25th time

Saturday I woke up and it was the day I was born, only twenty-five years later.  That's not what struck me first though.  What struck me first was the thud-thud-thud-and-so-on of construction.  Brittney ran into the room like a kid who's just slammed the door in the face of the weird neighbors' angry dog that go out and chased them down the block.

"Ohmygodthere's a guy with a badmintonracket."

So it wasn't construction, it was an angry person.

Brittney thought it was the man who was angry, hitting something with the badminton racket.  The sound was too deep though.  I didn't believe it.  We phoned Whitney, who lives in 306.

"It's some girl kicking the door," she said, and I could hear the screams now.  Maybe the man had gone to investigate with the racket for protection.  Probably though he is just a sportsm'n.

I am not about to waste an opportunity like this.  I am getting suitably dressed and investigating.  By the time I get up there she's gone.  There is a pillow on the stairs, pink, with two dirty shoe prints stamped in it.  The number pad, (we don't have keys), for the door in question is heavily askew.  I am heading back down the stairs and I pass a girl heading up.  I believed she was a curious neighbor like me, and so I give her the appropriate "search me what's going on" type of shrug.  She says something, I don't remember what but it gives her away clearly as the jackhammer.

"What's the problem?" I ask her.  She's past me at this point, walking up the stairs as I walk down.

"What is your fucking problem," she says through a sob and a thick accent.

There was a bit more pounding, but shortly there after she was admitted entry into the apartment.  Whitney said that she only ever saw an old woman go in there before that morning.  The woman's screaming carried out, but now out of the hallway she was muffled by all the walls between us.  I didn't pay too much attention though.  I was too busy thinking about how I'd woken up twenty-five.  I was so busy with this that I went back to bed.  It was only 8 am.  I would have a long good day.

K.I.S.S.E.S.

My cold feet tell me I should have turned on the heat

I'm finally the owner of a FULL DRIVER'S LICENCE.  It came in the mail all the way from Canada.  But why did customs feel the need to open it?  I mean, they only opened it a little.  You can not in any way see inside the envelope.  I guess they hold it upside down and see if a white power falls out?  Don't send your home made baking powder by mail.  At least my picture looks good.  I needed a hair cut and now my driver's licence will suggest to anyone who is required by law to ask me for it that I am the handsome bassist for an Oasis cover band.

The kids at school all have box cutters.  Have I mentioned this before?  I have been wondering a lot about what that means.  A lot of people would tell you that if you give over a thousand kids knives, pack them 35 a room and leave them unattended several times a day there would be at least one set of stiches in a year.  So far so good though.  Do we think too poorly of kids, treat them as though their heads are held on by string and teach them to act accordingly?  Or is this a master stroke, hiding what every boy in the seventh grade really wants right in front of his face so he doesn't even realize how much stupid fun he could be having with it?...

Today was the first day of my 'beginner' after school speaking class.  Things were going alright and I got a little ambitious near the end.  You can't explain to a kid who doesn't understand you at all that you've made a mistake and your time is nearly up so you'll be brainstorming and coming at this lesson from a different and more 'you-don't-speak-English' angle.  You can't explain this to 9 kids either.  And so you don't.  You just tell them, "O.K.  Go.  Leave." and you smile and you hope their parents' are ambivilent enough not to ask them, "what did you learn in your special after school class today?"

Flat wheel of time

On Monday I had a different schedule on my desk than I'd had on Friday, but it's not like I didn't know it was coming.  I just knew that I'd prepare for the week when I saw it.  I had a lesson ready for the first grade; I had a lesson ready for the third grade.  That I bother to tell you this should be all the hint you need as to my first class of the day, but I'll just come out and say it: second grade.

Scribbling my notes for my lesson down on the back of my old schedule, I nearly didn't make it outside for what was my favourite part of the day.  

The students stood in a bored phalanx on our dirty soccer field.  The teachers faced the flag at attention.  The national anthem began.  The stairs up from the field to the main entrance of  our school creates as good a podium   as any.  A girl, a student, took the stage, white gloves and thin baton in hand and began to conduct her peers.  In the twelve hundred heads I saw one mouth open in song.  The teachers did not sing, the students did not sing, and the poor girl waved her wand in time for four minutes.  And why do you need a conductor if there is choir already on the track to sing along with?

For the last five months of my contract last year I devised a system to keep my days in order.  I have never worked a nine to five, forty-hour-a-week job for such a span of my life before.  I can't believe that Thursday has come after Wednesday again.  (Doesn't anyone notice this pattern?  Why do we let this happen ?!  Surely we can think of something better to come after Wednesday than Thursday every time.)  I like to set my Wednesdays (any days) apart.  Last years system of links was a good one.  It gave me something concrete at the end of it, and the rings give me an amazing recall of the day they represent.  But the tape I used has torn pieces out of whatever papers my roof and gives me damage deposit worries.  Also I am not up for making nearly three hundred and sixty five of those rings.  And so for the first time I specifically turn to you, dear reader, dear sixty-three unique hits that google analytics told me I received last week.  How can I mark my days?