wolf t-shirts underneath a tuxedo jacket, miserable because he couldn’t find any women to talk about wolves with. “I wish I brought my book about wolves to read….,” he’d think to himself.
I have no idea what the interview was about since I couldn’t hear over my hysterical laughter—but one would assume that the interview was about wolves.
I wish people had “for hire” lights, just like taxis. I don’t mean “for hire” like we’re all prostitutes, I mean “for hire” in the “I’m ready and willing to interact with other homo sapiens at this moment” sense. It’d be perfect for those days when I want people to fuck off—I’d just turn off the light and only tourists and others ignorant of taxi protocol would continue to try to hail a conversation. Because sometimes you (and by you I mean me) have days where you don’t want to be rude to people and you can’t just tell them the truth: that right now the thought of interacting with another person makes you desperately want to vomit. And because humans don’t have “for hire” lights, the only option left is to hide. And think about giraffes.
That’s really what I did today. Apologies to people trying to track me down, but I need to think about giraffes much more than I need to interact with other people right now.
Before I talk about giraffes, I think I need to talk about cranes for a bit first. See, I’ve been thinking about cranes and claws for a while. Mostly because a few nights ago I had a dream that the school I was working at suddenly materialized in a claw machine that I was controlling. So then I dreamed that I could pick up students and teachers who pissed me off, hoist them up into the air, and then drop them into what Dream Sam recognized as nuclear waste, but which Awake Sam recognizes was actually horse shit.
Another thing that has got me thinking about cranes a lot is the fact that every day on the drive home we catch a glimpse of the city. There’s this one moment in particular where we get off the freeway and you see this glorious bit of green, and the city’s famous buildings sort of poke through the newer buildings and the green and…and…I can’t really describe it. But I love it.
But then there are construction cranes. Oh my God, there are cranes. Cranes everywhere. But not that much construction… For a while I had convinced myself that the cranes were actually an invading alien race, quietly biding its time until it had bred enough new cranes to form a crane army for a hostile takeover. Now, of course, I see that’s ridiculous. See, these cranes peer their heads over the houses and famous spires of the city like giraffes sticking their heads over the railings of the zoo’s giraffe enclosure to say “Herro!” to tourists.
Yes, dear reader. I am convinced that cranes are actually mechanical giraffes bred in the locked, underground laboratories of this city by creepy graduate students from the Ukraine to kill the people of this town.
Igor: “We’ve done it! We have successfully created the world’s first mechanical giraffe!”
Evgeny: “MUAHAHA!”
Igor: “And now we shall let these creatures loose on the city to wreak havoc, these giraffe cranes with a taste for blood! MUAHA—“
Evgeny: “And Cheerios.”
Igor: “Sorry?”
Evgeny: “They are giraffe cranes with a taste for blood…and Cheerios. I fed them Cheerios, too. They seemed to quite like them…”
Igor: “[*heavy sigh*]”
And so they’ve planted these mechanical giraffes everywhere in the city. I sat and stared for an hour at one in particular today, and I’m convinced he is a mechanical giraffe who wants to avenge the brutal turning into scrap metal of his father, the great giraffe crane king, Okonkwo. I imagine him going on a vengeful rampage through the city. “Nooooo!” people would scream as he picked them up and lifted them over the city before dropping them to be impaled on one of the city’s dreaming spires. Well, the few Israelis he’d find would say, “No no no no no” in a rapid fire, but everyone else would definitely go for the one “Nooooo!”
And so Chinua Achebe, this vengeful giraffe crane, lies dormant as the students and hordes of open-mouthed Japanese tourists pass by him, not knowing what level of monster lies in wait on the corner, just by that pub and that library.
