Buffalo Girl

I was running, tearing around the fountain, in hot pursuit of the little blond boy that was giggling hysterically.  A chair was in my path.  I plowed into it, did a somersault on the cement, and kept on chasing him.  "Do it again!  Do it again!" he shrieked.  I loved that hysteric giggle.

I was running, slowly, jogging,  up the sidewalk that circles the park.  I had had a productive day.  Went to work, worked after work, ran some errands, cleaned the bathroom.  Which, was nasty.  And now, a jog.  I stumbled and found myself smacking down on the sidewalk, hands bleeding and chest hurting like a motherfucker.  What just happened?  I got up and started running again.  I stopped after a few minutes.  My body really hurt. 

Tuesday morning, the air conditioning continued its upward cycle.  It was nearly eighty degrees in the room.  I was exhausted.  Every twitch of my body hurt my ribs, my shoulder.  I am not sure how I can crash into a chair and do a somersault on cement and be fine, but take a little fall on the sidewalk and half kill myself.  I picked up my phone during a break, ready to call my doctor.  I paused, and went to the school nurse instead.  "You probably bruised your ribs," she told me, "maybe even cracked them.  You are standing up and talking, so it must not have punctured your lungs.  There's not much anyone can do".  I knew she was right.  But everything hurt. 

I realized my voice was stammering.  "I need to know how to get a sub.  I know that you want us to find coverage if we are in a one teacher classroom, but you do not have a list of people to call in order to find someone to come in." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.  My school relies on parent volunteers instead of paid substitute teachers.  I don't know who to call if I am ill, or if my rib cage is caving in on my lungs.  The general response has been, "Wow, we really don't have anyone for Spanish".  "I also will not be at the faculty meeting.  I am going to the doctor, it hurts me to breathe". 

I was surprised when an hour later, the recipient of my nervous conversation walked into my classroom, a young woman in tow.   It was late in the afternoon, and the kindergartners were struggling to even sit the fuck down.  "Someone from another school!" she said brightly, while I winced and struggled to lift my left arm to do the hand motions of our opening song.  They left.  Another group of kindergartners arrived.  They were struggling.  I was struggling.  It was late.  Suddenly, the little observer from another school reappeared.  The kids were having one of their worst days yet.  The mysterious observer wandered around, without identifying herself.  I was having trouble breathing.  "We are going to listen quietly while I read the book out loud that you are going to illustrate" I told the class.  The kids got quiet.  The lovely observer started crouching next to kids, asking them questions.  It was confusing to them.  I had told them to be quiet, this lady was talking to them.  My chest was collapsing.  This little bitch needed to shut the fuck up, ask me in advance if she wanted to observe my class and quit disrupting the lesson.  And now all the kids were talking again. 

"Your rib cage and collar bone are bruised," my doctor told me.  "but I want to X-ray your arm, it worries me.  It could be dislocated or fractured".

I stood in the dark room, staring at the ghostly X-ray on the screen.  "I don't know what I am looking at." I told the technician.  "It's okay," he answered "I just wanted you to look".  "Bones are elegant, aren't they?" I asked him.

"Yes," he responded breathlessly.  "Yes they are".

Walking and Talking, Part Two

Warren walked in carefully, back erect and head held high, eyes cautiously shifting from side to side, with subdued, yet nervous delight.  He was wearing a full, real, soccer uniform from the Ivory Coast.  Jersey, shorts and the knee socks, which were mysteriously pulled up over his knee to mid-thigh.

He looked magnificent. 

"I'm hot. Are you hot, Carl?" I asked the fourth grader to my left.  "No, I'm kind of cold" he answered.  "I must have a fever," I responded, "I'm sweating". I have an odd cold that has never exactly reached full expectancy, yet began as a sore throat, moved to a clogged nose and is currently hovering in coughing up nasty stuff territory.  It leaves me feeling permanently tired, yet has not actually completely knocked me out yet.  It has been going for over a week.

The whole class was dancing to the Ketchup song.  I am a terrible dancer and can even show my lack of rhythm during easy, Spanish favorites, like the Macarena and the Ketchup dance. I do it anyway.  I actually really shake it.  The song was reaching the strenuous part when everyone starts to get tired.  "Keep going!" I yelled, "You guys are getting beaten by a forty year old woman with a fever!".  "Your only thirty-nine!" some of the kids yelled back.  Thanks for that, lovelies.  And I mean it. 

As first grade George excitedly told me about the best water slide in the world, I slyly slipped my fingers around his ankle.  We both started screaming. The notion of swimming along in the pool and feeling a hand closing around your ankle horrifies both of us.   Jokes like that are probably not appropriate for six year olds, but we like it.

The kinders are taking shape and developing personalities.  I have my eye on one devilish little girl with curly hair and mischievous eyes.  She holds hands with Ignacio's little brother in class, which only makes me like her more.  I sat on one of the tiny chairs in my classroom, reading La Oruga Muy Hambrienta to the class.  I could feel the kids fiddling with the weird floral object that sticks up at the end of my shoe.  I don't mind when they touch it.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Curly coming in a little closer to my shoe, a curious look in her mischievous eye.  "El lunes, la oruga comió...." I continued.

The tip of her tongue shot out, touched the flower thing on my shoe and quickly retracted, only to be replaced by a satisfied smile.

Here there and everywhere

I looked into the doll-like glass eyes, caged in by pastel frames of the little girl.  "Don't let her play you," one of her teachers told me the other day, "she is disabled, but she can follow directions".  "WALK to the rug" I told her.  She ran.  And pushed other kids.  "Emily.  Stand up" I commanded directly.  She refused.  In front of everyone.  "Emily, stand up" I asked again, quietly, extending my hand.  She refused again.  Her teacher came in, unexpectedly.  I got the kids singing and walked over to her.  I was frustrated.  "Emily is refusing to do what I asked, in front of everyone" I lamented.  "Yeah well, she does that, she's disabled....".  "Well, she can't shove the other kids, she just can't" I said with frustration.  She walked over and said loudly, "Emily, get up!" and then picked her up, kicking and wiggling to the far corner of the room.  Emily was screaming, crying, her face red, like a trapped animal.  The doll eyes darted behind the pastel frames.  I wanted to shoot myself.  I am so sorry, Emily. 

I remember carefully placing my glasses on a gravestone in the old cemetery by my house, and then somersaulting down the hill that faces the old textile mill.  I was drunk. Big green hills in the middle of the city had to be good for something.  I went to my sister's house and tried to race my niece on foot, while she was on roller skates.  I watched her skate up and down the street in the twilight, looking like an elegant swan.

I sat in the border wait line in Otay, eating a cup of corn.  So good, so very good.  Alec and I had flown to Los Angeles for the long weekend.  I had carefully booked us a cheap hotel by the airport due to our late arrival, which just happened to be convenient to South Central and Watts.  We hung around the city the next morning and went out to the pier, then beat it south.

So good to pull into Mexico.  Mi querido Mexico.  We ate like pigs, and did a nostalgia tour of our old neighborhood.  While heading back to the border, I nailed a huge pothole, like I have a million times in Tijuana.  I figured it was no big deal, until a light on the dash came on with exclamation points, on the rental car that wasn't supposed to be in Mexico.  I pulled off.  "Está pinchado" the gas station guy told me; I could hear the air coming out while he was putting it in.  "¿Hay una llanteria cerca?" I asked.  Why of course.  Tijuana is full of tire repair places.

"The rim is bent" the guy answered me in perfect English, after my sketchy Spanish description of what happened.  Great.  Another man walked over with a sledge hammer.  Instead of feeling nervous, I felt suddenly at ease that a Mexican with a sledge hammer could get that wheel on the road again in the simplest and most economical way.  They ripped it off, pounded out the rim, patched the tire and rotated it to the back, in less than ten minutes.  For gringos.  With a rental car with Arizona plates.  "It's six dollars," the main guy told me "and whatever you want to give him for the work on the rim". 

And now, back to work tomorrow. 

Let the games begin

I tried so hard to be positive.  I really did.

"Our class was feeling very negative about Spanish class, so I thought I would say a few words to them in Spanish this morning to make them feel more positive.  How do you say this?" the teacher implored, pushing a half translated piece of paper in front of me.  So, the kids don't like Spanish.  But they will like Spanish if you do it with them, right?  I guess I am the problem here.  It wasn't even eight o'clock in the morning.   "I told them this would be a different year.  Your schedule was really bad last year and it was your first year...". I appreciate that, I really do.  Do say that to the kids.   I have more than two additional instructional hours on my schedule than I had last year.  I would prefer last year's schedule.   "I told them that you have to be impatient with them.  There isn't a lot of time!".  Exactly.  The class looks like a most wanted list of who is a behavioral problem, but you know, it's my fault.  Parents have pulled their kids from the school to avoid that class.  Teachers have been fired for not being able to tame them.  But wow, I guess it was me all along.

The late night teeth grinding has already begun.

I have been forced to lead a song in Spanish during our morning meetings all week.  I was horrified by the prospect.  I can be a real ham when I am alone with the kids in my room, but not in front of more than four hundred people.  Singing. It has been going remarkably well.  I have too many student volunteers to sing it for me, and the kids high five me when I leave the stage.  I may do it again.

I left Atlanta's most wanted elementary class, angry.  Four or five kids managed to really fuck it up, and I had only a ten minute break before I had to teach for another two hours and fifteen minutes straight. I had already taught an hour and a half.  I went to buy a Coke.  "Hey..." a teacher called to me in the hall, insinuating that the lovely little boy to her left had a question.  "Doesn't the end of the song say 'turn to the other side' in Spanish?".  "Yes" I answered.  "The kids aren't doing it when you lead them in the meeting.  You need to teach them that!".  Thanks for that.  Anything else?  I have a few suggestions for you too. 

"How can we show respect for each other in Spanish class?" I asked the second graders, late on Friday afternoon.  "Don't say 'I don't like Spanish'" Julio announced.  "Wow, thanks Julio.  We don't say hurtful words in here, do we?  Those words hurt me" I responded.  "And ME too!" he answered.  I was surprised.  "Why Julio?" I asked.  "Because I am Mexican and THAT is my language".

The problems of the week slowly slid away...

Week Two

I could feel my scalp sweating as I sat in a circle on the floor with the third graders.  They sang lazily.  As I scanned the room, a dark little exposed belly caught my eye.  Lashandi sat singing, her tired looking eyes drooping, her shirt carefully folded up to air her stomach in the hot room.  She looked like a little old man.  Possibly a little old non-American man.  I've noticed they will unapologetically sit in public or walk through town with their shirts raised to air their bellies, jiggly old flesh staring out at the world.  I wonder if it works, if airing your stomach really cools you down.  A million old men and Lashandi certainly cannot be wrong.

The temperature crested at eighty-six degrees in my classroom.  A number of folks pushed all the useless buttons on the thermostat just as I had when I walked in that morning and achieved the same result:  It was fucking broken, just like I had said.  Penny reached toward me to hug me as she left the classroom, something she rarely does.  "I'm sorry, honey.  I stink." I told her as she continued to advance.  I could smell the curry I had eaten the night before escaping through my pores.  She smiled knowingly while wagging her head no and hugged me anyway.

It started out innocently enough.  I really felt raggedy one morning.  And it was only the second week of school.  And the air was working again.  I don't know what my problem is.  My first class came in.  "¿Cómo están?" I asked them.  "I haven't been sleeping at night" one responded.  Others nodded.  "My stomach hurts everyday" another added.  "I threw up last night" yet another quipped.  "Why are you all so anxious?" I asked.  They didn't know.  Instead of fighting the mood of the class, I decided to just go with it.  I heard about ear infections, blood, sleeping on the couch because the bed was too uncomfortable.  Oddly, one of the blond devils that has always been difficult for me voluntarily sat next to me, and even let me pat him on the back a couple of times.  David rose his hand.  "In the summer, my dad came in one day and turned off the T.V.  He said he had something serious to tell me".  I was nervous.  I could tell by his face that this might be a big one.  "My step dad died.  He was in the army and had to take medicine to get his head right again after he came home.  One night, everyone was out to dinner and he accidentally took too much of his medicine for his head and he died, because no one was home to help him".  "Is he still dead?" another kid asked.  "Yes," David answered solemnly, "he still is.  It is permanent".

"Oh my God!" their teacher laughed when I told her how we spent Spanish class.  "Yesterday we had a really long discussion about the various ways that they have been spanked!  It's not as awful as it sounds!".  "So....what about Jimmy, never been spanked?" I inquired.  "No," she answered, eyes widening "belt".  "What about Sarah?", "Measuring stick", "And Zach?"  I continued, strangely curious about the various means of corporal punishment. 

"No," she said with a relieved look, "never been spanked". 

You, Me and Everyone We Know

The one eyed machete wielding men of Nicaragua seem very far away now.

I walked through the blistering heat into the mini mart at the gas station, the first week of school under my belt. It's odd. There is a really shiny, fancy gas station across the street that has really shitty beer. I go to the completely sketchy looking place on the other side that actually has good beer. It was hot. Really hot. There was a vibe in the parking lot. I saw this Asian guy, wearing tight, dark jeans and multicolored Adidas, dark wristbands and spiky hair. He didn't have a shirt on. His upper body was completely covered in tattoos. I don't really have any issue with that, but something about him sort of screamed mafia, and don't fuck with me. He spoke in rapid fire, some kind of Chinese to another, I assume, Chinese guy. Stereotypes preclude that Asians aren't supposed to be intimidating, yet these guys clearly smashed that to bits. I steered clear of them. There was a line clear across the store. I grabbed my beer and got in it. "Hey! Where your partner?!" a completely homeless dude yelled across the store, "This is ridiculous!" he added, and stormed out. I stared forward. I heard a shouting, barking noise in the parking lot. "What is that.....?" the young, African American guy behind me in low slung jeans and an A hat whispered. "It sounds like shouting..." I responded quietly. The homeless guy re-entered. "Where your partner?!" he yelled. I bought my beer and left, exiting quickly and eyeballing the Appalachian homeless that sit by the dumpster, making sure they weren't coming up at me. A van blocked my car in. That is, a prison transport van, complete with prisoners shackled inside. I got in my car, locked the doors and turned the air on.

I could wait.

So, just mentioning Nicaragua made it come back to me...like a dream. Nicaragua is a big bike country. Not for fitness or fun, but primarily because of poverty. People routinely give each other rides on their bikes. Yet most bikes lack pegs on the back wheel that will allow a second rider to stand behind the principal one. The most common pairs of riders seemed to be young men. Not kids, but guys that were like, twenty-three. I was a little stunned to see the principal rider on the seat, peddling, while the second rider straddled the bar, yup, sitting right on it, while steering. Dads that were riding little boys often peddled and steered, yet the little boys still straddled the bar in front of the principal rider. I have to wonder if there is any sort of legacy of infertility among men in Nicaragua. The only people I saw riding side saddle on the bar, permitting the principal rider to both peddle and steer, were women. To put it bluntly, we aren't fools. We have a lot less junk down below, but we still aren't riding a bar.

I stared back at the new sea of kindergartners. They lacked identity and personality. I guess I don't have to wonder this time if they will worm their way into my heart. Everyone I teach does. This is my sixth year in the public schools. Blobs will become people and people, personalities. They will come and they will go.

Now, they just have to make themselves known to me.

We wish you well

I'm really fat right now. It's something I don't like to discuss. Giant. My hair is really big too. That part, I love. My hair has always been straight as a rail. Now, it is fluff king. My hairdresser flat irons it, to be fashionable. I hate it. I run straight to the shower, and let it fluff up it's to its full madness again. It has curls, waves. Cascading red craziness. It feels nice. I touch it and twist it and push it up and it only gets grander. Day two is the best. Day two after washing. Lionesca.

I went back to work. I am sorry, let me rephrase myself. I WENT BACK TO PINCHE WORK. We began three days before traditional pre-planning begins, which meant we started in the end of July. Let me rephrase myself. HIJO DE LA GRAN PUTA, JULY. JULY. I know it is only a three day difference, but starting before August fucks with my head. It does. We had to go to a retreat. At a 4-H camp in eastern Georgia. Let me rephrase. A 4-H CAMP. EASTERN GEORGIA. This wasn't some fancy thing that made you at least grateful that you got to go to a nice hotel. We are talking bunk beds, cinder block buildings. I struggled.

Two days after returning from Nicaragua, I actually managed to get up on time and head to my car, Google map in hand. I am not so hot at directions outside of the city. I drove. And I drove. I missed a little "highway" and had to turn around and catch it. Finally, I was on the road where I was to make my last right hand turn. I drove. I kept driving. What the fuck?! I started saying out loud. What THE FUCK?! The map was wrong. I was late. It was snowballing. Not five minutes late, not ten minutes late. Pushing thirty. I tried to call the camp, and the last bar on my phone died as the lady told me directions that were completely contrary to my map. I followed them anyway and was stunned when I saw the place. I drove way too fast through the little roads and got to the meeting building and entered. I was forty-five minutes late. Everyone was seated and in full discourse. Way starting the year on a positive note, I thought.

After the initial discomfort, I settled in. I was shocked at how much fun it was to speak to my co-workers and even more, to get drunk with them in the evening. Really drunk. Rampaging, hiking river trails without flashlights, bonding drunk. Screaming drunk.

The retreat was fun. I just hope that the school year will be fun. I will be returning to my Spanish island and oh so much can go wrong. So very much. People that are fantastic at a party are not always fantastic at school. I am crossing my fingers. I want it to go well.

I wish myself well.