A Rock To Tie A String Around

I don’t often admit to watching American Idol.  To counter the fact that I set my Tivo to record every Tuesday night, I staunchly refuse to learn any of the contestant’s names.  By knowing them only as Dude with Guitar and Blind Guy I am countering my addiction.

I have been baffled the last two weeks by the inefficiency of the guest vocal coaches.  It has to be pretty bad for me to notice, and the last two weeks were….well, ouch.  So I can’t help but wonder, if I, who can’t sing a note on key, could hear how off pitch Oil Rig Guy and Precocious Brunette were, how did Randy Travis and Smokie Robinson miss it?

I’ve formulated a theory that American Idol must have some serious TMZ worthy dirt on both Randy and Smokie, and that’s why they had that slightly terrified smile on their faces during the practice sessions.  So, I wrote them a little note –

Dear Friends,

Randy, did you really think that Pink Highlight shouldn’t change a thing?  Really?  What was going on Randy?  I’ll always have mad love for you, don’t be ashamed of whatever you’re doing in photo that the producer was waving at you off camera that made you tell Sensitive Guitar Guy that he sounded ‘great.’

And Smokie, when you told Skinny Blond Girl how ‘different’ she was – did you really want to say different as in terrible?  Why didn’t you just let it out Smokie, we were all thinking it.  Was there a bigger reason?  I’m just saying, whatever they have on you, I’ll still love you.  It’s cheaper to hire the lawyers, file a slander suit, but instead you sold your soul to American Idol.

I don’t care if it was an amazing coincidence that you pulled your AIG stock ‘just in time’ or if you Christian Baled someone in the recording studio, they probably deserved it.  Don’t let anyone blackmail you into telling Blind Guy that it was a good idea to be singing a Dionne Warwick song.

Love, Kathleen.

I understand that my students are seventeen and therefore logic is difficult, if not impossible, for them to understand.  But, it’s been a long day and occasionally hilarious day.  Here are a few of the anti-logic scenarios that have prematurely aged me.

1.    Student #1 falls asleep during the entire Act I of The Crucible.  Today we have an open book quiz.  She writes her name on her paper and then comes up to my desk enraged.
“How can you expect me to take this quiz, I was asleep!”

2.    Student #2 spends the entirety of the class period scribbling on his desk with a pencil. When I ask him what he’s doing, he says “Taking notes.”

3.    Student #3 is late to class.  When I ask for his tardy pass he gives me one with last week’s date stamped on it.  When I point out that it’s no longer St. Patrick’s Day, he looks confused and says, “All my other teachers took it…”

4.    Student #4 is selling candy bars and bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos in class despite a rather strict school wide rule barring such entreupenurialship.  When I tell him to pack up the store and sit down, he replies, “It’s the economy Miss, I have to, this is my stimulus plan.”  At least he watches the news….

5.    Last but not least, Student #5 looks quizzically at his test paper for nearly fifteen minutes today before he asks, “Is this a test on the book?”  When I reply sarcastically “No, it’s on what I saw on TV last night” Student #5 looks even more confused and responds with “I didn’t know Siddhartha was a TV show.”

My mom has always told me that you can’t have a logical argument with a crazy person, I think she should put ‘high school senior’ in that category too.

I’ve been sick since October of last year.  Seriously.  It’s gone in waves of terrible to bearable but I can’t count three consecutive days when I haven’t had something wrong with me.  Logically I know it’s because I work with teenagers who haven’t learned to cover their sneezes and have a baby whose new favorite game is to stuff cheerios in my mouth with his dirty baby fingers.

I can’t help but wonder if there’s a bigger reason why I’ve single handedly been responsible for raising the value of Tylenol stock.  I was thinking last night of all the transgressions that I’ve committed and wondering if, Seinfeld finale style, I am being punished for my inappropriate, idiotic, and downright mindless antics I’ve committed in the past.

Here are a few pieces of evidence that might have made Karma give me a six-month head cold:

1.    My freshman year in college my roommate dared me to hang a grocery bag full of old ramen noodles on our neighbor’s door handle.  I can’t remember why we thought this was going to be funny.  In any case I was a split second away from committing the crime, the handles of the bag were looped over her doorknob, and I was slowly and silently backing away when neighbor opened her door.

There’s really no way to defend yourself when you’re caught in a crime such as this.  I took back my noodle bag and shuffled to my room.  We never talked about it.

2.    When I was about nine years old our neighbors hired me to feed their cat.  They gave me a house key a month in advance and told me to mark the dates on my calendar.   Like any reasonable nine year old, I ignored their request and promptly lost the key.   They never called to remind me and when a month had passed I was plagued with a violent case of ‘what am I forgetting?’

The key was nowhere to be found.  I was afraid to tell my mom, so I took cat food from our pantry and shoved it through the kitty door of the neighbor’s house all week.  I have no earthly idea if the cat ate it or if I’m a cat murderer.

In my defense, who does that?  I wouldn’t trust the adults in my life to remember anything that was a month away.

3.    When I was about seven I got into a fight with my brother at McDonalds.  He thought I was eating too slowly and thus making us delay our trip to the video arcade (yes, I know I’m old).  So, out of anger I shoved all my French fries in my mouth at once and created a huge potato ball that I could neither swallow nor expel.  When we reached the arcade, my father ran inside to get me a drink so I could lubricate the potato ball out of my face.   While he was inside I managed to unwedge it and was then left with a slimy, slightly reconstituted wad of French fries in my hand.  In my horrified seven-year-old brain there was really no other option other than to throw it out the window before anyone else saw it.

This might have worked except for the lady wearing flip flops who just happened to walk by at the exact wrong moment.

I’ll probably never know what chewed up slime fries feel like between my toes, but I’m pretty sure it’s worse than the constant sinus congestion I’ve been dealing with.  Maybe I should count my blessings.

I’m switching my son’s daycare.  Not because I’m unhappy with the care they provide, quite the opposite.  My boy adores them.  It’s just an older lady and her niece, and they have become his California Grandma and Auntie in the six months he has been there.  The problem is this:  Grandma has decided to take a week and a half vacation at the end of April and I am faced with an economic dilemma.

1.    I can pay Grandma for her vacation and find someone else to watch my boy and also pay them.  This required me to have $300 just sitting around with nowhere to go.
2.    I can take the time off work and lose over $300.
3.    I can take a few days off work and hire Auntie to watch him for a couple of days and try to make up the difference financially.
4.    I can switch him to a daycare that outlines their days off a year in advance so I can plan ahead for just such an event.

Suffice it to say, Number 4 won out.  So today I have to break up with Grandma.  I feel terrible.  I feel like I’m overreacting.  I feel like I’m losing a family member.

I also know that this is probably a much bigger deal for me than it is for them. They’ve been doing business for thirty years, kids have left before.

Wish me luck.

I recently decided to do something about my woefully inadequate Spanish.  I live in Los Angeles, I teach Spanish speaking students, my son is taken care of by Spanish speaking child care providers and really all I could manage was ‘Nesecita mas Tequila.’

So I saved up my money this past year and I bought the first installment of Rosetta Stone software, Latin American Spanish, Level 1.  First of all, let me say that it is indeed awesome.   I, who am terrible at learning languages, am now able to have a functional if somewhat stilted conversation.  I can only imagine where I will be if I ever save up enough money for the next two installments.

However, I’m getting frustrated.  It’s a frustration that I felt back in high school French class and it’s just resurfaced.  I know it’s necessary, and I know short of moving to Columbia for a month, there’s really no other way, but language lessons always seem to include the world’s most improbable and non sensical conversations.

For example:

1.  An Arabic speaking man is never going to approach me and ask me in Spanish if I speak Arabic.  If he speaks Arabic and needs to know if I do as well, I would assume that he would ask me in Arabic.

2.  No one has ever approached me on the street and demanded to know where I work, what hour of the day and when I drink coffee.  Ever.

3.  I have never walked up to a bookstore and asked the clerk if it is a pharmacy.

4.  I have little to no use for the phrase ‘My apple is red.”

5.  If I saw a woman holding a vase of flowers on the street, I wouldn’t think to ask her if her flowers are yellow.

6.  I rarely if ever announce that I have a small dog and a purple umbrella.

I’m not knocking the system necessarily, maybe a Farsi speaking man will need to ask me in Spanish if I can take him and his purple cat to a hardware store because he needs a green tomato.  I will be prepared.

I want to take a minute to celebrate the Bravo channel.  I deeply appreciate Bravo programming, not because it’s particularly intellectually challenging, actually quite the opposite – it’s perfectly sedatively, zen-like background material that makes me feel good inside.  Here are a few reasons why:

1.    The Catty Housewives of Various Cities:  Even though it’s become painfully obvious that these women have nothing to do with each other when the cameras aren’t rolling, I still can’t stop watching.  It’s all very Artaud – theatre of crueltyesque; watching them desperately chase after their youth and make nasty comments about each other’s boob jobs is the modern day equivalent of hanging rotting slabs of meat in a theatre.

2.    The Millionaire Gold-Digger’s Club:  I know, I know, they’re not gold-diggers – they’re just nice girls who are looking for true love….with millionaires.  In a way I like the honest, no holds-barred approach that Matchmaker Patty takes, but at the same time I feel a little Heidi Fleiss guilty watching it.

3.    Top Chef:  I’m absolutely fascinated by people who can chop veggies at lightening speed without dismembering themselves.  I also have a fantasy about eating at the various restaurants that these guys run.  Of course with our current budget and the utter lack of babysitters in our lives….this is unlikely to happen for about the next fifteen years.  By then we’ll probably be taking our meals Jetson’s style in capsule form and I will have missed my chance.

4.    Actor’s Studio with James Lipton:  There was a caller on the radio the other day who said that James Lipton’s wife illustrated ‘The Joy of Sex’ and that the alarmingly hairy man featured in said book is actually modeled after her husband.  Think about that next time you’re watching and see if you can keep a straight face.

5.    Project Runway:  I can’t sew a button on a shirt but I love that these fashion design contestants can make a couture gown out of a plastic grocery bag, a sack of leaves from the yard and a ball of orange yarn.  Love it.  I wish I had those kinds of mad skills.  Unfortunately I’ve resigned myself to not wearing anything that can’t be fixed with duct tape.

There are more reasons out there, but I have to go see how Patty’s date with the fifty year old oil tycoon went with the twenty year old model/actress…I smell true love in the air.

I’m not overtly confrontational.  It’s not because I’m necessarily afraid of confrontation, but more because I don’t always think people are asshats in the exact moment that they’re practicing their asshattery.  I have delayed reaction asshat radar; I realize about twenty minutes after the fact that I should be offended, or angry or appalled.  In the moment, however, I’m often confused.   Maybe I’m not understanding this person correctly; maybe this person has some kind of mental impairment that I can’t visibly see….maybe maybe maybe.

In any case, I’d like to provide the transcript for my most recent incidence of asshattery.  In this case, the asshat is the husband of a neighbor who I frequently run into while walking with my son.  You should know that we live near the airport and planes were flying overhead the entire time.

Me:  Oh, look a biplane.  I’d like to go up in a biplane someday.

Asshat:  (snorts in disgust) Why in the world would you want to do that?

Me:  I just….

Asshat:  (another snort) They’re just planes, nothing special about it.

Me:  Oh, well, I…

Asshat:  So you’re a teacher huh?  What’s the makeup of your school?  Bunch of black kids?

Me:  (taken aback but used to people asking dumb questions when they learn I teach in South Central) Actually we’re about 80% Latino and 20% African-American right now.

Asshat:  My school’s all black, bunch of black kids over there.  Say, did you actually go to Harvard or are you just wearing the sweatshirt?

Me: (secretly hoping the baby will begin to fuss so I can have an excuse to keep on walking) Well…no, I didn’t go to Harvard; my husband went on a business trip to Boston and brought this ba….

Asshat:  Well, that’s something, didn’t even go there and you wear the propaganda, that’s something else all right.

At this point my wish comes true and the baby fusses enough to end the conversation and propel me out of there.  Incidentally, my Harvard hoody is really warm and soft.  I’m a poser with a good reason.