I Got Nuthin’

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I Didn’t Have To Go To Starbucks For This One

The semester is almost over, thank dog.  I am worn out.  Two of my classes have been engaging and fun.  One class, my mouth breathers, have required every bit of patience — well, let’s just say that their ignorance is like a BP oil spill: the stupid won’t stop pouring out and, I swear, it’s not my fault!  I’ve had writing workshops, peer reviews, and intensive one-on-one writing sessions yet I still receive papers with insightful pronouncements like:

“Being a Christian has the promises of eternal salvation.  One day, when you kick the bucket, you will go to the city called Heaven.  Except, maybe not.  You might go to Heaven.  Unless there isn’t really a Heaven.  Then you will just be dead.  So sad.  So very, very sad. But this book isn’t about Christianity its about anarchy and there all going to hell anyway.”

And…

“Paul Whitman wrote Leafs of Grasses.  He was gay.  He had a beard because he had acne.  He is famous because he is the only gay poet in America.  If Paul Whitman were alive today he would be a gay poet with a beard.”

But the Troglodyte Of The Year Award goes to Beaker.  On the first day of class, my explanation of the syllabus was interrupted by a high-pitched “Meep!” from the back of the room.  All heads whipped to the hairy bespectacled Lorax sitting in the corner. 

“Excuse me?”

“Meep!” he replied, the lower half of his wooly Snuffleupagus-like visage partially hidden by the syllabus wedged between his saber-toothed incisors.  Meep!  Meep!  Meep!  I was a bit non-plussed by the truckload of trouble that seemed to be backing its way into my classroom. 

“I have autism!” he shouted through a mouthful of paper.

Beaker’s proclamation hovered over the room like a loud, liquidy shart in a crowded elevator.  No problem, I thought.  I’ve had autistic students in several of my classes.  What followed, however, was weeks of meeping when asked a question, spasmodic jerks at any mention of technology, and a host of other ticks and triggers that made teaching each and every class like being “It” while playing Simon Says in a minefield.

On one occasion, I asked the class a question about the day’s reading.  Beaker’s hand shot up.  Thinking it was one of his ticks, I called on someone else.  Beaker’s other hand shot up. 

“Beaker, do you want to respond?”

He nodded emphatically, eyes wide behind his dirty glasses.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Beaker slooooowly lowered his hands and covered his mouth as he spoke, fingers interlaced in a hairy-fingered web that trapped his words.

“Beaker, I can’t hear you.  Do you mind moving your hands?”

Beaker paused for a moment and then slooooowly raised his hands like a roman shade until his eyes were blocked from view.  His mouth continued to move.  No sounds emerged.  I sighed and called on someone else.

Beaker’s outbursts increased in frequency and intensity, often disrupting class.  I needed some advice: taser or baton?  So I went to the student disability office.  The student disability office Beaker was supposed to have registered with at the beginning of the semester.  The student disability office he said he registered with, between meeps, at the beginning of the semester.  The student disability office he didn’t register with at the beginning of the semester because he DOESN’T FUCKING HAVE AUTISM!

In fact, the student disability office informed me that Beaker had tried his autism routine in several other classes.  When confronted, Beaker fessed up, settled down, and didn’t utter another meep for the rest of the semester.  That’s right, Innernetz, Beaker doesn’t have autism.  At all.  Not even a little bit.  Not even the high-functioning-I’m-gonna-make-a-bazillion-dollars-on-a-world-dominating-computer-operating-system kind.  What he did have was the wrath of Dingo coming his way.

The next day, at the beginning of class, I announced that I had sent the entire class an email.  He meeped and flailed back and forth like a hairy piñata in a Santa Ana wind.  I ignored it and went on to mention that students could collaborate about their in-class presentations online.  Beaker twitched and jerked.  I suggested Tweets and Beaker grabbed a book from his desk and waved it in front of his face while making “tweet” sounds.  When I suggested that the groups befriend one another on Facebook, he screamed while smacking the book against his face.  I suggested instant messaging, bulletin boards, and online collaboration apps, but it wasn’t until I mentioned Skype that Beaker fell to the floor, exhausted and panting.  I then requested that he come see me during my office hours.

“Ms. Dingo? You wanted to see me?” He stepped into my office, hair poking through buttonholes and sleeves as if he’d bought his clothes at a minoxidil fire sale.

“Sit down, Beaker.” Beaker sat. 

“You don’t have autism.  You’re a faker,” I said getting to the point.  Barely restraining my glee about the water works and blubbering apologies that I just knew were about to spring from his lying lips, I reached for the tissues I keep by my desk for such occasions. 

“Um, is this about my papers?”

My hand paused mid-air.  I may or may not have made a fist.  He doesn’t have autism.  He did have stupid.

“No, Not Rain Man, this is not about your papers.  This is about the fact that you’ve been faking a developmental disorder and disrupting class.  What the hell, dude?!” I sat back mentally rubbing my hands together waiting for the groveling.  I’d worn my best shoes.  I find the tears of desperate penitents exceptional for buffing patent leather.

“Oh, yeah, that.  Does this affect my grade?” he asked.

“Meep!” I said.

He smiled a little.  “No, seriously, I can’t fail this class,” he said.  “This won’t affect my...?”

“Meep meep,” I said and froze, but for my left arm, which glacially moved a sheet of paper from the desk to the front of my face.  “Meep,” I repeated, until I was sure he had left.

Damn, I’ll be glad when this semester is over.

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Furby

So, there I was at Starbucks, grading papers and trying to ward off an Overused Comma coma with a Cranberry Bliss bar, when Tiny Bladder at the next table asked me to watch his stuff for the millionth time.  I rolled my eyes, stuffed a chunk of Cranberry Bliss into my mouth and said, “Dude, I don’t care how cold it is outside, no one wants your dollar-store notebook and the ratty goddamn trench coat your mama obviously dressed you in.” Somehow, through the crumbly brown sugary goodness that fell from my mouth he heard, “Sure! No problem!” Then he dashed off.

While Tiny Bladder ran to the bathroom, a fetid odor snuck into the coffee shop, curdling the last of the lemon frosting sticking to my fingers.  I held my nose in the nick of time because, given a few more seconds, it would have jumped off my face and scurried out the door.  For there in the doorway stood Furby.  I groaned.  I had thirty-three more papers to grade with sentences like:

Homosexuality didn’t have a name in the 12th Century.  It was called gay in the 20th Century being that men what lived together were happy.

And

During the American Civil War in the late 1960s feminism was dying.  It was in its death throws.

I did not have time to deal with Furby’s brand of crazy.  My stomach tried to dissolve itself with its own acid as Furby’s pungent, dank, mop soaked in urine, moldy cabbage scent settled over the store.  I turned back to my papers hoping Furby would not sense the crazy magnet implanted behind my left ear during a secret government experiment in the 1980s.  He had thirty or so mangy stuffed animal torsos from the Island of Plague Infected Toys pinned to his moldy jacket and 70s era running shorts.  As he made his way toward me (natch!) eyeless heads with mouths disfigured by rats and dry rot taunted me, “We’re coming to get you, Dingo!  We’re coming to get YOUooouuuuUUU!”

It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, I told myself, closing my eyes and wishing it all away.  It worked.  Sort of.  When I opened my eyes, Furby was seated at Tiny Bladder’s table drinking Tiny Bladder’s coffee and writing in Tiny Bladder’s notebook. 

“Excuse me, “ I said.  “Someone’s sitting there; he’ll be right back.”

Furby continued to scribble in Tiny Bladder’s notebook.  Although Furby ignored me, his Typhoid Toys did not.  Bouncing and bobbing with every elaborate flourish of Furby’s Tiny Bladder’s pen, their empty eye sockets stared at me accusingly, spewing reproach (not to mention hantavirus) in my direction.  I was supposed to be watching Tiny Bladder’s things!  What kind of derelict sentinel am I?  I had to do something.

Before I could interrupt him again, Furby paused from his frantic writing.  Apparently, all that creative activity, together with the large coffee, were making him warm.  So he removed the head-studded coat with some fanfare, and the smell of sick room sweat and body odor became even more overpowering. 

But at that moment, thoughts of compassion, understanding, and kindness rose above the wormwood stench of Furby’s presence.  Furby, after all, seemed to have fallen on hard times.  I was warmed by the holiday music playing over the speakers. The beautifully lit professionally photographed pictures of pumpkin pie latte evoked Normal Rockwell images of friends and family.  Furby’s furry contingent of contagion was his family.  And I, I am a friend to man, a comrade of all mankind.  My mind floated on thoughts of “we are the world” and “we are the children,” and, miraculously, my body went with it, all the way up to the manager where I, with compassion, understanding, and kindness said, “He’s using someone else’s stuff.” Because nothing overcomes a spiritual bond with your fellow man like good ol’ property rights.  It’s the American Way!

I stayed at the counter thinking of Peace on Earth and ordering another Cranberry Bliss as the manager gently, and with compassion, understanding, and kindness, gave Furby the boot.  Furby gathered his things and flounced out of the Starbucks with a primetime pageant-worthy flounce to end all flounces.  If trumpets had heralded his departure, it would have been no more dramatic.  Still, if he had turned at the door and said, “Good day, sir!  I said, GOOD DAY!” I would have applauded.

Instead, I hummed Fa la la la la! La la la la! all the way back to my seat and launched into another poorly written paper.  Tiny Bladder returned.  Dear god!  What took him so fucking long! 

“Hey!” he exclaimed.  “What happened to my coffee?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Well,” I began to explain but was cut short.

“And where’s my coat?”

Oh shit.  Still sitting on the chair was Furby’s coat of heads, all of them staring at me critically with their vacant eyeholes.  Tiny Bladder’s trench had departed.

“That’s not your coat?” I asked.

Yes, there are eight million stories in this naked city.  And tonight, one of those stories is a little less naked. 

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My Fat Mouth

Quick Update:  I forgot to tell you, I did another post at The Greenists.


Christmas came early to Casa de Dingo in the form of a 246-page glossy magazine.  Although I try to camouflage my fashionista aspirations beneath sweatshirts, tattered jeans, and slept-in pony-tails to avoid the ravenous paparazzi waiting to plaster my face across the latest copy of Useless and Oh no, not her again magazines, I cannot deny my love for Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle, and InStyle.  I consume them from cover to cover, ripping out the perfume inserts and rubbing them all over my body like poor woman’s Febreeze.  Except for the Prada Milano perfume insert.  It makes you smell less like Febreeze and more like the sticky stained carpet in a whore house.

It was with glee that I flipped through the pages of the November Glamour because it was the issue that promised to feature “plus-size” models — by plus size, they meant anyone who can wear corduroy without looking like a pipe cleaner.  What a disappointment!  Only two of the gorgeous plus-sized models were modeling clothes and even then, they had their arms crossed protectively in front of their bodies as if to shield readers from the sight of their unemaciated flesh:  Oh noes!  A Size-12!  Won’t someone think of the children?!1! 

I flipped through page after page of waifs, sticks, and cadavers balancing lollipop heads on necks so skinny they’d fail inspection at the broom factory.  I finally found models larger than the rolled Benjamins Kate Moss uses to snort her coke.  The luscious ladies were lumped together — literally, lumped together like tumors — in a two page spread waaaaaaay at the back of the magazine.  Fuck you Glamour.  Fuck.  You.  Nobody puts baby in — oh, wait, nevermind, Johnny Castle has left the building.

As fate would have it, last week my students were working on their research papers about advertising and media.  One of my students, a café au lait complexioned beauty with a honeyed patois that conjures images of Coronas, beaches, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” was struggling with her paper about the negative impact fashion magazines have on the female psyche. I don’t play favorites, Innernetz.  I really don’t.  I just like some students more than others.  Caribbean Queen just happens to be one of those students who could write her research paper on the back of a matchbook and light it on fire as she is handing it to me, and she would still get an A.  So, when I saw her chewing the end of her pen, I made my way to her desk.

“Stuck?” I asked.

Caribbean Queen sighed deeply and pulled a copy of Vogue from her backpack.  She slapped it onto her desk in disgust.  “I’m not in there.  I’m never in there!” she said.  I looked at this smart, funny, beautiful girl and felt her dismay.  She could forget about ever finding her Rubenesque body-type modeling an off the shoulder, cinched-waist, bracelet-sleeved, metallic pleated skirt, rock, paper, scissors, mini-shift in the pages of any fashion magazine.  The Glamour debacle, fresh as a newly erupted cold sore, propelled me to action.  Oh hellz no!  It was not going to go down like this.  I was not going to allow her to even begin to disparage herself.  I was going to change her life.  Change. Her. Life! 

I grabbed the pen from her hand and began to write.  Sparks erupted and the smoke that rose from her wide-ruled college pages was heady incense.  I gave her the names of web sites like Shapely Prose, Big Fat Blog, and Fatshionista.  I told her she is beautiful just as she is blah, blah, blah, don’t try to conform to arbitrary standards of beauty, yadda, yadda, yadda, Madison Avenue’s boy-like model of feminine beauty is more a statement about pederasty than pretty, nod, wink, nod.

I set the pen down only when the plastic casing started to melt.  She looked at me with awe and adoration.  I was humbled, Innernetz.  Humbled.  She was silent for a moment. Suddenly, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks.  A simple “Thank you” would have sufficed. And some fresh brownies at Christmas.  And maybe a Moleskine notebook for Teacher Appreciation Day, engraved with “Best Teacher Ever!” But that’s it!  Anything more and I’d have to report it as income.

I looked into her watery eyes and mine grew watery, too.  My lips were pursed into a tight but quivering smile.  A hug was about to happen and my hands were already flapping a little.  She, meanwhile, was speechless. 

“Ms. Dingo, I didn’t . . . I mean . . .”

I managed to gasp, “Yes?”

“I want to see someone in the magazines who looks like me!”

“Exactly!” I said, and reached for that hug. 

“No!” she wailed.  “I didn’t mean fat!  I meant Black! Do you think I’m fat?”

“No! Nononononononononononono!” I spit out as fast as I could.  But it was too late.  The fat was out of the bag, spread all in her notebook.  Add some flour to her notebook, pop it in the oven, and you have a pie crust.  Add some baking soda and milk: biscuits.  Delicious biscuits.

By this time, the rest of the class had turned their attention to us, wondering why Caribbean Queen was crying and why I was backpedaling so fast I knocked yesterday onto its ass.  Fortunately, there was only fifteen minutes of class left and I decided to let them out early.  Trying to recover my composure, I walked to the front of the class and announced, “Remember, your papers are due on Friday.  And please, please, PLEASE!, remember to fat chick.  Fact check!  I meant fact check!”

Ah yes, Innernetz, life is all about Teachable Moments.  That day, however, I was the one who got schooled.

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Pound Of Flesh

Quick Update:  I did a movie review for The Greenists.  Please check it out!

Tap, tap, tap…testing 1, 2, 3…is anybody out there?

Well, that was an unexpected and unintended bloggy hiatus! 

The last two weeks of class were a flurry of papers, projects, exams, and grading.  You’d think that once grades were submitted I’d be able to kick back with a beer and revel in the five minutes I have to myself before I begin prepping for the fall.  Oh, Innernetz, how silly you are!  I had to use four of those minutes to catch up on the many things I had let slide during the summer session.  After grades are submitted, my personal life takes over. Among the many joyous tasks I had: calls to my slumlord about the dismal water pressure that had turned my shower into Chinese water torture, involuntary volunteer work, and inventing new miracle diets that magically and effortlessly pack on the pounds.  Yes, I did watch eighteen nonstop hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood, but that indulgence was earned since, even after grades were submitted, I spent a disproportionate amount of time performing cutting edge surgery on students whose heads were so far up their asses that their burps were indistinguishable from their farts

All of the students (and some of their parents) think that if they could just meet with me, they’d be able to convince me that getting that pedicure was much more important than attending the mid-term exam.  And every semester I get one or two students who tell me that they thought all of the assignments were optional.  I tell you what, if they were as creative and diligent in doing the assigned work as they were with coming up with excuses for not doing it, they’d all be A+ students.  But they’re not.  They’re just idiots.  Two seconds after grades were submitted I began receiving phone calls and emails asking, “What can I do about my grade?” My standard answer always starts with, “First, build a time machine....” They don’t think that’s as funny as I do. 

One student failed the course because she missed an entire week of class.  She flounced into my office peeling like a soft shell crab, her tan lines fish belly white against her crocodile jerky skin.  “I told you that I had a family vacation that was non-negotiable!” she shrieked, waving her arms with such fury and drama that she looked like a fight scene from the Matrix.  Layers of baked flesh drifted onto my desk as though I had landed in a dust-mite’s dream.  Flake threw herself into the chair next to my desk and crossed her arms like a petulant child.  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Flake demanded, her face shriveled like an Appalachian apple doll.  What else could I say?  I gently pushed a tube of Aveeno across the desk and held up the garden hose I keep in my desk.  “She rubs the lotion on her skin....”

The last time I saw skin like hers, I was Flake’s age and working at a video store.  (Just in case any of my students are reading: yes, they had televisions and even videos when I was your age.  Yes, the videos were made of wood.) My co-irker was a tall bottle-blonde who aspired to be a supermodel.  I didn’t see it ever happening only because she had a congenital defect that was impossible to overlook: she was butt ugly.  Willem Defoe/Janet Reno love-child ugly. If ugly were a sport, she would win the Tour de Ugly every year and, every single year, the French would accuse her of taking ugly-enhancing drugs.  My co-irker would lay out in the sun every chance she got, but her skin never changed from baboon-ass red to the deep copper tan she so desired.  I called her Chernobyl Barbie.

One day, after being on vacation for almost two weeks, Chernobyl Barbie walked into the video store looking as if she had vacationed on the sun.  Her skin was brown, blistered, and pork rind crispy.  In her red and white sundress, she resembled a KFC Chicken Strip.  Chernobyl Barbie slathered on cheap body lotion throughout the day to soothe her skin and prolong her third degree burn tan.  She scared more children than usual.

By closing time, her chest was an oozing mass of moist, peeling, bubbly flesh.  After returning some videos to the stacks, she came behind the counter where I was counting the day’s receipts, noting the surge in rentals of Nightmare on Elm Street. Chernobyl Barbie went to grab the next pile of unshelved movies from the floor and tripped.  I tried to catch her but my palm landed with a schwack! in the middle of her lubricated chest. It was like sinking my hand into Vaseline covered Tempur-Pedic foam, patented NASA research and all.  I yanked my hand away but, after her twelve hours of regular basting, my hand just slid across her Butterball chest, the skin curling like ribbon candy and encasing each digit like a Chinese finger trap. And the smell!  I gagged and tried to breathe through my nose as her skin gave off the swampy, wet smell of a dirty fish tank.  Where was her filter?  Must change her filter!

“Get it off!  Get it off!” I screamed, snapping my hands back and forth.  But the dead flesh clung on, not wanting to relinquish its hold on living cells.  Chernobyl Barbie was no help.  She was staring in disbelief at the raw white skin emblazoned on her chest in the distinct shape of my palm.  With a final violent shake, the skin came loose and dropped onto the glass counter with a sickening schlock! Imagine the sound you make when you suck Jello right out of the bowl: schlock!

I don’t remember much after that, and neither would you.  But I do remember that, for the rest of that summer, Chernobyl Barbie walked around with my handprint on her chest like a turkey drawing kids do at Thanksgiving, except that, against the crispy pork-rind skin next to it, it looked like a marshmallow turkey.  Still, somehow, she continued to scare more kids than usual.

I thought about Chernobyl Barbie as I watched Flake douse herself with my tube of lotion.  As she sputtered and spewed about her vacation and how I owed her a good grade, her dry skin crackled and threatened to split like a crusty baked potato.  Where was my sour cream?

With the apartment in such a state of disrepair that Dingo Girl and Not a Dingo are weighing the benefits of homelessness and the drama of summer semester just beginning to fade, students for next semester are already starting to contact me (“Do we have to read all the books on the syllabus?”).  I have been too tired and unmotivated to blog, preferring instead to escape my surroundings via the Fine Living channel. But that will change soon.  I’ve scheduled myself for a thirty minute nap on Thursday.  After that, I’ll be Dingolicious all over again.

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