What Time Is It?

Recently I was eating lunch with a good friend at a local Chinese restaurant. I was yammering on about the daily saga that is my life, and she was politely listening and occasionally making the requisite comments: "Uh huh," "Yeah," and "That's not right!" Then the fortune cookies came, and she opened hers while I continued with my drama. Suddenly she got this smirk on her face and cut her eyes over to me with a mischievous look.

"What?" I said. "What does it say?"

She just handed it to me so I could read it myself: "Now is the time to make new friends."

I Give Up

Best conversation to come out of my job teaching high school English this year:

(while doing Mad Libs)
Me: I need a verb.
Student: Corn!
Me: [trying not to mock] Corn is not a verb.
Student: Yes it is.
Me: [now debating whether I should continue this line of discussion] No, it's definitely not.
Student: Yes it is!
Me: [now trying to control fists of death] A verb is something you do. You can't corn something.
Student: Yes you can.
Me: How? How can you corn something?
Student: Like if you throw a corn cob at someone. You're corning them.
Me: If you throw a corn cob at someone, throw is the verb!! [clearly having lost my cool]
Student: Well, you can "do corn," just like you can "do pot."
Me: [still wondering if I should continue] Not that I want to encourage any discussion about doing pot, but if you do pot, DO is the VERB! You can't pot something, unless it's a plant!
Student: Well, pot is a plant...come to think of it, so is corn.

Damage Control

And onward I go trying to compose this essay for my black belt scrapbook. I am a writer -- I did not expect this to be difficult. But today I wrote this:

My parents love to tell the story about my escapades as a Little League softballer in the fifth grade. According to their tale, which elicits copious laughter every time, I would spend most of the game sort of twirling around in the outfield, looking up at the sky and singing to myself, sometimes not so softly. I think they mean to use this charming anecdote to highlight my sensitive, artistic nature, and to illustrate that well-known truth that we all have our strengths, and mine was obviously never athletics. I don't blame them. I know their intentions are good. And I guess to someone who buys into the innocence of that image -- the simplicity of an eleven-year-old too distracted by the beauty around her to notice something like a softball game in which she is supposed to be participating -- that story would be cute and funny.

But I was there. And it's not funny to me because I know the truth. At the time I only knew the details of the situation: 1) I loved softball and wanted desperately to play (my parents had not made me join the team); 2) I was awkward and gangly and could not run fast -- I was a 5'6" eleven-year-old trying to reconcile a pair of giraffe-like legs and a double-barrel chest with a uniform that was clearly never intended for such beasts; and 3)at that point in my life, I had already suffered so much ridicule about my physical appearance at the hands of my "peers" that I was terrified of anything that would draw more attention. Now I know that those moments on the field -- those silly, childish moments that make such good stories -- defined me in ways I'm still trying to understand and reverse.

So there I was, literally and metaphorically out in left field, trying desperately to drown out the words in my head that had me pleading with God not to let a ball come my way. I would do anything, I promised. Anything if He would just keep me safe from that humiliation (obviously just making me a good player was not an option). It was damage control, just as the coaches' decision to make me an outfielder was. I looked around, trying to focus on the trees or the sky. Sometimes I tried really hard to listen to the "chatter" of the other players supporting our pitcher. Sometimes I sang softly to myself.

Damage control.


And now I'm beginning to wonder just how far back this black belt journey is going to take me. And just how much longer it will go on.

Touchee

I thought I'd share with you two of the best topics to come out of my recent assignment to my college students. The assignment was to write a short argument piece on any topic of their choice, to demonstrate their best abilities with being persuasive:

1. Pot should be legalized because if everyone were high, there would be less crime, which would ultimately result in world peace.

2. In order to stop overpopulation and provide a solution for caring for the elderly, we should send the elderly into space as untrained astronauts, where they would live in space sattelite stations and be ejected into space when they died.

More Fun from Laundry Day

So I thought I'd include for your reading pleasure a partial transcript of the conversation that took place between the laundry girl and her dad on Skype (see "Criminally Mediocre" below). I wrote this down because...well, I'm a writer, and writers do weird stuff like that:

Girl: Hey, Dad! I'm at the laundromat.
Dad: What? Why are you getting a new doormat?
Girl: Huh? No...laundromat. I'm doing laundry.
Dad: Oh. What's the quandary?
Girl: No...Dad...I said LAUNDRY!!!
Dad: Oh, laundry, right. Hey, I hope you're not washing your underwear there. [**personal thought: I hope she is...or at least washing them somewhere]
Girl: Dad! WTF? Other people can hear you, you know! [**personal thought: of course other people can hear him, you moron, which would be one of the many reasons I would not choose the laundromat as the forum for my Skype convo. Just sayin'.]
Dad: What does WTF mean?
Girl: Dad, I gotta go.
Dad: What did I say? I just asked a simple question.
Girl: I'm hanging up now.