A new Purpose...

Welcome to today. A day that will live for 24 hours then be forgotten faster than that that guy in that movie with um….crap…what’s his name?...damnit…anyway…Today is one of those ordinary days that make you go a little crazy because you wish something would happen. I can’t explain exactly what I mean but you get the gist I’m sure. You woke up, got in the shower, got in the car drove an hour to school and sat in class for an hour and 15 minutes after your “morning ritual” (for more information see earlier blog entitled “Holy Random Batman”). Now, here you are, waiting from 10:15 until 4:30 for your next class. How many times does this scenario happen to you?

It happens to me every Tuesday. There is nothing exciting about this day other than…BUSTER POINDEXTER! Oh damn that was killing me inside! His name is Buster Poindexter and he was in Mr. Nanny with Hulk Hogan…damn that was close…I was about 6 hours away from a massive aneurism…as I was saying…nothing exciting other than news from yesterday.

I will share since you asked. I was asked to tutor for a kid that got run over by a car and cannot get to school. THEN I was asked how much I would charge to be a private tutor, and THEN, when I got home, there was a message on the machine about participating in the John W. Rogers Middle School Student-Faculty basketball game. This is a game that I was not asked to participate in when I was a student, so clearly my game has improved.

I am not saying that I’m Lebron James, although I’m older and therefore could clearly kick his ass in a game of hoops. I am, however, saying that in order to bring this great gazelle of the hardwood to the ground these kids better bring some elephant rifles and tranquilizer darts. I’m going to rack up more points than the McClure clan racks up STD’s. I’m gonna put up points faster than Dick can turn his head to look inside a carriage. These kids will be begging for a substitution once I start raining down the long balls and stomping on faces as I charge to the hole. This game WILL be called…maybe due to slaughter rule, maybe because I’ve blocked too many shots down other players’ throats!...But it will be called. Every time a ball hits the ground from their dribble, I’m gonna get another steal and take in the length to embarrass them more than Mills after he saw his mother’s website. There will be no player safe from my fury. Kids will dive into the stands like lemmings when I bring the ball into their zone. There will be blood, screaming and plently of carnage…It will be a site.

I’m only sorry that these little midgets didn’t see it coming. Here I am a substitute getting the call to come and end there fantasies of squeaking out with a win. I don’t even care if I get the “take it easy on them” schpeal. I’m going to tear through this game like Vodka through an Irishman. There will be tears at the end of this game. Children mourning their loss of the game. Parents mourning their loss of their children. Teachers crying at the vision of the roundball spectacle that is Tim Fitzgibbon. It will be truly magnificent.

I have a new purpose...I shall write more on the debacle after it occurs...

Until the death-making has commenced….

Ah, the students of Rockland High

Students are funny things. I will elaborate…sometimes, you will be sitting in a classroom with some students and you will be entirely accepted into conversations. It is a strange experience, but they ask questions and you answer them, the next thing you know, they talk to you like a human, without saying, “um…Mr…Um…can I go to the bathroom?” Therefore, they start to consider you to be a real person and stop treating you like the guy who is out to bust them.

Other times, students think you are the antichrist and will go out of their way to make you feel like that guy. They’ll give you attitude, ignore you or throw the look of death your way. You know the look: the one says you must be the one that knocked up their mom or older sister, punched them in the gut and ran for your life to avoid child support. That too is a strange situation. You see, this happens when students feel that you are trying to bust them, OR they think you are going to write them up if they look at you funny or they are just plain antisocial.

Today was a strange day, in that the kids were not talking to me, which is normal, but it was on the same day that I was being a good guy. Let them do whatever they wanted, you know? I let them play cards and students avoided me like the plague. “Can I go to my locker (without a pass)?” SURE! This was how hard ass I was today. Still, I was the school day equivalent of Ebola.

However, I have had my glimmers of goodness known as PCC students. I love PCC kids at school. They may not be the only good kids, but I have yet to meet one that will drop f-bombs in the classroom, just walk out, shout across the room, or do something stupid to get in trouble. These kids always say hello and goodbye to me. It may not mean anything, in fact, they probably say it just to be nice, but that is something too. The PCC program may not make the kids good, but that at least gives me a reason to go back every summer; to know that there are kids like these…somewhere.

Project Contemporary Competitiveness is a summer program I work at. Kids know PCC as the “happiest place on Earth.” And it really is too. The kids are amazing. The proctors are always up and ready to give these kids the best summer or two of their lives. I have worked there for 4 years and will be returning for my fifth and probably final summer this upcoming June.

It is a sad thing for me to think about right now; not going back, that is. It has been a stable thought in my head since I was a student myself. I wait all school year, just to be able to go back in the summer and see the kids that return and see the proctors that I return and meet all the new people. Every year I get a little bit older and a little better at my job, and I get more responsibility and I grow as a person and as a teacher. I don’t teach there, but I deal with students, I work with behavioral problems, and I pass on what I know to them. Every year one or two students make the program for me. I miss them terribly when I go. Sometimes, after the program is over, some students find my screen name and write me updates to their lives. They remember me, and I appreciate the program all the more.

Every time I sub at Rockland, I see at least 5 or 6 students I had at PCC, some I was close to and others I just remember, and some I don’t remember but they remember me. They are all good kids and I love to see them in classes I sub. I know they will be respectful and help me out. And sometimes, I need that assurance to get me through classes. I don’t know how the kids were in school prior to this year or in the prior class. I do know that I can count on them every time.

PCC may not change these kids at all, and I may not change them at all. In fact, many of them are the way they are before I meet them, long after PCC is gone forever. Nevertheless, I truly believe that the program can make people better, and can make high school a little more bearable. If you know there are people like the ones you met at PCC out there, you take more risks, try more things and work on being a better person yourself. It worked for me.

I hope wherever I end up teaching, there is a program like PCC to work with. I can’t imagine going the rest of my life without knowing that there are still kids singing American Pie, dancing every Thursday night and begging their proctors for just one more minute with the lights on so they can play 4-Square in their rooms. Without this assurance, I am almost certain that I will not be a very effective teacher in classrooms of today.

I think the reason for my fear of being ineffective as a teacher stems from students I see daily who make me want to vomit every 5th minute of every period. There are many kinds of these vomit-inducing student at good old RHS and here are a few and a description of each.

Alternateens:
These are students who do not want to be involved in anything considered “mainstream.” In fact, they hate the normal folks so much that they all do the same thing to avoid being like them, ironically. They all sit there quietly in a corner of class with they’re hair all long and/ or dyed and swear to show they know big words. They wear black everything, mascara (guys too), chains, and trench coats made to be worn over business attire. Girls wear a lot of fishnet things and tend to dye their hair black. Guys tend to wear band t-shirts or ones that claim the wearer hears voices. They never look you in the eye unless you have told them they are in trouble. Then and only then are you entirely assured that they know how creepy they look, because they try to use it to sketch you out and into submission. However, knowing Alternateens, is the key to their downfall. Most of these students are big wussies and want nothing more than to be left alone. Any confrontation will dissolve their outer stoicism, and show you the kicked puppy that is their core.

Emokids:
These students are addicted to emo-music, short for emotional. These are typically skinny little boys and larger girls. Now I’m not saying all people who like emo are emokids, just that when kids who like emo let it go to their heads, they become these things. I hate emokids, and I hate them most in class. They are always complaining about one thing or another and I’ve never seen so much eye rolling from white boys. The guys (barely) will wear skin-tight jeans that can only be bought in states beginning with K and ending with tucky due to their sperm-reducing tendencies and Kentucky’s plan to drop pregnancies within families. The gals are a harder bread to spot, but they are normally accompanied by an emoboy (sorta). They tend to think everyone is out to get them and make them cut their hair and dump their boyfriend or girlfriend (yeah right). I’ve come to the conclusion that the emo-music is deteriorating their reality as it is always whining about lost loves, and bad days at school or work and how everyone is Capulet, they are Montagues with no one left on their side. I would just like for them to come to grips with reality and stop the whining. To deal with them…I let them leave when they ask; saves me from kicking them out because they are worthless lay-abouts.

Convicted Felons:
That’s right everyone. I have subbed for convicted felons. I didn’t know it at the time, but it sure does explain a lot. For instance, why the two of them did not care when I was telling them to calm down…after all, I didn’t have a GUN at the time. Or, maybe it could explain why the word “faggot” was thrown around so much. Perhaps too much time in a cell with Bubba? Who knows. What I know is, they better have been joking about that slashing my tires thing.

Aside from these folks, I get along fine with the rest. Students are students in any school I imagine and there is very little you can do to change them.


Until I think of more kids who I love or who piss me off…

A trip to NYC with Ames

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with my girlfriend Amy. The two of us are extremely busy, so it gets to be a lot of fun when we find the time to get together. Not that it is all that tough to find time, so much as for the two of us to decide what to do with it. The two of us are quite possibly the least decisive people on the planet, which makes finding things to do practically impossible. However, one day within the last couple weeks, Ames says to me, “would you want to go see the “Lion King?” I thought about it and said that I had wanted to go see it eventually. And she said that she had gotten us tickets to the show on Broadway. It was an interesting experience, knowing what we were going to do before we did it. So I couldn’t wait.

We decided that the best way to get there would be to drive, since it cost about a billion dollars to take the train and it wasn’t a guarantee that we would get the times we wanted. So we drove. Although the drive wasn’t nearly as uninteresting as all that made it sound. In fact, the drive there was half the fun. You see, neither Amy nor I had ever driven to or through New York City and it was strange to be driving as we got closer, but the adventure actually started before we left Rhode Island. The two of us, who have both driven through that little Ocean State many…many times could not navigate ourselves past Newport.

So the two of us travelers eventually left Rhode Island and made our way through Connecticut. All the while we were just talking and laughing and singing. It was a good day just in the car before we even got to where we were heading. And once we got there, and kept driving down the same road forever looking for parking. Eventually we found a place to park and eventually agreed that paying 40 bucks for parking was still better than 250 dollars to take the train or 100 to take a bus.

So then we went and got food at Applebee’s which was delicious, but the staff was, let us say…a little off. There was very little service speed and when they were around they were making fun of each other without any respect for the customers…It was pretty funny. Amy and I decided that even though it was before noon, it was ok to order a Long Island Iced Tea just because it was like trying the native customs. And I have to tell you, that even at noon, Applebee’s on 42^nd Street makes a frickin ridiculous Long Island. Saying that I couldn’t drink the whole thing would be an understatement. I barely finished one third. It tasted like vodka mixed with tequila and gasoline, and looked like a glass of water with a yellow tint. The entire thing was quite overwhelming.

After lunch we went to the show and entered the building. The play was in the New Amsterdam Theatre, which was so amazing. The artistry and carvings in the wood, the bronze and gold were so intricate. The entire auditorium was designed to look somewhat like a wooden theme and painted with likenesses of nymphs and gods. Downstairs, near the bathrooms there was a rotunda that was painted in various scenes of New York and American history. It was beautiful.

The show itself was absolutely stunning. There was so much to look at that it was hard to stay on top of what was going on. The costumes were amazing. It was like watching the movie of the Lion King without that pesky Jonathan Taylor Thomas. The entire play was adapted to be a more African experience and all the actors, except Scar, Zazu, Timon and Pumbaa were black. The changes were done so well. The animals were all part human and part the animal they were supposed to be. There were elephants in the aisles and some ram-type things in the balconies at the beginning and the animals were so close to me and Ames (who were sitting on an aisle) that they would brush my shoulder as they passed. We were re-freaking-diculously close, too. We were 6 rows back from the stage and on the aisle!? (did I mention we paid 25 bucks each for the tickets?!) I mean, it was just too cool to be true.

During the show I felt like I was one of the little kids that were pointing at every animal saying, “did you see that?” or “look at that elephant.” Ames and I were pointing things out like that all night. It was like being a little boy at the circus. The show was awesome and we had a lot of fun.

Afterwards, we went to take a walk…and walk we did. We must have walked over 20 blocks from the theater and into Times Square and around St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We walked everywhere and were going to try to find “Ground Zero” but a) we had no idea where it was, b) we had no idea where we were going, c) we were cold, and d) it was getting really dark. So we turned back and got the car out of the lot, but immediately fell back into our “bad at reading directions” phase and took a left out of the parking lot instead of the right we were supposed to take. And I know what you are thinking...“so you just turned around and headed back, right?” WRONG!

You see, New York City is arranged such that turning is Illegal. (Which is stupid as hell!!) But it turns out that this is how you think when you root for Knickerbockers and Metropolitans. After all the driving and eventually turning around and then getting through some New York traffic and even worse some Connecticut traffic. We finally returned to Rhode Island and Newport.

It was a great trip and a whole lot of fun. I guess my point is that any time spent with Amy is a lot more fun than time spent elsewhere. I was stuck in traffic, going the wrong way, paying 50 dollars for lunch and a drink I never finished, sitting through a long play (awesome but long), walking until my feet hurt, being told I can’t turn around because I’m not a bus….

And because I was with Amy Lee, it was ALL the best part of the trip.

So, until I feel another episode of sappiness come on….