I’m Moving!

After some research (and continued trouble using wordpress), I’ve decided to transition my blog over to blogger.

I’ve put up one post, and am currently working on the design, and on organizing the site.

You can view it here.

Thanks!

Building a Better Haiku

Naturally, this morning my job search began on the more reputable search engines, and nose dived into the hairy depths of Craigslist after about an hour.  From there I meandered my way through recent job postings, through the “pet forum,” where I shuddered over pictures of juvenile ferrets, and, eventually, I found myself in new territory: the Haiku Forum.

What is a Haiku Forum? you ask.  I spent an hour there this morning and I am honestly not sure.

But there is one thing I do know for certain…haikus are supposed to be simple, and  yet no one seems to know how to write one.  That, or everyone is lazy, which could be part of the problem.  I know it is possible to text your haiku to craigslist, so perhaps a percentage of the people sending in these alleged “poems” are missing important body parts, like thumbs.

Haikus made a brief comeback following the release of the movie “Fight Club.”  Who remembers Edward Norton slouched and bloody behind his computer desk, emailing jaded haikus to coworkers?:

Worker bees can leave
Even drones can fly away
The queen is their slave

I would like to point out several things, here.  Firstly, please note that this is a haiku because of its FORM.  It is a poem.  It is three lines long.  The first and last lines are each five syllables, while the middle line is seven.  You probably wrote a few in fourth grade.  Simple enough, right?  Apparently not.

As I read my way though the past two weeks of haiku-gibberish, I was filled with disbelief.  Most of the “haikus” in the forum were not the correct amount of syllables.  Not even close.  For example, please note the following poem, entitled “Twirl Round Nuts & Twigs.”

Squirrels

That’s right, people.  Squirrels.  That’s it.  It is slightly funny, but mostly just depressing.

Here is another example from the forum.  At least this one is three lines long:

“Vagabond”

Out of sight
Out of mind
Hobo

For a grand total of eight syllables, this poem is clearly about hobos.  Ta da!

But not everything in the forum was crap.  I would like to make note of this masterpiece, and say, once and for all, that this is the most wonderful haiku I’ve ever had the honor to read…

“Stingray Softly Sleeps”

 

Stingray softly sleeps
My probing will not wake him
Sweet dreams little one

I poke, poke his little face
And yet he still ignores me
Poke, poke, poke, poke, poke

It’s not perfect: it’s better than perfect.  Frankly, it kicks ass.

Merry belated Christmas from your procrastinating, easily-distracted blogger friend, Emily.

Magic Magic

Jeremy, disgusted with my slovenly ways, recently cleaned out and organized our closets.  I think he tired of opening the door the way Indiana Jones entered a booby-trapped cave.  There was a familiar creak, followed by a yelp and a crash.  Over the course of several days, he took everything out and put everything back in.  He measured and made shelves and finally he laid out a whole bunch of miscellaneous crap that I’d given up finding.

Wow – were there treasures in there!

My Ipod charger, lost for months.  A pair of shoes I’d long since given up searching for.  A sweater.  My large plastic bin full of magic tricks.  It occurred to me that I should have returned that large box of tricks to the after school company I used to work for.  I spent several days guiltily avoiding the box, which Jeremy had placed next to the door.  I tried to decide how bad it would be to show up at the magic office nearly two years late.  It’s not as though they’d called me, asking for their box back.  I decided my laziness and lack of follow through was their fault.

It had been good money, teaching magic to children after school.  I’d show up around 3:30 at a different school every day, with my box full of cheap plastic magic tricks manufactured in China, my white socks and yarn and buttons, my safety scissors and juggling balls, my plastic top hats, my wands, my Elmer’s glue and my binder full of “how-tos”.  I found the job on Craigslist, just into my first semester of Grad School.  I needed the money, and the thought of only working two hours a day was very appealing.  How bad could it be?

After attending a training session that involved eating large quantities of cantaloupe while watching a man juggle, I was given my large green tub and the location of my first assignment.  I was told that I was starting on week two of an eight week course.  The girl who’d worked that first day had quit.  Her name – Crystal – was written on the papers inside the box.  At the time I thought it was odd that a person would only work one week of such an easy job before quitting.  Now I think Crystal was much smarter than I was.  Crystal was a genius.

I drove straight from class to the school – a private school in Northern New Jersey.  It was an elementary school and it was huge.  I got my tub of tricks from the trunk of my car and lugged it into the building, pausing in the office to ask where I should go.

The woman behind the desk looked at me skeptically, “Um, I think it’s that way,” she said, gesturing in a vague way down the left hallway.

“You think it’s that way?” I asked, getting worried.

“Um, yeah, I think so.”

Um.  Okay.  Strange, I thought, that the secretary of the school didn’t know where the after school teachers met.  Wasn’t this a regular thing?  Biting my lip, I wove my way through haggard looking teachers and parents with their hair going every which way, while screaming, tumbling children wearing brightly colored backpacks bumped into my knees like the steel balls inside a pinball machine.  I walked around several corners before I realized I’d traveled in a huge circle and was back at the office.  The secretary watched me with an expression that managed to convey boredom and interest at the same time.

The big plastic tub I was carrying was a lot heavier than I’d initially thought.

On my second jaunt through the school I passed an open door.  High, piercing shrieks were echoing through it, so I stuck my head in and realized at once that I was in the gymnasium.  It was one of those combination gymnasium-auditorium-cafeterias built for a maximum occupancy of 60 children, at a time when the real Laura Ingles Wilder was just learning how shitty it was to grow up in a dirt mound on the prairie.  I was pretty sure a budget hadn’t passed since the school opened.  This crappy excuse for a gymatorium was filled with children.  Kindergarteners, third graders, fifth graders: I tend to be unclear on the ages of most children before the age of twelve.  Suffice to say, they were small.  Children were running, tumbling, and forming huge sprawling piles of kicking, screaming hot little bodies. Dirty faces, dirty backpacks, filthy hands.  I stood there for about thirty seconds, stunned that so much chaos could fit into such a small space.  There was one adult there, attempting to untangle a pile of children.  He was sweating profusely and looked panicked, trying to decide which part of that hot screaming mess he should grab.  I walked inside and put my tub down.  Instantly, I was surrounded on all sides by small, dark eyed, curly haired children.

“Miss – Miss – Miss – what is that!”  Twenty pudgy hands were already tugging at the top of my green tub, attempting to pry it up and see what was inside.

“Oh, there’s magic in there, but you can’t see it yet,” I yelled in my best grownup voice, trying for super cheerful and nonchalant.  I figured showing fear in front of these little snot-monsters would be like showing fear to a house full of half-starved feral cats.  I had no intention of becoming the crazed cat lady in that scenario.  Everyone knows they found her without a face.

The sweaty man finally gave up trying to instill order and noticed me.  For one moment his eyes were mostly whites, and he looked as though he was trying to remember where he was, and why, and perhaps how he’d gotten himself into such a stupid situation.  He hurried over, rubbing his hands on a pair of dress pants that had seen better days before offering one to me.  I shook it, tentative, and tried not to grimace at the amount of sweat that transferred between us.

“Hi, I’m Mr. _____” he shouted.  I cocked my head to one side and attempted to infer what his name was.  It had sounded something like Smoozul.

“I’m Emily,” I shouted back, not overly concerned with giving him my last name, which he most likely wouldn’t be able to remember, anyway.  I smiled at him hopefully, waiting for some clue as to what my next move was.

Throughout this exchange, dozens of little fingers continued to pry at the top of my magic bin.  They were getting close to breaking in.  Swiftly, unable to think of a better idea, I sat down on top of it.

“No,” I said brightly, the way you might scold a stranger’s dog who was humping your leg.  I avoided eye contact, and said it to no one in particular.

A small, pale child put his finger in my ear.  “Want to see my toys?” he asked.

I nodded stupidly, while watching as Mr. Smoozul pulled a binder down from atop a fire extinguisher and leafed through it.  There were several pint-sized humans tugging at his pant legs, their hopeful little faces at eye level with his crotch.  I admired his ability to ignore them.

“Here,” he declared triumphantly, with a sweaty flourish, “your class list.”

“Thanks,” I screamed back at him, grabbing the computer printout and pulling it close to my face, scanning the list of names with the vain hope of memorizing some of them.

I suck at names.  That’s the kindest way to put it.  Whatever part of my brain processes people’s names is similar to a black hole.  The names go in, but they don’t come out.  Learning the names of my magic students had been my number one concern, and I had reason to doubt myself: back in high school I had trouble remembering the names of my classmates, and we’d been together since kindergarten.

When I glanced at the list I forgot that a kid’s finger kept finding its way into my ear.  I experienced a sinking feeling that rivaled the destruction of the Titanic.

There were four Ezras, two Uris, an Abishalom, Asahel, Yaakov, Cheilem, Akiva, Imrie, Mordechai, Micah, Adonijah, Tzurishadai, Reuben, Elkayam, Menachem, and a Gevaryahu.

After nearly vomiting on my paper, I scanned the auditorium again.  Of course I had noticed that the school was Jewish, what with a name that contained the word Yeshiva, and yes, I had noticed that almost everyone was wearing those little Jewish hats (I googled them later, they are called Kippahs), but I hadn’t realized that the names might be a serious problem.  I was pretty sure that I couldn’t pronounce most of them, and the only Reuben I’d ever encountered was a sandwich.

Dear Jesus, I muttered, and then felt instantly guilty.

A high pitched whistle cut through the general din, and everyone snapped their heads in the direction of the door.  A short, stern looking woman in a headscarf had the whistle to her lips and she was gesticulating in a “come hither” motion.  I shifted anxiously from where I sat atop the bin, worried that if I stood up I would be overrun.  The kid standing next to me, startled by the whistling noise, took his grubby finger out of my ear.  He put it in his mouth.

Feeling somewhat safe because the kids attentions were diverted, I rose swiftly, and realized that there were other young and desperate looking twenty-somethings with their own colorful bins, shifting anxiously back and forth in the hallway.  I admired their intelligence and berated myself for being such an idiot.

Pulling the bin up to my chest, I shuffled forward, trying to shake off the little hands that kept grabbing for it.  Truthfully, the little woman looked a lot larger and much more scary from far away.  Once I reached her I realized she barely cleared my chin.  It was disappointing that the children appeared frightened of her, while they hadn’t any qualms about sticking their germ-ridden fingers into my orifices.  I slouched down a little, attempting to show respect.

“You’re Magic?” she snapped at me in a clipped tone.  She said it like it was my name.  I attempted to shrug, but then I remembered I was holding the bin.  I nodded.  “Good,” she said, “collect your students and take them upstairs.  Your room is down the hall and to your right.”  I continued to nod stupidly while I attempted to figure out how I would “collect” my kids.  I was having visions of enormous butterfly nets.  Little Woman, sensing my uselessness, blew her whistle until she ran out of air.  The din diminished impressively.  “Magic!” she yelled, “Magic over here!”

I reminisced fondly on my own grade school years, where the rule of the line was enforced.  Unfortunately, there appeared to be not such rule here.  This school was like the wild west of Northern New Jersey.  A stampede of shrieking children flew at me from all directions.  Instinctually, I backed up, attempting to preserve some of my personal space.  Something attached itself to my leg.

Shuffling backwards into the hallway, I was able to ascertain that there were approximately 21 kids surrounding me.  This was reassuring, because there were 21 unpronounceable names on my list.  “Okay,” I cried, attempting to sound enthusiastic and happy, “Let’s go upstairs!”

“Aaaaaaah!” they screamed, all at once, taking off down the hallway like a pint-sized running of the bulls.  All but one: the mystery kid, who was still attached to my leg.  I shuffled forward a little and jiggled my foot, attempting to gently dislodge my little hitchhiker.  Because I couldn’t see the kid, I was filled with an irrational fear of being bitten.  I shook my foot a little harder.

“Hey,” I said, in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.  “Hey, we need to go upstairs, okay?”  Once dark eye peered at me from between my legs.

“Okay.”  The kid had the highest, most feminine whispery voice I’d ever heard.  Her hands released from my leg and the kid shuffled into view.  She had beautiful dark, curly hair beneath her little hat.  She was very cute.  Her eyelashes would make J-Lo jealous.

“What’s your name?” I asked, beginning to walk towards the stairwell.  I wanted to be far away from the gymnasium/auditorium when the other teachers and their unruly kids started pouring out.

She batted her eyelashes at me and attempted to wrap her hand around mine while I continued to hold onto the bin.  “Akiva,” she said shyly.

“That’s a pretty name,” I said, starting to pant as we reached a second flight of stairs.

When we reached the top I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to find my kids.  How embarrassing would it be, for the teacher to lose 21-or-something students?  I paused, unsure, and heard a shriek coming from the right.  Little Woman had said my classroom was on the right.  I followed the noise past a row of Picasoesque finger paintings.  The door was ajar at the end of the hall, and I nudged it open with my foot.

Children were running pell-mell around the room, throwing papers and broken crayons and McDonald’s happy meal toys at each others heads.  I walked to the teacher’s desk, located at the front of the room before a large blackboard.  I put the bin on top of it, because the kids who weren’t totally engrossed in playing “throw as much shit around as possible” were already trying to get into my bin again.  Putting the bin out of reach made me feel a little calmer.  The classroom was cool, but already I was covered in sweat.  I tried to think of what my mother would do in this situation.  She is great with kids, and works with elementary age students at my old public school.  A portable pencil sharpener flew past my face and I realized that I had no idea, not even an inkling, of how she would handle this.  Kids just seemed to respect her.  Some people are cat people.  She is a kid person.  I am more of a parakeet person.

I’d grown up in a house with lots of pets, and as I stood there I recalled how we’d dealt with our old dog, who went crazy whenever anyone come to the door.  We had a large coffee can full of rocks, and we shook it in her face.  It seemed to work most of the time.  I didn’t have a large container of rocks, so I figured I would clap at them to get their attention. The noise in the room was deafening, so I clapped extra loudly.

I clapped, and clapped, and when that failed I started yelling, “Hey!” over and over, interspersed with other phrases, like “Let’s go!” and “Come on!”

There was a pile of boys near the cubbies.  They were wrestling and grabbing at each other’s clothes.  I remembered what my mom had said once about not touching the children, the way one would also never touch the zoo monkeys.  I thought this was good advice, from the zoo angle.  I also was aware that law suits were another reason not to touch the children, but they looked more like monkeys to me at that moment.  I walked over to them in what I thought was a scary fashion, and clapped my hands right above their heads.  “Hey,” I yelled, “Stop it and sit down!”  Several flushed faces swiveled in my direction for a split second before resuming the wrestling match.  I decided I would bend the rules a bit.  Reaching down, I grasped two of the kids by the handles of their backpacks.  This, I figured, would be alright.  It wasn’t as if I was making direct contact with them.

The kids weighed maybe forty pounds each, and flailed their arms wildly as I slung them into separate seats.  Once most of them were seated I clapped my hands again for good measure and beamed a fake smile at them, “Okay, great! Let’s take attendance!”

I looked down at my list of incomprehensible names and raised my hand in the air, “I know!” I said, “Let’s play a game.  Let’s go around the room and you tell me your name, and then I’ll find it on the list.”

“Make the blackboard disappear!” screamed a little boy with a chocolate/poop stain on his shirt.

“Um, let’s start with this table,” I said, pointing at a cluster of desks to my right.  All the heads at that table snapped upright and six pairs of dark eyes looked up at me guiltily.  I looked closer; all six boys were up to their armpits in the desks, and the desks had name tags stuck to their tops.  All girl names.  The desks were the kind that had open storage compartments in the back.  Underneath the desk was a pile of loot: a My Little Pony, a sparkly stars pencil-case, a hot pink pencil, and a troll doll with fuzzy orange hair.  My stomach attempted to leap out of my esophagus.  “Okay, I’m going to count to ten and when I reach ten, all of the stuff you took out of those desks will be back inside.”

“Make the blackboard disappear!” screamed the kid with the creepy shirt-stain.

I ignored him and attempted to stare down the six boys at the offending table.  “Now – I said.  One, two, three, four…” One little boy in a blue striped shirt got under the table and began scooping all the stuff into a huge pile.  He stood up and began shoving all of it back into his desk.  I was positive that all that stuff didn’t come from one desk, but I sensed that I was losing the attention of the room.  If I waited too long, the tiny bit of control I’d managed to establish would dissolve.  “Great!” I said, brightly, “tell me your name?”

He looked down at the desk and mumbled something.  “What?” I asked again.  He mumbled the name a second time, no louder than the first, and I realized that there were no names on my list that started with the letter S.  It didn’t help that I had no idea how to pronounce most of the names, but still…

I was starting to feel nauseous.  I decided the best thing to do would be to skip the name thing entirely.  I realized I was breaking some serious rules but at the moment I didn’t care.  I’d already wasted twenty minutes trying to calm the children down, and I only had forty minutes left to get anything done.  Inside my bin there were mesh drawstring bags, one for each kid, and sharpie markers for them to write their names with.  I decided that I would just take attendance after the class was over.  It was really the best I could do at the moment.

I opened my bin.  Now I had most of their attentions.  They were watching me with wild eyes, as though I might have a real rabbit in there, or perhaps a dove.  I pulled out the bags and the markers and began passing them out.  “Here – write your names down on the bags and then I’ll teach you the first magic trick.”

One little boy ran up to me and began pulling on my pant leg.  “What?” I asked.  He held up a snack pack full of gummy bears.  He was apparently unable to open it.  I figured it wouldn’t hurt if he had his snack, so I opened it for him.

“Miss!” screeched another kid, “I want a snack!”

“Do you have a snack?” I asked.

“I want my snack I want my snack!”

I attempted to reason with him, “Well, you can only have a snack if you have a snack.”  I paused, trying to make sense of what I’d said.  Several other kids were surrounding me, holding out their hands for snacks.  There were other kids who had snacks and they also wanted me to open them.  “Okay, everyone sit down!” I yelled.

“Make the blackboard disappear!  Make the desk disappear!”  This kid apparently thought I’d attended a New Jersey version of Hogwarts.  I turned toward him, only to realize he was scribbling on the desk with the sharpie marker.  I practically ran to where he was sitting and swiped the marker away.

“Maybe if you’re good,” I said, through clenched teeth.

There was a wail behind me.  “My snack!” bawled a little kid I hadn’t even noticed before.  He was sitting in one of the cubbies by the door.  His snack – Cheez Nips – were scattered all over the floor.  He crouched over them, sobbing.  He picked one up and shoved it, along with several fingers, into his mouth.

“Hey!  Why don’t you come over here and sit down,” I coaxed.  I walked over to him and led him to a desk.  He gazed at the scattered Floor Nips with intense longing.  “Do not eat those,” I told him.

I turned around and swiftly began collecting Sharpie Markers.  Who had decided permanent markers were a good idea?  I threw the markers into the bin and pulled out my stack of black plastic top hats.

“Oooo!” sighed the kids, their mouths falling open.

“Okay,” I said, going for businesslike, “Each one of you gets a hat.  When you all have hats, I’ll pass out the stickers and you can decorate them!”  I clapped my hands for emphasis and waggled my eyebrows at them.

Akiva, the cute little girl who had befriended me, was raising her hand.  I smiled and pointed at her, “Yes?” I asked.

“Miss, I need to make!” she said, in her high little voice.

I was perplexed.  Make what?  I kept the smile on my face, “You’ll get your stickers in a minute,” I reassured her, as I began passing out hats.

There was a shriek, and a crash, and I spun around from passing out the last hat, only to see that two boys from the first table were lying on the floor amidst pencil erasers and overturned chairs, wrestling over one of the hats.  “Hey! Stop it now!” I yelled, leaping over a backpack and sprinting to where the two little monsters were trying to gouge one another’s eyes out.  “Stop it right this instant!” I sputtered, grabbing their arms and pulling them apart.  One little boy had a big angry red scratch across his face and the other one was sobbing.  Scar Face tried to hit Water Works again and so I picked up both him and his chair and put him beside the cubbies.  “Time out.” I snapped.  “Stay.”  I pointed at him the way I used to point at our dog.  I challenged him to move.  He scowled at me and folded his arms.  Water Works was still sobbing.

“He took my hat!” He screamed.  “My!  Hat!  Aaaaaaahhhhhh!”

Scar Face stuck out his tongue at me.  “Did not!”

“Ten minutes in time out,” I said.  “Ten.”

I pushed an unused desk up to him in a vain attempt at barricading him against the wall.  “Stay,” I said again in my sternest voice.  I jogged back to the teacher’s desk and pulled out another hat and my bag of stickers.  “Here,” I said, handing the hat to Water Works, “now everything is better.”  He hiccupped.  I gave him a handful of colorful foam stickers.  I hoped he wouldn’t eat them.

Akiva was pulling at my pant leg again.  “Miss I need to make!”  Perplexed, I shoved a pile of stickers into her sweaty hands.  “Here, go put stickers on your hat.”

A banging noise was coming from near the door.  I turned around.  Scar Face was pounding on his desk with his little fists.  “PENIS!” he screamed.  “PENIS PENIS PENIS!”

I froze.  What, exactly, was the appropriate response when a six year old screamed penis?  It’s not like I felt penis was a dirty word, but still, the last thing I needed was an entire class room full of kids to go home and tell their parents the magic teacher taught them a word synonymous with cock.  Other children were starting to giggle around me.  I heard the word again, “penis…hehehe…”

I decided to ignore it and pointed at Scar Face sternly.  “Ten more minutes,” I said.

I passed out handfuls of star stickers and prowled the room, keeping one eye on the clock at all times.  Only fifteen more minutes.  Please, God, let these minutes pass uneventfully.

The room was somewhat quiet.  Everyone was absorbed, peeling and sticking the stickers all over their hats.  I glanced back at Scar Face, who’d been quiet for a full five minutes.  I couldn’t tell what he was doing at first.  A pair of safety scissors were in his hands.  His little pink tongue stuck out in concentration and his eyes crossed as he tried to see the fringe of hair on his forehead; the hair he was hacking to pieces.

“No!” I yelped, launching myself at him.  I grabbed the scissors away and stepped back, panting.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” he declared, scowling.  Stricken, I assessed the damage.  Hair was scattered across his desk and there was a pile of it on the floor between his feet.  A huge chunk of his bangs was chopped off, nearly to his hairline.  His mother was going to kill me.

“Miss!  Miss!” the little voice behind me was urgent.  I spun around, expecting to see another kid with terrible hair.  A little boy from Akiva’s table was standing up, looking uncomfortable.  “Accident!” he yelped, when I started walking towards him.  Had he wet himself, I wondered?  I walked around his desk and looked at him.  Yes, his pants were definitely drenched with something.  But it wasn’t pee.  It was gooey, and white.  I spotted the industrial sized bottle of Elmer’s glue, lying innocently on the floor.  I picked it up.  The entire thing was empty.

“Where did you get this?” I demanded, holding up the bottle and waving it back and forth.

The little boy tugged, uselessly, at his pants.  It appeared that the boy had taken the bottle and overturned it into the top of his pants.  As I watched, the glue continued oozing in a slow, downward waterfall, soaking through the insides of his pants and into his shoes.

“I need to wash,” he declared.  I looked at how the glue was beginning to ooze over the tops of his sneakers and puddle on the floor.  I looked at the rest of the room, filled with mischievous faces.  Apologetically, I shook my head at him.  “Sorry kid,” I said, “You’ll have to wait until you go home.”  I could imagine how unpleasant a half hour bus ride home would be, with pants soaked with Elmer’s glue, but I didn’t see another option.  There was no way I could leave the rest of the room unattended, and there was no way I could clean him up without taking his pants off.

He looked upset so I smiled at him in encouragement.  “Don’t worry,” I said, “that will wash out.”

Akiva was back at my leg, tugging away.  Agitated, she hopped up and down, “Miss, Miss, Miss – I need to make!”  I glanced at the clock, there were ten minutes left.  If I could just get through these ten minutes I would be free.  I couldn’t handle another mystery.  I didn’t have the patience.

“Go sit down, Akiva.”  Akiva started sniffling.  A big wet tear rolled from the corner of her eye.

“Avika’s a cry baby!” yelled Scar Face from his cubby banishment.

“Time out forever!” I yelled back.

“Cry baby, cry baby!” screamed Scar Face.

“Leave.  Her.  Alone!” I shouted, folding my arms across my chest.

Silence.  I was impressed.  Had I finally frightened them into submission?  Akiva screwed up her pretty little eyes and began to wail like a siren.

A little boy who I hadn’t noticed because he was one of the few non-trouble makers, raised his hand.

“Miss, he needs to make.”

Akiva, the…boy?  I could feel my cheeks flush.  I was sure they were blazing red.  Oh dear Jesus, how embarrassing.  This poor kid Akiva would probably never recover from this, and it was all my fault.  I tried to think of what to do next.

Five minutes left.  I was too overwhelmed to deal with this new development, so I clapped my hands again and steered Akiva back to his seat.  “Okay everyone, it’s time to clean up!” I yelled.

“No!” shrieked Scar Face, who promptly bolted out the door.  What was I supposed to do, follow him?  I couldn’t leave the rest of these kids unattended.  No one was listening to me.  Sticker wrappers were all over the floor, and while I looked hopelessly at the huge mess that needed cleaning, six other little boys ran, screaming, from the room.

I lost it.  “Pick up NOW!” I screeched, stamping my foot like a six year old.  Out of the corners of my eyes I noticed several kids creeping slowly under the desks, picking up handfuls of pencils, shredded papers, and sticker backs.  “Thank you,” I sighed, relieved that I’d gotten any of them to listen to me at all.  Water Works was back at the site of his cracker accident, his little back to me.  I felt a flash of pride, that he was helping to pick up a mess he’d made.  I walked around the room, thanking the kids who were picking up, and holding out a trash can for them to put the mess in.  Things would be all right, I thought.  I was in the home stretch now.

A bell rang in the hallway and Akiva bolted from the room, followed by the rest of the kids.  Everyone but Water Works, who was still diligently cleaning.  I felt proud.  I had gotten through to at least one kid.  At least I wasn’t a complete failure.

“Clean up is over,” I called to him, gathering my things and throwing them into the bin.  I snapped the top on and began picking up all the papers and other trash the kids had missed.  There was a lot of it.  Water Works was completely engrossed in what he was doing.  I got everything cleaned up and walked over to him, carrying my bin.  “Hey, buddy, it’s time to go.  Thank yo-” I gasped.

Water Works looked up at me.  His face was smeared with snot, Cheez Nips crumbs, and Scar Faces hair.  “Okay, enough clean up,” I assured him.  He made one last grab for the filth on the floor.  I grabbed him and shooed him out of the room, mortified.

I followed the kids downstairs, only getting lost once on my way through the building.  I stood in the doorway, watching kids get on the bus.  Over in the parking lot I spotted Akiva, who seemed to be doing a complicated dance.  A teacher shooed him into an idling bus.  I sighed.  Beside me, someone snorted.  I turned and recognized another after school teacher.  She was sitting on her bin, looking exhausted.  I followed her example and once I was sitting I turned to her, raising my eyebrows.  “So, what do you teach?”

She sighed, “Mad Science.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun, what did you do today?”

“Slime.”

I looked at her face and shuddered.  I tried to imagine making slime with all 21 of my kids.  “That sounds awful,” I said.

She groaned, “Yes, it was.”

We watched the busses pull out of the parking lot in silence.  “Hey, can I ask you something,” I mused.

“Sure.”

“What does ‘I need to make’ mean?”

The girl beside me laughed.  “Oh, that means they have to go to the bathroom.”

It was like the heavens opened up and a ray of singing, golden light slapped me across the face.  Of course.  I thought of Akiva’s jiggling, frantic dance in the parking lot.  It all made sense.

With a sigh, I picked up my bin and bid farewell to the girl.  I thought of Akiva the whole ride home.  I hoped he didn’t have far to go.

Sacrificing to the Highway Gods

On Monday I walked outside at 7:45AM with coffee in one hand and my bag in the other.  Jeremy’s raincoat was slung over my head because I’ve lost another umbrella, and my sneakers were soaking through because rain was bouncing up from the pavement, spraying into my ankles.  In my typical morning stupor I almost missed the missing hubcap, but no – my eye caught on the dark circle where my shiny silver hubcap was supposed to be.

“Seriously!” I snap, “What the hell!”

This hubcap was the new one – the hubcap my father had replaced only last month, when the exhaust system literally fell out of my car on 295 West.  I am unclear what happened to the last hubcap, too.  I mean, I am 90% positive that the old hubcap was on my car when the burly tow-trucker man hoisted it onto the flatbed.

Perhaps this new hubcap was with the old one, keeping it company.

I am continually surprised by just shitty driving conditions in the Metro Area.  The sign that reads “Manhattan, Next 7 Exits”, should really just say “Potholes Ahead, Prepare to be Smited.”

Last year I got to school and realized my tired had nearly deflated.  It was a slow leak, and I was able to drive it to the nearest auto body shop, where they patched me up and sent me on my way.  It was only later, when my father changed those tires for winter snow tires, that we realized the entire metal wheel was pounded flat on one side.

“Holy crap, how did that happen?” he asked.

“Pot hole – in Queens.”

The fact that I knew exactly where the incident of wheel-denting occurred is a clue to just how massive that pothole was.  At the time I drove into it I was already suffering from a massive adrenaline rush, because one of those large highway scrubber truckers had shot a huge rock into the side of my car only moments before.  The rock hit with a crack, I swerved instinctually, and the next thing I knew my car made a horrible metal-meets-asphalt noise, as though the entire underside of my car had just smashed into the pavement.  I was instantly drenched in a hot/cold prickly sweat.  A “holy crap I just murdered my car” sort of sweat.

Of course there isn’t just one pothole in the New York City area.  This past spring there was a week of flooding from massive rainfall, and a huge crater appeared in the left lane of the Major Deegan Expressway South.  I avoided that lane for two weeks, until the city sent a maintenance crew out to slap a mound of blacktop over it.  I wasn’t the only one avoiding the hole: New York drivers learn quickly.  Me and most of my fellow commuters all merged over to the middle lane before the pothole/crater.  The ones who didn’t eventually left a heaping mound of silver hubcaps strewn along the left guardrail.  There was an actual, literal pile.

I am always intrigued by people who use rubber bumper-guards over the back ends of their vehicles.  Do those actually work?  I often pass cars with huge dents in the trunk, but these dents are  higher than any bumper-guard could reach, as though they were hit by the driver of a 16 wheeler with depth perception issues.  I always think about those rubber guards whenever I pass a long line of cars pulled over to the side of the road, smushed together like a brittle accordion.  I bet no one standing there waiting for the police and the tow trucks is thinking, “Damn, I wish I’d gotten one of those rubber bumper-guards.”

My 2000 silver Honda is scrapped up at every corner, and all along the back, but she is, for the most part, a very reliable car.  There was, of course, the incident with the broken exhaust pipe and the wheel, but those were minor problems in the grand scheme of things.  I’ve been in many near-accidents: I’ve been shouted at in Syracuse by a deranged, angry man, who proceeded to ram the back of my car several times with his; I’ve had rocks thrown at my car by bored angsty teenagers (Syracuse again); I backed into my mother’s car while attempting to exit my driveway; I have driven into potholes the size of Australia.  But I’ve never had the misfortune of a major accident.

When I pass those big, catastrophic accidents, I say a little prayer to the Highway Gods: “Take the hubcaps – thanks for just taking the hubcaps.”

“Shit-hole” Part VII: Kitchen Squirrel

It was a surprisingly nice day.  It was spring.  The birds were chirping, the squirrels were performing daring acrobatics along the telephone lines that ran from roof to roof.  The septic system in the equally shitty apartment next door had burst and flooded the basement with vomit and excrement.  Our neighbors were outside beside a kitty pool full of beer, wearing rubber boots and goulashes.

I was watching them from the kitchen while I ate a sandwich at our folding card table with its blue vinyl table cloth.  The kitchen window was wide open and a faint breeze drifted through the house.  On the table was a plastic bag filled with someone’s hamburger rolls.  The rolls had been on the card table for several days.  No one seemed to know who they belonged to, so they would most likely sit there for another two weeks before I threw them away.

There was a squirrel outside on the driveway, watching me.  He was flicking his whiskers in my direction so I toasted him with my half-eaten sandwich and went back into my room for a mid-day nap.

After my nap I exited my room and walked into the kitchen.  Everything was as I had left it.  There was still a nice breeze, carrying a whiff of sewage from next door.  My neighbors had abandoned their kitty pool.  Crushed beer cans adorned the lawn like cheap jewelry.  They glinted dully in the sun.  The plastic bag full of rolls was still on the table, but I felt a flash of annoyance because one of my housemates had made a sandwich and left crumbs scattered across the table cloth and all over the floor.  Messes like that were always happening, and it was impossible to catch anyone in the act.

Stomping over to the table, I intended to sweep up most of the crumbs and toss them in the trash, but I stopped mid-reach.  There was a large hole in the plastic bag, and a roll was reduced to chunks of malformed bread.  I sighed.  Not only had one of my roommates left a mess, they’d apparently been too lazy to even take a full roll.  Angrily, I re-wrapped what was left of the rolls and made a cursory effort to clean up the crumbs.  I was still half asleep from my nap, and already late for my afternoon class.  Grabbing my bag, I left in a hurry, and promptly forgot all about it.

Four hours later I made it back to the apartment.  I was excited because it was still light out at six o’clock and it wasn’t raining.  I unlocked the back door, walked up the stairs, and paused.  There was movement at the periphery of my vision.  I turned, expecting to see a college student’s head as they cut through our parking lot on the way to class, and instead I found myself locking eyes with an enormous gray squirrel.  It stared me down from where it crouched territorially over the shredded remains of the hamburger rolls.  Fresh crumbs littered the floor as well as the table.  The squirrel chattered angrily at me, its long yellow teeth glinting dangerously from beneath its rubbery squirrel lips.

Quietly, I retreated into my room.  Right before I closed my door, I glimpsed the squirrel sized hole chewed through our window screen.  It was a large hole – big enough to pass a softball through.  The sound of rustling plastic continued for a moment for two, followed by a brief scrabbling sound and then silence.

Only shredded plastic and ravaged bread was left.  The hole in the screen gaped at me, and I quickly shut the window.  It was getting dark, but I didn’t want to attract any other hungry animals during the night.  In the morning I called about the screen, explaining this new development to Mr. Handlebar Mustache’s secretary, who told me that maintenance would be over as soon as they were free.

Several days went by.  I’d been living in the shit-hole long enough to know that Mr. Handlebar Mustache wouldn’t replace our old screen with a new one, but part of me assumed that he would replace the screen with an undamaged, or less-damaged screen, salvaged from some other crappy apartment.

I was eating lunch when the maintenance man came over.  I nodded at him.  He nodded at me.  He left the old screen where it was.  He lifted a large roll of chicken wire, cut it to the shape of our window, and proceeded to staple-gun it to the window frame.

I was surprised, but only because I hadn’t expected the chicken wire.  Over the two years I’d lived in that horrible house, I’d wasted hours scheming how I might get out of the lease.  I was too disgusted with the place to convince a subleter, no matter how desperate they were, that they should live here.  I’d wasted hours fantasizing about Mr. Handlebar Mustache meeting a horrible end.  I realized it wasn’t worth it.  I was moving out in just two months.

Screw it, I thought.  And I completely understood why those previous tenants were thinking, when I met them on my first tour of the house.  Now that bitter subleter was me.

The maintenance man was finished in about five minutes.  He picked up his leftover scraps of chicken wire and his staple gun, and left.

I couldn’t wait to do the same.

“Shit-hole” Part VI: Closet Avalanche

I was having a quiet day.  It was summer, and a weak, watery sunlight was streaking through the cloud cover.  Clouds are typical of Syracuse.  Almost everyone was home for break, and everyone else was outside, enjoying the day.  I was inside enjoying a book.  Things were quiet, almost serene.  It was the sort of hush I noticed because I had grown used to the background noise of thumping bass and other typical college student noises.

Jeremy was home in Connecticut for the summer and I reveled the silence and book-reading his absence inspired.

I probably exaggerate when I say the house shook, but it felt that way.  At least my bed shook.  There was a loud ripping noise, followed by a cascading, crashing sound.  I sat upright, frozen in horror, as a cloud of white dust billowed through the crack beneath my closet door.

I experienced a pure and unadulterated “what the fuck” moment as I sat there, stupefied, trying to decide whether or not a bomb had gone off among my sweaters.

There was another smaller ripping sound, accompanied by a noise that reminded me of pebbles bouncing down a steep hill.

Tentatively, I approached the closet and opened the door.  More white dust billowed out and, coughing, I batted at it in an attempt to see the damage.  The entire ceiling of my closet had apparently tired of its place in the dark, and had made one wild leap for freedom.  Chunks of plaster and insulation had torn away, exposing the thin backbone of the house, and pieces were hanging from it in tatters like skin.  Plaster dust and who knows what else covered my clothing, and debris lay in a heap at my feet.

I called the secretary of Mr. Handlebar Mustache and attempted to describe the problem.  I’d gotten to know his secretary – I had to call frequently due to a cranky toilet.

“So – what is the problem, exactly?”  I imagined her with her be-stockinged feet up on her desk, filing her nails.

“Uhh – my closet caved in.”

There was a pause.  “What do you mean, caved in?”

“Um, well, the ceiling fell off.”

“It fell?  Where?”

I fought the urge to snap at her.  “Well,” I said, very slowly, “It appears the ceiling was weak and it fell down into all of my things and is now all over the floor.”

There was another pause, “Oh.”

Oh.  Right.

“Did you do anything?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I wondered.

“I mean, did you do anything to cause the ceiling to fall in?”

I was incensed.  My mouth fell open and I stared blankly into the wreckage of my closet.  “Is that a serious question?” I asked.

“Well,” she said after a long moment, “I’m not sure how much of an emergency this is, but I will tell the maintenance guy and he can come over and fix it as soon as he can.”

I thought about asking her what she considered to be an emergency – perhaps my whole ceiling caving in, burying me, would make the cut.  Instead, I thanked her as sweetly as possible and hung up.

“Shit-hole” Part V: Spiderman

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Diego was replaced by another housemate.  This guy was obsessed with Spiderman and A Cappella groups.  An unlikely combination.

Spiderman had a tattoo of Spidey over his heart and enjoyed singing loudly while walking through the apartment wearing only a leopard-print towel.  I remain unclear, to this day, about why he bothered with the towel at all: Spiderman was the sort of guy who didn’t know it was courteous to dry off after his shower.  He tracked large puddles of water all through the apartment.

Spiderman wore dog tags that jingled wherever he went.  He lived in the only room in our apartment that had a door with glass windows.  These he covered with a sheet, but we could still see his hands and listen to the metallic jingling sound of his dog tags hitting the floor every time he grunted through a pushup.  The dog tags were helpful only when we needed to locate him.  One could find Spiderman easily if they stood still and listened.

After Spiderman moved in food began mysteriously disappearing from the refrigerator.  I’m not talking about only food from the grocery store.  One weekend half of my leftover hamburger from Ruby Tuesday’s went missing.

It was Spiderman, and his tag-a-log A Cappella friends who decided our basement should be the site of killer parties.

He asked permission to have the first party – I’ll give him that.  It was the spiked fruit punch and Natty-Light variety of party.  There were black lights strung up over the old washer and drier in the basement and Spiderman spent time sweeping the dirt floor so the freshman who got alcohol poisoning would have something clean to vomit on.

It rains a lot in Syracuse, so it wasn’t a surprise that there was more water pelting from the sky than there was air to breathe.  There was no gutter on our roof, and water poured directly from the roof onto the heads of everyone coming inside.  These partygoers had too much to drink, needed to pee, and proceeded to track mud across the kitchen (where my room was), through the odd L-shaped hallway, and into our bathroom.  Because the walls were so thin the music that Spiderman was blasting echoed through the house, and I spent hours trying to fall asleep on a pillow that could have doubled as a subwoofer.

I got through that first party with as much grace as was humanly possible.  The packed dirt floor of the basement had become a yeasty swamp, littered with red solo cups and discarded clothing.  Like a saint, I ignored it.  I even waited half a day, with superhuman patience, for Spiderman to clean out the bathroom.  He did a passable job.

I came home several weeks later to a palette of beer cans by the door and the makings of fruit punch in the sink.  Spiderman was all amped up, whistling, super pleased with himself.  “I’m making jello shots!” he told me.

“Umm.” I said.  “Umm.  Are you having a party?”

He stopped.  Looked at me, “Yeah – didn’t I tell you?”

He had not told me.  I attempted to kill him with my mind.

After an uncomfortable silence Spiderman went back to making punch and singing Celine Dion, and I went into my room to stew.

My then-boyfriend, Jeremy, couldn’t understand why I wished to throttle my roommate barehanded.  He looked at me, mildly perplexed, as I ranted about the many ways in which I loathed Spiderman.  “His dog tags – they jingle.  ALL THE TIME!” I wailed.

“Uh, you could just stay with me in the dorm,” Jeremy suggested.  I sensed he was trying to infuse me with calm and goodwill, and I wasn’t falling for it.  No way – not now.

“Never!” I sputtered.  Jeremy sighed as I stomped off in search of Julia, who I knew would commiserate with me.

We spent the better part of the night guarding the door from the basement to the kitchen, trying to keep the drunk and rowdies downstairs as much as possible.

“There’s a bathroom outside,” I suggested helpfully to a girl who clung to the stairwell like a sailor in a hurricane.

Eventually we were overrun.  Tired of rap music and screaming obnoxious teenagers, we decided to begin phase two of our plan.

When I first toured through the shit-hole, before signing the lease and legally binding myself to Mr. Handlebar Mustache the way Ariel bound herself to the Sea Witch, I hadn’t noticed the hole beneath the dishwasher.  This is surprising, because it was a very large hole.  At some point or another the floor had rotted completely through, and there was a good five inch long and two inch wide hole that went directly to the basement.  I amused myself sometimes by pouring cupfuls of water through the hole.  I enjoyed listening to that waterfall sound.

Julia and I filled a pot with cold water and, when the coast was clear, dumped the entire thing through the hole in the floor.  The water made a whooshing sound as it slashed into partiers, packed together near the speakers, and the large splashing noise it made when it bounced back up from the floor was loud enough to hear over Black Eyed Peas singing “Ima get you drunk, get you love-drunk off my humps.”

Then the screaming started.  We ran for cover, diving into my room and locking the door.  With the lights off, we waited for the confusion to subside.  It didn’t take long for the people who came upstairs to lose interest: it could have been some sort of water leak, we heard someone suggest.

After all, it wouldn’t be surprising.