The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

"They never did nothin'," the man muttered over and over again, "the children, those poor children".
I looked up at him as he wheeled me on a gurney through the hospital to the operating room.
He stared off for a minute while he rolled me into the elevator.  I thought maybe he wouldn't talk anymore, or talk about something else.
"Those children, how?  How?" he began again.
"Yeah..." I said tepidly.  It was unspeakable, but I had no idea how to convey that and every attempt I made sounded inadequate, or almost fake.  It was like when you find out from your boss that another employee was caught stealing and you feel like everything you say is a lie, even though you know you didn't do anything.  

The I.V. in my hand was throbbing, swelling and bruised.  It had been there for hours and was more uncomfortable than the hand they were about to operate on.   My ass was sticking out of the back of the gown and nakedly sitting on the gurney sheets, not matter how many times I tried to arrange things.  I still don't know why hand surgery required underwear, off.

"You know, there are those 47%ers that live off the rest of us, on ENTITLEMENTS" the nurse stated, shortly after telling me that she had herpes.  I was guessing that she didn't even know what 'entitlement' meant.  I smiled weakly.  I wasn't getting into this with her.  I just wished she would realize that it was inappropriate.  Actually, more inappropriate than talking about downstairs herpes, as far as I was concerned.  She brought it up a few more times throughout my six hour wait for surgery.  I continued to smile weakly and think of all the 'entitlements' she was probably taking advantage of: Old Pell grants that she used to get her R.N., mortgage interest write offs, tuition deductions for kids, health care costs.  As well as the real freebies:  SOCIAL SECURITY and impending MEDICARE!  I actually liked her though.  She was a stone cold cracker that kept offering me Valium, just to 'take the edge off'.  I said "no thank you" politely, anticipating anesthesia and pain killers.

"Hey!" a number of jovial people asked me,  wearing colorful headgear.
"What's your name?  Your birthday?  What's getting operated on!?"
I impressed them with my fascinatingly correct answers until the doctor finally came and wrote 'yes' on the finger that he was going to operate on. 
"Bring her my cocktail!" chief crazy headgear wearing anesthesiologist announced.
"So, is this like a pain killer or the stuff that will put me under?" I asked, as one of the crew injected a syringe into one of the outlets on my I.V.
"You are going to laugh like crazy for a second and then you'll be out" he answered.
I felt fucked up for a minute. 'Mother's Milk' I thought, thinking of the term the cracker nurse used to describe the 'cocktail' that they would be using on me. 

I woke up in the same place that I had fallen asleep in.  An ill fitting oxygen mask hovered over my face.  A large cast and wrap covered my left hand.  My I.V. had been moved and was pierced into the outside of my forearm.  I realized I was sporting a very off the shoulder look with my gown, the neck had been spread out and wires were attached to sticky things.  Someone pulled them off and helped me not be so, er, naked, and rolled me back to the cracker nurse. 

My mom was waiting for me, having sat with me all day without biting her tongue off, trying not to go at Romney nurse.  I found out that an hour and a half had passed.  It was dark outside.  The nurse reminded us that we could leave when we wanted.  I could hardly stand and stumbled into my clothes.  I was actually relieved when they brought a wheel chair to take me outside. 

I sat in the bathtub the next morning, trying to get ready for work.  Hideous bruises lined my I.V. arm, dark, black and yellow ones.  My surgery arm was bathed in a strange orange substance that wouldn't wash off.  Skin was missing where some sort of tape had been removed.  I splashed water on myself. Under my surgery arm, some weird electroprobe thing remained.  I ripped it off and threw it on the floor.  Along with the tape and cotton that covered yet another black I.V. bruise. 

Then, I went to work. 

The Grady's

"When are you going to get your cast off?" one of my students asked.
"It seems like its been on forever".
You're telling me.  Large, clunky, difficult to maneuver.  Beautiful weather wasted by mandatory sitting on ass for seven weeks.  Watching my dog whimper and stare through the window.  I whimper too sometimes.  But just a little.

"She can tell mommy's off her game!" the dog trainer said enthusiastically, pointing at my cast.
"Why are her eyes turning so red?" I asked, trying to calm Lola.
"She's just wound up, she's choking herself!"
I looked at Lola, tethered by her leash in a corner while the other dogs went through their training.  I started crying. 
We slept close that night and many nights after, Lola's neck stretched across mine while I hugged her in my sleep.

"Can you explain the difference between preparing an ordinary, American new teacher as opposed to an international teacher to understand your school?"  I asked again.
"Well, we have New Teacher Orientation" the interviewee responded.
Click.  That was all I could think.  Click.  Your Fulbright adventure has now come to an end.

My doctor grabbed the outside of my purse, dramatically.  
"Is my phone vibrating?" I asked, alarmed.
"Where's your other shoe?" he asked, smiling.
"Are you kidding?" I asked, incredulous.
I was thrilled.

He wasn't kidding.  I went home and put on my other hiking boot, the mandated stiff bottom foot wear.  I was really excited.  Until I realized I can still barely walk and that my left knee is hurting from carrying my right leg along.  And my broken foot again turned purple and bruised.

I had a great, short walk with Lola and fun training and playing with her while she was tethered in the yard.  Her eyes were NOT turning red. After,  I took a couple of days off from walking because of the pain in my foot.

I decided today that I was being a lazy fuck and that I needed to quit making Alec walk my love dog.  The walk wasn't going as great as the other that I had bragged about.  She was pulling hard and not responding to any of the stuff we had been working on in our training.  I was juggling her treat bag and transferred her leash onto a few of my left hand fingers while I tried to rearrange the bag on my shoulder.  Suddenly, Lola jumped a couple of feet in the air and ran toward a rampaging squirrel.  I held tight and pulled, even though I had heard a snap.  I got her onto the sidewalk.  I knew something was wrong and I looked at my awkwardly positioned ring finger that wouldn't move and was hanging at about eleven o'clock to the left.

I got Lola home, actually trying to act natural when kids and parents commented on my cute dog.  I put her directly in the crate and drove to my sister's.  I had broken out in a cold sweat and was crying and trying not to vomit.  They took me to Grady.

Grady is a very large hospital about two miles from my house in downtown Atlanta.  It is the only place indigent people can go here.  I've visited only a few people there and have always been scared of it.   But, I was more afraid of my dangling finger.

We had to pass through a metal detector and an airport manual wand to get in. They handed me something to put on my shirt that I stuck on.  Only later did I realize the date was written on the sticky.  I guess if they found me in some corner a few days later they would know that I was ripe. 

I got X-rayed.  I was surprised everything was happening so fast.  Every time that I have ever been to the emergency room I sat there for hours.  All of the doctors looked younger than I am, which was weird.   They put me in a plush ass room with a TV and started telling me what they were going to do. It was broken, below the knuckle.  They were going to manually re-align the bones, basically grab my finger and push the broken bones back where they should be. I started sweating again.  They told me they wouldn't hurt me and started talking about an IV painkiller drip. 

Then, timed stalled.  I saw people wheeled into the trauma unit.  They had neck braces on.  I heard them screaming from the rooms.  I waited a while.  Hours.  I understood.  But I was getting more afraid.

A young intern put shots in my hand and joked about how sweaty it was.

And then, I turned my head away and squeezed my eyes shut as he moved and shoved the bones of my finger back into place.

Fuck White People

It had been a rough couple of weeks.  Poor Lola looked butchered, violent looking staples running up her belly, the incision stained by iodine.  She couldn't run outside or play with other dogs.  My foot was broken anyway and I couldn't run outside or play with other dogs either.   Lola recovered quicker than I did, staring wistfully out the window before getting excited and pounding forcefully on the glass with her front paw-hands.  She would whimper.  It was horrible.

I took her to the vet right at the two week mark to get the staples removed.  Two 200 pound plus vet techs were assigned to my dog.  I was in there too.  At first, they tried to stand her up, holding her under her arms while the other came at her staples with some awful plier looking things.  Instead of barking and biting at the techs as any dog would do in that situation, especially a sixty-five pound, eight month old Pit Bull, Lola's ass started wagging back and forth, tail whipping as she stretched up and licked the tech's face that held her under her arms.  Eventually, she wrestled the other tech with the pliers to the ground as I tried to hold her still.  While the three of us laid sprawled on the floor, Lola pinning one of the techs to the ground and licking him, starting at the chin and over his bald scalp, butt and tail swinging wildly from side to side,  I suddenly imagined a bird's eye view of the situation and started laughing.   

Lola was free and ship shape again.  I was two weeks in to the four weeks I had to wear a cast before getting my foot X-raid again. 

I had taken her out to pee, just days before robbed uteri and broken feet had attacked us.  An Atlanta Public Schools bus drove by, kids hanging from the windows.  Probably middle school, I guessed.  Two little girls pointed at Lola.
"Look at that dog...." one breathed.
"It's cute...."
I smiled at them.
"FUCK WHITE PEOPLE!" a boy interjected, shoving his head through the window of the admiring girls.

"I wanted to contact you because I am concerned with Paul's performance in Spanish." I began, typing my usual introduction to a parent whose kid acts like a shitbag.
"He consistently has his head down and I have to ask him repeatedly to take his headphones off.  He is only passing the class by a point." I continued.
The parent's emailed resonse came almost imediately.
"We need to meet" it stated forcefully.
Great, I thought.  I knew who was going to be in trouble, and it wasn't Paul.  

I had been given three more weeks in the cast.  I was disappointed.  I had been totally counting on four weeks and then moving to an ugly shoe.  But no.

"Should I be like, sitting down whenever I can?" I asked my doctor.
"Well, yeah...," he replied, thinking, "don't you at school?".
"No, I mean, I float between three classrooms.  I move with the kids, I have to go up and down stairs....".
"YES" he responded.
"After all of that, you need to sit down the rest of the day".
Fuck me.  And fuck my a-hole school.

I checked my email.  I had suggested a time to Paul's mom and again, received an immediate response:

Wednesday at 4 pm will be fine.

Paul knows that I am not

playing with his education.

Thanks

Lila

I felt a smile spreading across my face. She might be a little different than I expected.

I walked through my neighbor's house, headed straight for the bird room.  The giant birds that had been friendly the night before were acting strangely.  Actually, they scared me.  As I replenished their water and gave them kibble and nuts, I felt them biting my clothes.  One attacked my hair.  Two of them shrunk down and ran toward me, big-ass beaks wide open.  I tried talking to them.  These fucking things normally can talk back.  They didn't.  I gave them their food and ran out.  

"Hi, I'm Hadley!" the chipper, cute girl on my porch stated in introduction.  I had already introduced myself in the same manner, shaking her hand.
She wore short jogging shorts, showing off her muscled, spray tanned legs, though it was chilly outside.  She had on a long-sleeved running jacket, her face completely made up and hair in a high ponytail.    She was petite, yet buff and strong.
"I just moved here from California!" she stated, hugging and kissing Lola.
"I work with the athletic dogs!".

Perfect.  She would look great next to Lola, tearing through the park until my foot heals. 

Lola's my princess.  She deserves only the best. 

Elecciones

"I'll be back in ONE minute." I said, clutching Lola's face in my hands and kissing her on the side of her mouth-snout.

I ran into the beer store.  The homeless Rasta man was there again, but this time, he had a friend.  Something was up.  The friend was screaming at my brown-friend guy that works the store, waving the daily shit-ass Atlanta newspaper in his face.

"You vote Romney, right?!" he yelled, waving the 'Obama Wins' cover story in his face.
I went and got my beer and cautiously returned to the line.  The original Rasta man clubbed me forecefully on the shoulder, moving me ahead of him.
"Mama, you can go ahead."
"Thanks."
"Did you see what he did?" Rasta asked me.
"I didn't see anything." I said, averting my eyes.  
"You vote India!" his friend screamed, waving the Obama page in his face.
"I'm South African!" Rasta-junior continued.
"I'm gonna come back here and shoot you!  Keep callin' those police!".
"Um, you're up," I told Rasta, "you've been here longer than me."
"Shut yo' mouth" Rasta instructed Rasta-junior.  

I paid for my beer, widening my eyes at the other brown-man friend I know that works behind the plexiglass.

I pulled my phone out as soon as I got in the car.  Lola was crawling on me.  I hid the phone beneath her, worried that the Rastas would see that I helped my brown men by re-calling the police.  I felt like I should have spoken up to them, to the Rastas.  These poor Indian/Paki/Middle Eastern whatever ass brown dudes were not their enemy.  But I am a cowardly female.  I just bought my beer.

I saw the police pulling up as I hid my phone under Lola.  I watched.  I wanted to tell the cop that Rasta Jr. had mentioned shooting my brown bro.  The Rastas charged the cop, my brown bro following quickly behind.  The cop shooed the Rastas away, just go away silly homeless fucks.  My brown-bro was exasperated, pleading with the cop. 
'Ridiculous,' I could imagine him saying, 'you don't know what just happened here.  They were screaming at me.  They threatened to kill me.  It's not right....'.

I took a right out of the gas station and drove home.  Lola crawled all over me, licking my face, jumping on my lap.

Though I didn't deserve it.  

All Saints

I looked at my increasingly hostile, first period class.  The pale, visibly shaking girl was actually at school that day.  Despite her heavy load of medication, her dark eyes continued to glare at me while her body palpitated.  Her friend had made it for her one day of attendance a week as well.  They were usually together. 

"We'll quit talking and pay attention," the friend implored, "just don't make me sit somewhere with people behind me.  It makes me very uncomfortable." 

The athlete that had been expelled last year for robbing half of the student body entered the room well after the bell had rung, calling to other students and cackling jovially with his friends.  He stood laughing and talking with no intention of sitting down.  When I told him to get a late pass, he got in my face, then threw the pass on the floor in front of me. 

My OCD brat balanced with his stomach on the seat of a chair, arms on the ground and legs extended into the air.

 A third pale girl that sat with the shakers turned her head.  I saw that she was crying again. 

"Don't LOOK at me!" she said abruptly and left the classroom. 

I asked the smart girl to change seats so that she would quit talking.  She stood up defiantly, hitting me in the shoulder with her shoulder as she walked past me... the way guys do when they want to fight. 

"Did you see that!!!!" the athlete screamed, laughing loudly.

My Ethiopian special ed. kid balanced on the back legs of his chair, sans pencil, paper or any other type of provision.  He hadn't put pen to paper in weeks.  I was getting a lot of pressure over his failing grade.  The parapro assigned to him sat off to the side, engrossed in his Kindle.  He glanced up at the board for a second.

"I think you spelled 'roto' wrong." he informed me.  I hadn't.  He went back to reading. 

No, I do not work in an insane asylum.  Just an ordinary high school.

"My dog Gus is dead."

The text startled me.  I was riding in Alec's car, on the way to a going away party.  It was from my ten year old dog whisperer, Warren.  I hadn't received a text from him in about six weeks.

I sat on my sister's front steps, handing out candy when I spotted Emily.  She was wearing a puffy muscled Batman suit without a mask, her head poking out curiously. 
"Emily, it's me, I used to be your Spanish teacher." I said, fearful that shouldn't recognize me in costume or worse, remember me at all.
"Welcome back!"  she loudly and clearly.

I grabbed her and hugged her, not ever wanting to let go.  

Decay and Attack

"Does a caged bird sing the same sad song?......... Always a captured thief....."

I drove my hooptie car next to the train tracks, headed to work.  It smelled funny and is still full of boxes - my teaching career - months after I was laid off. The sky was gray and wet.    

"It's something my body needs anyway....to spell relief.  What we had before was beautiful, if not very brief.  You gotta call that love, I guess its something... to believe".

I was definitely listening to the wrong music, unless I planned on driving my car off of a cliff. 
It is so hard to go to work.

My poor dog looked terrible that morning.  She turned her back to me while she laid in her crate, sad, long, tired eyes looking over her shoulder, legs curled and guarding the staples that created a line straight up her belly.  She could hardly hold her head up.

"We wanted to share how impressed the Fulbright group of observers was with what we do.  We were very proud of our school."
The next line of the all school email said that we shouldn't get a half day substitute teacher.  I am the one that did that.  To bring the Fulbright group to them.  My bad.

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

I've always thought service was easy, mainly because you really can be great and make a difference.  On your own terms.
But I feel really tired these days.

"I'm NOT getting a pass".
Terrell said loudly while stomping behind me to his seat, nearly brushing my back as he looked down at me.   I love how teenage boys in adult sized bodies always resort to physical intimidation, not against men, but against women, when they don't get what they want.  Something in me doesn't feel afraid, I just marvel at how pathetic and cowardly they are.
"You angry or something, you crazy.  I don't know what your problem is.  I'm not leaving".

I talked him out of the room and closed the door.  

I broke a bone in my foot over the weekend.  It is horribly swelled and bruised.  I am in a "walking cast', more like a hobbled, wincing, dragging cast.  I start to sweat and grind my teeth when I walk, grimacing. It hurts.

Terrell came back with his pass and threw it on the ground.
"Pick that up," I commanded, "you don't think I'm going to, do you?"
He picked it up.
And then I privately got in his face, "walking cast" and all and let him know he didn't have two choices, he had one:  SHUT THE FUCK UP.  

"You have no right to judge me, its none of your business.....I thought I had my shit together, I know what time it is....."


*Lyrics and title, Smoke, "Decay and Attack"
*Quote, Martin Luther King Jr., you know, my man Martin. 

Lost in Translation

"Ayyyyyy MACARENA!" the karaoke leader called as we jumped and twisted to our new direction for the next round of line dancing that coincided with the song.  I was laughing as I looked around the seedy dark bar. It smelled kind of funny.  The dark, street level windows were adorned with neon Coors Light signs as well as other glowing advertisements of a variety of beers that even I would never consider drinking.  It was late on a Thursday, a school night, and I kept asking myself how I had ended up in this strange bar in downtown Atlanta, dancing anonymously to the Macarena, while a hodge podge of people looked on.

I struggled to knock down some grading before "going under": before entering the cavernous hotel for days of Fulbright workshops.  I glanced at Ophelia's quiz.  She is an annoying girl that thinks she knows everything yet continuously displays the opposite on nearly every assessment.  In response to a multiple choice question she had written "N/A".  I laughed.  I really didn't think you could write "not applicable" on a quiz, but I guess I was wrong.

I remembered the day earlier in the week, when the email was sent out to a large number of teachers, me included.
"The Fulbright Teacher Exchange would like to observe us!" it said.  I was on the list just like everyone else, anonymous, unacknowledged.  I was also on the observation list.  I emailed the sender.
"I can't be observed by the teachers. I am working the conference as a resource that they are attending.  I will have a substitute.  It was approved at the end of August."
I sat down for lunch with my department.  A number of them had the email printed out.  They were worried.
"Fulbright is coming to observe us?!  Why didn't anyone tell us earlier?!"
I tried to explain what was going on, that they didn't have anything to worry about, that the international teachers just wanted to see how an ordinary, American school functions.  They wouldn't listen.  The turned to our Chair.
"I know they were coming." he said secretively, smiling, never mentioning that it was because of me, or that they should listen to me, that I could explain things.
"They are flying them from all over the United States just to see us!" a teacher exclaimed.
Yeah.  Yeah right. He didn't dispute it. 

"Similarities and differences?!" one of the workshop facilitators elicited the teachers.  "Well," a Scottish teacher began, "at home, the kids are small and irritating.  Here, they are big and annoying.  I mean really, the size of 'um......" he finished, eyes widening.

I walked through the parking lot at my beer store /  gas station.  A scruffy white homeless man approached me.  I cut him off at the pass.
"I have a dollar," I offered "you need money, right?"
"Those people in there, they hate me." Why, because you beg off their customers?
"Will you go in there and buy me a beer?'
"Have one of these" I offered, pulling one off of the six pack I had just bought.  
"They're strong.  But I don't have a bottle opener. I just don't, um, carry that around."
He handed me my dollar back and smacked the bottle open on my car door. 
"Take care" I called as he walked away. 

"Hilary, something weird is going on with your school." A program administrator informed me.  She is a person I greatly admire, more than greatly admire, emulate.
"I spoke with them yesterday and they said you were going to be at a conference when we visit your school.  They don't even know that you are working our conference!"
"I know," I responded,  "they're clueless.  They are acting like I had nothing to do with them being selected for international teacher observations at the school.  They are leaving me out of the loop, acting like I am just any other participant."
"Hilary, that's bullshit.  The only reason why we are observing them is because you recommended them".
"I know.  It pissed me off for a couple of days, but now I don't care.  I am used to it.  I just hope everyone has a great visit."
"HILARY.  Don't 'get used to' that kind of treatment." 

All of the teachers, mentors, alumni and program administrators walked around the King center.  Just like anytime anyone receives visitors, my boring city suddenly transformed itself into an interesting place as I pointed things out and gave a little history when I could.  One of the administrators approached me and introduced herself.  She was very friendly and immediately started telling me personal things which made her seem all the more casual and approachable.
"Hey," I said, "it's really hot and I know an awesome juice place close by.  Are you thirsty?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed.
She marveled as we walked through King's neighborhood about how lucky she was to have a local next to her, that neighborhood walks were her favorite things, just seeing, seeing what people do.  We arrived at my juice place and she was completely charmed.  I was surprised when she busted into native Spanish and charmed everyone that worked there.
We sat out front at a table, enjoying our juice, the weather and the neighborhood.
"Hilary," she stated, while sipping on her juice, "with your international experience, you really should be working with us."
I was stunned.
"That would be awesome..." I said, almost uncomfortable, afraid to look too eager if it was just a baseless compliment.
"I'm serious," she added, "think about it.  I can help you."

We got off of the bus in front of the school.  I was relieved to see the principal and her secretary waiting to greet the teachers.  As I descended the bus, the principal looked at me.
"So, that's why you're not at school today!"
I smiled tightly.  It was explained and approved at the end of August.
The teachers had an excellent visit.  I felt proud of the school, though I reiterated multiple times to the teachers that I had only been there a couple of months.  I was glad that the principal put on such a great reception for them.  I still don't know why she wouldn't speak to me all day, why she treated me like just another participant. 

A blast from the past approached me at the big dinner, the sit down dinner with the keynote speaker and everything.  She had worked at the school I left after going on exchange, the one that hosted my exchange partner.  The one that treated both of us like shit before I never returned to it.  She acted friendly at first.
"You caused a lot of problems." she stated.
"What, they didn't like my exchange partner?"
"No, not him.  That you didn't come back.  The stakeholders wanted to know why the paid a teacher to teach in a foreign country."
"You know as well as I do that it didn't cost them a penny.  They got a free, international teacher in exchange.  Why is this the first time I've heard this?  It has been over two years....."
"They almost didn't approve my application, because of you.  I practically had to sign in blood."
"My application nearly wasn't approved either.  I had to overnight it.  They didn't know what 'Fulbrite' was.  That is how that county works."
"Where do you work now?"
I told her.
"I want to work there.  How can I find out about jobs?  The county is falling apart".
"Yeah.  That's why I didn't come back."
"Did you ask to get invited to do these things?"
"No." I responded.
"Oh.  Maybe I just need to put myself more out there.  It's because I teach Music.  That's it.  It's an unusual field."
Yeah. Maybe that's it.  I glanced at my salad and looked back at her.  The rest of the table was already eating.
"We'll talk later!" she ended, cheerfully.  
"That looked like a nice reunion!" my friend sitting next to me commented, without a hint of sarcasm.  I was glad no one could tell what it really was. 

There were some older, white, businessmen-types wearing the remainders of suits - button downs and pants and shiny shoes without ties or jackets.  Convention folks?  A few bits of female white trash:  brash singers of new country hits with frizzy hair, tramp stamp tattoos and a bit of a meth look to their unattractively thin bodies.  More locals, tough looking black men with "A" caps on and dark, Ray-Ban style sunglasses, though it was the middle of the night.  The karaoke leader:  a long haired white man in his forties that I could tell still really liked White Snake.  A fun looking group of dressed up black women that came cha-chaing over to our originally nervous table, shaking their ample booties at the international teachers and getting them in the mood to have fun.  That's right, I forgot to describe our hodge podge group:  a few American white women in teacher clothes and group of elegant Mexican exchange teachers.

Watching one of the Mexican teachers belt out a Tom Jones song, preceded by the tough black men singing a Barry White number, The Lost in Translation feel never left me as I spun and laughed, pee beer in hand, in a place I normally wouldn't even go near.