Slooooooow Talkers

This morning, I awoke to the sensation of my cat licking my underarm. Does that make me a salt lick? Last week, I was not sure that it could get any worse. Or that I should stick around to find out. But I did. And it did. Actually, only in terms of bizarrity, not with regard to my personal safety, as it was last week with the high school experience. Have been sleeping with the local NPR station playing softly in my bedroom, as it is easier to tolerate than the sounds of the neighborhood, which, at any given time, might include a distant gunshot or an extremely loud car stereo system. It makes for some interesting subliminal messages. And some questionable lines between dream and reality. This morning, I thought I was learning a Bob Fosse dance in my sleep when Liza Minnelli was singing “All That Jazz” to me, and I was unclear, upon waking, whether or not it was really happening or not. Then George W. Bush was speaking to the United Nations General Assembly. Broadway. Afghanistan. Broadway. Uzbekistan. Where am I? When I realized I was still just wearing my five times too large pajama pants and $1.99 GAP T-shirt, instead of fishnet stockings and a three sizes too small leotard, I saw the light. Marshall, Texas, exotic wonderland of lights. Where to begin. At the beginning of last week, I was posing as a fifth grade math teacher. And, lucky me, Mrs. P had arranged for me to have to EARN my $55.00/day. I was charged with the responsibility of introducing a new math concept : probability. What? In the fifth grade? Based on my limited experience in the past month, fifth graders can barely write their own name. And are still getting excited about the prospect of writing in ink, rather than with a #2 pencil. Okay. Let me study the teacher’s manual really quick. For I am quite sure that I understand the concept – I mean, I HAVE been to Vegas. But how to tell those less-than-fresh-faced beings about it all. I had some definitions. We’ll have them write those down. Then go through the practice exercises in the textbook. They’re using a bag of marbles as their example. And I’m reflecting on my 7th grade language arts teacher, Mr. Yow, who at least recognized how banal the book’s language could be. He theorized that if his example sentences (while learning to diagram sentences) had something interesting in them, we would be more likely to pay attention, remember and be changed by his teaching. So, instead of, perhaps, “Mrs. Jones attended Brown University and studied British Literature”, Mr. Yow might have asked us to diagram the following sentence: “Mr. Gonorrhea attended the KISS concert and ate big, green boogers during intermission”. Really. Back to fifth grade math. I was convinced, in my own sick mind, that instead of “You have a bag full of all red marbles. What is the probability of pulling out a blue marble?” it might have been more tangible, for instance, to say, “You have a room full of six ‘uncles’, what is the probability that one of them is your father?” I stuck with the textbook. And they were duly befuddled. There were a few hilarious, non-math-related incidents on Monday and Tuesday of last week, though. Like the one day that my cousin, M*** (one of the aforementioned 5th graders) came up to me in class, after a 35-minute recess/lunch period, and said, in a weak, sloooooooooow voice, “Miss Wright, my mom told me that if I got to feeling real bad, I should call her at work so that she could call the doctor and get me an appointment”. So I said, “Have you got to feeling real bad? Right here after lunch and recess?” And M*** said, “Yes, ma’am”. So I wrote him out a hall pass and sent him to the office, reminding him to make sure that an office worker signs the pass for him to come back to class. He goes. I assist some students in their practice, and he returns, as instructed, having secured Mrs. B’s signature on his hall pass. He returns to his desk. About fifteen minutes later, he approaches me again, saying, “Miss Wright, I really think I need to go call my mother”. What? I said, “M***, didn’t you just go call your mom?” Response: “No, ma’am, I didn’t get a chance to call her”. Well, what the hell did you do in the office? “You told me to get that hall pass signed and come right back.” Oh my God. Future of America. What I really wanted to say was, “If I gave you permission to go to the restroom, would you require permission also to unzip your pants, evacuate your system, wipe your butt and re-dress yourself before returning to class? Or would you simply stand there and return a few minutes later?” Next day, Antonio Roach, a sweet and needy little boy who commands adults’ attention by misbehaving in class, came in after recess/lunch claiming that he felt sick and needed to throw up. I just told him, in his perpetual hoax mode, that he should make sure to stick his head in the trash can if the impulse should become reality. He went back to his desk, the urgency dissipated. About ten minutes later, I was assisting a student at my desk, and he returned, with the same claim. I said, “Antonio, what did I tell you to do if you felt sick?” He said, vomiting undigested fresh grapefruit in the trash can right beside me, “To make sure I put my head in the trash can?” Yes, Antonio. Thank YOU for following instructions. Later that day, I had to go to Wal-Mart, diabolical institution that it is, for some cat food and litter. I picked up a few other things there as well, because they apparently have the right to sell one of everything. I stood in the shortest express line that I could find. Manned by Ski-Anne (two words, rhymes with city in Wyoming), who is checking out a fellow Wal-Mart employee who has blatantly disregarded the item limit in the express lane. And who has rocked Ski-Anne’s world by wanting to pay for her purchases with her Wal-Mart payroll check. This is a new one. And it locks up Ski-Anne’s computer. Due to inexperience, of course, not ineptitude. After four calls for a customer service representative to register three, someone finally arrives. Why did I stand around and wait? How could I not? The purchaser was going on about how her “auntie” (pronounced ‘ay-nee’) will straight up leave her if she’s not outside in two minutes. Ski-Anne was incredulous. “she’ll leave you?” --yeah, girl, she done it before. Then Ski-Anne was complaining about how hard her day had been, and I said, well, then it could only get better right? And she responded, “Well, I’ve only been here an hour, and knowing how stuff goes at Wal-Mart, it could get WAY worse!” I said, “Well, at least you’re not buried under rubble.” And she said, “Well, I don’t know, it gets pretty scary here, and I’m not sure that being buried under rubble wouldn’t be better.” Oh, Lord. So, now I’m definitely staying in this line. For then, completely unsolicited, Ski-Anne begins telling me about her fascination with the apocalypse and how she’s read the Book Of Revelation she doesn’t know how many times. And she assures me that this can’t be the end of time because in the Book Of Revelation, it states that there HAS to be a twenty-year period of barrenness in women (no pregnancies, no babies born) before the world can end. So, I say, “Well, sister, let me tell you, I’ve been teaching school for the past three weeks, and that is DEFINITELY not going on!” Enjoyed the CMA Awards this year. A far cry from the disaster they were last year. Lots of really great songs…no dancing…and a few surprises. Anyhoo, the back half of the week is a bit of a blur…….my mom’s out of town for the next three days, so who knows what might go on on this little street!

The Future Of America

I absolutely hate being rained on when I have someplace to go. Not that I’ve been rained on since I arrived back in my hometown, but I just wanted to vent that sentiment. I only accepted one teaching assignment last week, and when I accepted it, this is the confirmation that I heard on the ultra-sophisticated voice-activated, computer-generated ‘substitute management system’ : “MHS, Mrs. H, Advanced Math, Wednesday October 31st from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm”. Sounded innocent enough to me. I was very excited about being with ‘the big kids’. Had not really walked the halls of that school since my own graduation from there in May 1986. Oh how things have changed. There is an entirely new wing that was originally built to house the freshmen when they finally integrated them into the high school. When I was in ninth grade, we were on our own campus, Pemberton High School, which was the non-white high school before integration. And that is where ninth graders should be – alone, together, to forge some sort of pre-adult, communal identity, before being cast to the lions with the senior high students. I visited a few former teachers, heard a few crazy stories[1] and made my way to a teacher’s lounge, as Mrs. Holloway had conference period for the first class block. Much to my dismay, I learned that the high school has adopted block scheduling, which means that those heathens are in your charge for 1.5 hours at a time. No end in sight. The bell rang, and I made my way to room 905, which may as well have been room 666 as far as I am concerned. Halloween. Full Moon. Overcrowded classes. Recipe : Disaster. The class began filling the room, and I prepared to call the attendance roll. They were not nearly as impressed with my Spanish skills as the children at the middle school. I’m not sure what, if anything, would have impressed them. The first class was behaving alright at first, generally pretty disrespectful and mildly rowdy, but I was able to get them to at least sit down and accept the classwork that the teacher had left for them. There were several who never even attempted to take out a pen or pencil and pretend to make an effort. Those few I loaned my personal pens (which I value greatly and thankfully they volunteered to return to me) and the rest I just tried to watch over and make sure they were working. Well, as we are all familiar with attention spans of teenagers, that semblance of peace lasted only about 20 minutes. Seventy more to go. So then, they decided they wanted to pick on each other or just sit and visit. They were completely uninhibited about their conversations and other conduct. One kid looked at me and said, “Miss ******, you ever smoke weed?” Huh? What in the hell am I supposed to say to that? Correct his grammar? There was no answer that was going to be anything but sudden death for me. Then there was the ever-delightful Tony G, who began telling me about how he started smoking dope the summer before his ninth grade year, and you know, every now and then, he might get drunk on a special occasion, but usually he’ll just stick with the weed and the odd 40 oz. I looked Tony straight in the eye and said, “You know, it’s probably better if you don’t tell me all this.” “Why?” he wondered. I said, “Do you know Coach Harper?” Nods. “He is my uncle, and you know what else?” Appropriate look of interest/disinterest. “I spent six years working in the District Attorney’s office here in town, and they’re all still really good friends.” Deer In Headlights. No more from Tony G the remainder of class. And sweet little Jaumar M. He was wearing a Yankee’s jersey, so I asked him if he knew who won the game last night. Response: “I don’t watch no damn baseball.” Okay. He was one who had to borrow a pen from me. He was not doing his work, so I went over to stand beside him, put my hand on his back and talked to him for a while. I stood there for probably for or five minutes, and then Jaumar had had enough. Without even looking at me or stopping what he was doing, he just said, “Why is your hand on my back? I don’t like teachers or anybody else to touch me.” I didn’t move it. When we were standing in line to leave class, Barry G -- who at various impromptu times in the middle of class, would jump up on top of his desk and shout, “Do you know who I am? I’m Barry G!” Great. Sit down. – asked me, “Miss Wright, how many you been through?”[2]All I could think to say was, “Not nearly so many as you’ll ‘go through’ when you’re somebody’s bitch in The Big House’! Put that in your crack pipe and smoke it.” But I didn’t. And that was just the beginning of the day. But the rest isn’t any more interesting than that, so I shall spare you. I left the high school campus that day, swearing never to darken their door again. I suppose I was beside myself, because I started driving aimlessly around town and ended up at my Dad’s office, where I proceeded to cry off and on for the next hour. It was just so depressing and disheartening to me. And that was advanced math? Later that night, I ran into one of the high school counselors at a Halloween carnival. She’s also a family friend, and she asked me how my first day at the high school had been. I assured her that she was mistaken. It was my LAST day at the high school. I told her how horrible it had been, and she asked me whose class I was covering. I told her, and she said, “Oh, yes, she took Mrs. W’s place.” I talked about some of the kids in the class, and she looked at me, puzzled. “Barry G is NOT in advanced math!” I assured her that that was what Mrs. H had stated on the message. Lisa said, “You were teaching Math Modeling!” Huh? She told me that it was as far from advanced math that you could get. They require three years of math at the high school – Algebra and Geometry are required, and Math Modeling is where all the students who don’t want or aren’t skilled enough to take Pre-Calculus or Trigonometry or whatever are enrolled. Well, that explained something, at least. The disparity between my expectations and that stark reality. It’s difficult to remember what else happened last week. I spent one day with my cousin Eva, who was our next door neighbor when I was growing up in the country. She is seventy-four years old and is active, as always, maintaining a home and a small farm/large garden. When we didn’t have a washing machine, we would go next door to Eva’s house and use her three-legged old-fashioned one.[3] The kind that you had to hook up to the water hose and which had an external wringer that you had to feed each item of clothing through individually before hanging it on the clothes line. She taught me how to make homemade Popsicles when I was little, and there was always some fun chore you could help her do – feeding chickens, digging potatotes, working the flower garden. We had a nice time visiting. Was driving home from the movie on Friday night (Monsters, Inc. – great!) with my sister, and her three daughters, and we passed a business whose sign said the following “Simpson Pest Control : In God We Trust”. That was part of their logo! I just found it a funny series of words to strong all together. I have a picture to include, and hopefully, I will find someone with a scanner so that I can send it. It pretty much sums the whole thing up. [1] While chatting briefly with my ex-yearbook sponsor, Isabel L, who was trying fervently to talk me out of substitute teaching, even as a recreation, and she introduced me to another English teacher, Mrs. Ivy. She asked Mrs. Ivy to relay to me the story of Katoya, one of her senior students, and a recent outburst that Katoya had in class. Apparently, David was bothering her, and she exclaimed to the class, “David Smith’s mother sucks his dick!” Delightful. [2] Referring to men. [3] The kind I showed my nieces at an antique mall last week, and Mayzie asked, “What is that? Some sort of oven or something?”

Substitute Teaching, Fall Fest Injustice, Lying in Church

So you thought that the second week couldn’t possibly be any more bizarre than the first. Alas! Wrong again. Last week was only a bit odd – on Sunday, I had to drive my sister back to Dallas Love Field so that she could fly back to Nashville from her 10 year high school reunion, and my brother’s kids had been here for a short weekend visit, so I returned them to Mesquite, Texas. My sister-in-law Karen and I rented Bridget Jones’ Diary so that she could see it for the first time and so that I could see it for the fourth. And for me to at least catch a glimpse of what a single thirty-something gal’s life is supposed to be like! Karen, Chelsey, Brady and I went to Posado’s for lunch, and we determined that if you buy your chicken at Sam’s Wholesale Warehouse Club and put it in your restaurant’s alleged Tex Mex food with all the spices in the world, it STILL tastes like cardboard box. Ugh. I went to Half Price Books Records & Tapes as well as to Starbuck’s before leaving the metroplex. And the hot guy behind the counter said, “You have very nice eyes, too.” And I responded, “Is there a run on nice eyes tonight?” He laughed. Come to think of it, maybe I should have invited HIM to go to Starbuck’s with me. I didn’t have to be at work the next day. Oh but the day after that, I did. Posing as a sixth grade social studies teacher at Sam Houston elementary school. Let’s just say that Sam Houston himself must roll over in his grave knowing that his name is on such an institution. I’m here as an eyewitness to tell you that the public school systems are in grave danger. As is the future of America. (soap box alert) Mainstreaming, first of all, is of the devil. If you don’t know what this term means, apparently, it means that there is no regard for what kind of disparity there may exist in a classroom between the extremes of aptitude. When I was in school, we were grouped by levels. The teacher taught all of us the same way, gave us all the same tests and had the same expectations for each of us. But that was because testing had helped to determine that we were pretty much all in the same ‘range’ of ability. Not anymore. I was dumbfounded to learn that teachers have to teach to such a vast array of students on so many different levels that there is no way that students at either extreme are being served. And in the gross vacuum that exists between the top tier and the lowest tier is a fertile breeding ground for behavior problems. Trust me. OH, and the teachers also are not allowed to give all the students the same test. They have to ‘modify’ their tests, which means that their work is essentially doubled (again). Ludicrous. Research this practice, and take a stand. No one can learn in that environment. And from what I’ve witnessed, the teachers (God bless them all) who have excellent students just create more work for those students to keep them busy – not enrichment work – book reports, or papers or something else purely academic. Thereby teaching them that they’ll be punished for being bright. Hello, did ANYONE take Educational Psychology but me? Tonight, we drove down the road to visit my mom’s sister Tommie and her husband Sid. Tommie is a Language Arts teacher at the school where I was a substitute teacher last week. We talked a lot about some of the kids about whom I had questions. Elester was one of the little boys that I taught – he was really sweet, pretty bright, but a little difficult to corral in class. She told me that there had been an incident last week on school picture day where some little girl’s picture money (cash: a 20 dollar bill and four one dollar bills) had been stolen from my aunt’s desk while the students were at lunch. My aunt is a rather relentless warrior for justice (as she should be – the only example of such some of those children will ever have), so she went to the auditorium where all her students were lined up to take school pictures. She went through all the kids, asking them who was buying pictures and how they were paying. She had them all empty their pockets, and the money was not there. She went to the office and reported the money stolen. Then she went back to her class room to look one more time. Kristin’s order envelope had been torn open and was dropped into the wastebasket by my aunt’s desk. She knew that it had been thrown in there quite recently (as in during lunch time) since she knew that she had thrown away an empty box of Kleenex, and the envelope was in the wastebasket ON TOP of the empty box (reading Nancy Drew pays off, I’m telling you!). So she took the ripped, empty envelope back down to the auditorium and began asking anyone in there if they knew anything about the missing money. As she was leaving, one little boy said that Elester had asked him to hold onto some money for him during recess. Then he said that my aunt could confirm that story with Dedrick, another 6th grader. So she pulled Dedrick, the first little boy and Elester aside and took them to the office. She made the boys sit down, and she relayed the story to the assistant principal Mrs. Price. One by one, she brought the ‘witnesses’ into Mrs. Price’s office for questioning. The story was confirmed separately by both boys. Then they brought Elester in. They asked him if he had taken the money. He denied it several times, saying that the money was his and that his auntie had given it to him ‘last night’. (He lives with his auntie and his grandmother). Mrs. Price asked him for his auntie’s phone number, and he gave it to her. She then said, “You know, I’m going to call you auntie, Elester, and I’m going to ask her if she gave you that money last night.” They asked him over and over, and he finally admitted that he had taken the money simply because he had wanted to have his picture made and wanted to buy them. But his grandmother and auntie had refused to give him any money for pictures. My aunt asked Mrs. Price to step outside the office and begged her not to call Elester’s auntie, relaying a story about a colleague who had called the woman the last time Elester was acting up in class. He came to school the next day with his eye blood red and almost swollen shut. The teacher took Elester aside and asked what had happened, and he said that his auntie had hit him and tried to scratch his eye out. My aunt was crying and convinced Mrs. Price not to call Elester’s auntie but to try one more time to have him confess. He produced $21.00 from his pocket, and they asked him for the other $3.00. They asked him if he had spent it on lunch, and he said, ‘no’. My aunt went back to her class room and let Mrs. Price finish handling the situation. Mrs. Price reported to my aunt later that she had retrieved the final $3.00 from Elester but that it was a little smelly. He had stuffed it into his shoe. So sad. And it’s far more the rule than the exception. If you have the opportunity ever to tutor children or be a mentor of any value, please do so – I suppose it really does ‘take a village’. I accompanied my sister and her girls (the 3-M’s) to my sister’s school’s Fall Festival on Saturday. They each had twenty little tickets to play games (cakewalk, dart throw, ring toss, etc.) and proceeded, among them, to win three gold fish (much to their mother’s delight…eeek!), a boat load of candy, some toys and all sorts of other useless stuff. There was a bingo room, and we played a few rounds of Bingo together. There were two craggy old ladies in there, who had endless amounts of tickets and who were playing five cards apiece each round. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘all those prizes are just crap from the Dollar General Store that they could have bought ten times over for what they spent on those tickets!’ Whatever. Needless to say, of course, they kept winning, and those sweet little kids didn’t have a chance. At the end of the evening, the remaining prize items in the Bingo room were ‘auctioned off’, and Mayzie happened to be in there for that event. A few minutes later, she came out of the room, crying as if her best friend had just died right there in front of her. I asked her what was the matter, looking for open wounds or blood, and she managed to wheeze out amongst sobs, ‘there was this girl in there named Shelby who had tons of tickets, and she just kept winning everything in the auction because she had more than anybody else. It’s not fair. They should have let more people have a chance at getting those things.’ Now, here you must know that Mayzie did not have any tickets, and there was nothing on the prize table that she even wanted. She was upset over the principle of the matter. Her mom was elsewhere helping to clean up after the fair, so it fell upon me to try and explain the concept of fairness and of how some people just don’t grasp it, and how she should not get so upset over something she can do absolutely nothing about right now. So she calmed down, and I continued in the clean up effort. As I was walking away, she got all upset again, and blurted out, “the last line of the pledge says, ‘and liberty and justice for all’ – where is the justice in that?” She’s eight years old. This afternoon, I went to the county courthouse where my mother works (and where I used to work in the District Attorney’s office) to put together some packages to take to the post office. My mom sent me out to her car to retrieve some papers and money that she needed to order my Aunt Verne’s medicine. I was sitting in the driver’s side of the car, one leg out the door, and this man appeared from out of nowhere, and leaned down and stuck his head in the car. He mumbled something even I couldn’t understand, and I said, ‘What?” Then he said it again, unintelligible. Then I understood that he was asking me if I could do him a ‘small favor’. Mind racing. I said ‘No, sir, I am on a quick errand, then I have to return to work in THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE. That appeared to have thwarted him. At least momentarily. So I decided that I didn’t want to sit out there long enough to sort through all the papers in my mom’s visor (aka her personal filing cabinet), so I grabbed everything, including the bank envelope with the money in it, which I had shoved under my leg when the scary man appeared. And he was in the car again! Asking me for two dollars for some gasoline. I just looked him in the eyes (which were less than six inches from mine) and said, “NO!” He went away, thank goodness. Rattled me, though. He had been watching me, I guess. Lovely. So I pack up my mail and head to the post office. I had several letters to mail, and I put those in the ‘stamped mail’ slot, then went into the counter area to fill out a customs form. Then, going through my remaining envelopes – ones that I needed to add extra postage to – I realized that I had dropped an un-addressed, un-stamped envelope into the bin. Great. Anthrax alert. So I told the USPS fellow behind the counter, and he looks at me and says, “I’m going to have to call a supervisor.” Great. Aiming to leave the country and I get myself on the FBI Most Wanted List. So he calls for a supervisor. I’m on a cell phone call trying to hear a juicy story from a friend back in Nashville. And the supervisor comes out. Meanwhile, I’m watching the rest of the patrons, hoping they don’t go Flight 93 on my ass. I show the supervisor an identical envelope (my favorite kind – the plain brown wrapper kind) so he’ll know what to look for, and he goes back behind the curtain. Then he shouts to me from the other room and asks me to come to the special counter with him. Sweating. Lugging two packages and some other loose mail. Dropping customs form. Trying not to draw any more attention to already conspicuous self. He tells me he can’t find any brown envelopes in the bin. So I determine that perhaps I mistakenly left it at home. Then he notices my little brown box that I am shipping to London, UK (oh, like that’s not suspicious in Marshall, Texas), and he asks if he can photocopy the other little brown envelope that I have, ‘just in case the lost one turns up, he’ll know who to send it to’. Well, now they have a handwriting sample, fingerprints AND my home address. Only me. I got home and found the ‘missing’ letter in my book bag. I had not taken it to the post office at all, as I was not sure that I had my organizer in the car with the correct address. Ugh. Just came back from visiting my great aunt Verne (short for LaVerne) – my mom does her grocery shopping for her and picks up her prescriptions for her as well. We cooked meat loaf, turnip greens and yellow squash tonight so we we took her over a warm plate of dinner as well. She greeted us at the door, saying, “Well, I’d done give up on y’all comin’ over, so I’m cooking myself some chili in the kitchen.” Then she decided that she would have the chili for breakfast and eat our dinner tonight. By the way, it was only 6:30pm when she had given up on us. As we walked from the kitchen back into the living room, she said to me, “Girl, you have sure gained a lot of weight; I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so heavy.” Delightful. Then she said, “How do you do it? No matter how hard I try, I cannot gain any weight.” So, to her it was a compliment? And she envies my girth? I’ll tell myself that. Then we sat down to visit, and she asked me if I wanted to see pictures of her daughter-in-law. I said, “Sure.” So she went into her bedroom and gathered some snapshots of her new daughter-in-law. I looked at them and asked her name. She said, “Cindy.” Then she proceeds to tell how Cindy has told her that she has to have dialysis and chemotherapy. Then my Aunt Verne asks my mom, “Do you have to take chemo when all you have is sugar diabetes?” My mom doesn’t think so. Then Aunt Verne talks a little about how she thinks that Cindy is mad with her because she hasn’t heard from her or her son Ron since last Friday. I asked her why she thought they might be mad at them. She said, “Because they asked me if I wanted to go to church with them on Sunday, and I responded, ‘Now, Cindy, do you think if I wanted to go to church, you would have to ask me?’” But she said what she really wanted to say was, “If I go to church, does that mean I have permission to lie all the time like you do?” Go Aunt Verne! Other adventures this week: went to Nacogdoches last weekend to see Gary Allan, Sara Evans and Kenny Chesney. Had fun – Gary only played 30 minutes, so we all pretty much just hung around backstage at the coliseum and on the bus, dodging scary ‘fans’ until the entire show was over. Then to the Whataburger. Of course – what else would you do after a late night music event in Texas? Also signed up for local internet service last week and was able to cajole the fellow, Ben, to sign me up with no contract, so I can bail as soon as I know I’m leaving the country. I was quizzing him (as he seemed the type who would know and tell the truth) about building one’s own web page, which is something that I hope to do while I’m overseas to help keep in touch with everyone. So I asked him how difficult it was to learn HTML and were there any easy programs to learn to do so? He rattled off a few but ensured me that there were a couple that were really great – Adobe Photo Shop and DreamWeaver. So he told me a little bit about those, and he said, of course, that the downfall was that they were pretty expensive ($250 or more). Then he gave me a wink wink nudge nudge and told me that he’d share his with me if we could just keep it between the two of us. Well, maybe, Ben, but that is ALL that there will be between the ‘two of us’. Lord E. Mama.

The Tangled Web

So I have just completed week one of being back in my hometown of Marshall, Texas. I will begin by saying that it is quite a phenomenon to be approached by people who have known you since you were in diapers and to have them talk to you as if you have kept in touch for all these years. Quite a phenomenon. The first day that I passed through, on my way with my friend Rita, to Central Texas for some visiting with friends, family and some fun music stuff, I had to go by the service station to get an inspection sticker on my car. This fellow stopped in, and I thought I recognized him, so I asked his name. He said, "Chris", and I introduced myself -- we went to high school together. Then he just looked at us and said, "Y'all broke down?" It was so funny. As if he presumed the only reason I could possibly be in Marshall, Texas, was if my vehicle had betrayed me and rendered itself useless. We set out for Waco, Texas later that day, and at one fuel stop, we engaged in conversation with a man with multiple scars on his bald head in the convenience store. He was telling a story about one of his wives that he had been with near Nashville, Tennessee. But he had left her. Because "she needed to be left". Okay. Then, in Athens, Texas, we saw a fun little shop on the side of the road called "Still Life Taxidermy". That one made the trip notes page.The first few days that I was here, I just worked on unpacking boxes and trying to settle myself into the room that my mother has set aside for me. Learning to be comfortable on a twin sized day bed after having slept for five years on a queen size bed (generally alone) is quite an adjustment. But not the biggest one. Last Tuesday, I attended the Marshall Independent School District's Substitute Teacher Orientation Meeting. Let's just leave it at the fact that I was far more disoriented when I walked out of that room than before I arrived. When the woman conducting the seminar actually said regarding paycheck accuracy, "if you find that the information you have on your days of employ does not 'jive', as it were, with the information that the school district has, please call", i nearly died. She actually instructed a room full of adults on several occasions to underline a certain word in a sentence (e.g. "commitment" or "responsibility"). Then she imparted the knowledge that page two would follow page one in the handbook. (Yep.) I left that meeting and immersed myself immediately in my "moving to Spain" research project. What did the rest of the week hold for me? More unpacking, some visiting with family. My sister was coming home on Thursday evening for her 10 year high school reunion, and my niece and nephew were also coming in on the weekend for a few days. Saturday, I attended my nephew’s two-year-old birthday party at the McDonald's in Henderson, Texas. There were quite a few people there, adults and children, and as usual, in those situations, I hung very near my immediate family. I am not that close with my step-brother's wife, so I did not know many of her friends who were there, with their children. My sister did, however, overhear one of the parents, a pregnant mother of one, say, "Football means nothing to me. NASCAR is our lives." (Yep.) Later, at the end of the party, that woman's child, Cassie, 3 years old, wanted to take some of the helium balloons home with her. So her mom told her she could have one, and Cassie wanted them all. They compromised, and Cassie was allowed to choose one of each color. So she told her mother that she wanted a Bobby and a Tony. (Huh?) Karyn and I immediately began to pay closer attention. A Bobby and a Tony? The mother proudly informed us that that meant green and yellow. Why? Because NASCAR driver Bobby Labonte drives a green car, and NASCAR driver Tony Stewart drives a yellow car. My father and I got up and walked outside for air. Can you believe that? Isn't Cassie's kindergarten teacher going to have fun fighting with her over the seemingly incorrect 24 box of Crayons?Later that evening, I attended a birthday party for my step-brother, given for him by his girlfriend. She was throwing the party for him, her father and another family friend. A surprise at the local Italian restaurant, Gucci's. She is pregnant with my step-brother’s baby (or so she says), but she is married to Gucci's nephew, who lives in Houston (so he could obtain U.S. citizenship). Now, you have to understand that the girlfriend has had some drinking and drug problems in her time, and they appear not to have subsided, even with her second pregnancy. She was so loaded that she could barely keep her eyelids open during the fiesta. Then this older fellow comes and sits down by me and my step-sister (a high school Spanish teacher). And he starts blatantly flirting and hitting on us. He is so drunk that he can barely speak properly. He introduces himself to us as "Rick" and is asking us our names and how old we are. I ask him what his relation is to the party guests, and he says, "I'm Methodist". I said, "relation, not religion". Then he begins to tell us the following joke, "You know what the difference between Methodists and Baptists is?" No. "Methodist ministers will speak to members of their congregation in the liquor store, and Baptists ministers won't". Delightful. At which point my father thought it would be funny to introduce my brother-in-law, "Rick, I'd like to introduce you to my son-in-law, he is the pastor over at M******* Baptist Church here in town". It was hilarious. Rick goes away briefly, and my sister and I take the opportunity to discuss all the bizarre people at the party, but in Spanish, so no one else could understand us. Never have I been so thankful for a gift in all my life as at that moment. By the way, Rick is my brother’s girlfriend’s dad, who is currently married to her mother. He came back for more, and thanks be to God that our pizza arrived for take out at a very crucial moment. Back at the house, I was having arts and crafts fun with the kids, and I decided to see if I could remember how to make paper dolls. So I began my trial and error process, and the first set I created had four legs. My sister picked up one of them and handed it to her mom, introducing it as her next grandchild (due to the scary drugs the step-brother's girlfriend was doing while with child). Sick, yes, but I choked back a laugh. Today, the big adventure was going to the Social Security Administration Office to get a new Social Security card. Mine was in the batch of things stolen in Barcelona earlier this year, I think, for I cannot find it anywhere. There was this fellow in there going on and on about how he really needed to get this business taken care of because the cafeteria at the Marshall Memorial Hospital (it hasn't been called that in at least ten years) was opening at 11:30 am, and he really needed to be there. If he said it once, he said it a hundred times. And he kept making sure that everyone in the room had taken a number. And that they were in order. And what should he do with the ones that earlier patrons had let fall on the floor? Yikes. Tomorrow (Tues. 23 October), I have my first substitute teaching assignment. Fourth through sixth grade social studies. Eeeeeeeek. Everyone knows what a delight I think children under the age of sixteen are, right? Include me in your nightly prayers, please. Make that hourly. I'm sitting in a terribly uncomfortable chair, so I will go now. Please keep in touch. And if you have any questions about any of the aforementioned information, please do not hesitate to write.