Outside Over There

i heart rwrii

Joie (pronounced Joey) is a student here at the school where I work. When I started the job, she was a freshman with dyed-purple hair. I'm sure most of us have had funny-colored hair at least once over the years, so it doesn't sound like a big deal, but in this (conservative, wealthy, mostly-Asian) community, kids don't dye their hair. I think she was the only student in a school of over 2000 with "unnatural" hair. Pretty ballsy for a freshman. She was always hanging around the career center. "Miss Avis, I wanna tell you my DRAMA." Cute guy in the math class, nasty email from a girlfriend, her favorite N'Sync band member. She'd come back three times in the same day and tell me the same dumb stories...basically, she was driving me crazy. I started being more short with her, to discourage her from telling me about her personal life (and asking about mine), and sometimes I'd ignore her if she was being particularly irritating. I dreaded seeing her in the mornings.

Then, one day when I was in the main office, I heard a (loud, angry) dad yelling at his student. "YOU SO STUPID WHY YOU NEVER GO TO CLASS? YOU A DISAPPOINTMENT! I TELL YOU EVERY DAY GO TO CLASS, WHY YOU NEVER GO?" It was pretty obvious that he was yelling for the benefit of everyone in the office, so that they would know that it wasn't his fault. He was a "good father." I peeked around the corner to see what was going on, and there was Joie, huddled on a chair and crying, while her dad layed into her. I understood then that she had a lot of other things going on in her life that made her need to spend so much time talking to me about boys and boy bands.

Fortuitously, in a staff meeting that day we discussed the concept of mentorship. We were given data from a study showing that most successful high school students have a mentor. That is, an adult who encourages them, listens to them, provides a role model, gives information, etc.

Joie, I realized, had chosen me to be her mentor. I started gritting my teeth and listening to her, giving her feedback on her interests and choices. I learned how hard it is to be a chubby Asian girl in a high school full of size 0 midget Asian girls. I learned what it feels like to be rejected every time you ask someone to a formal dance. I learned what it feels like to be condemned to special ed after failing English classes repeatedly. I learned why she took modelling classes even though her chances of modelling are less than zero. Since I've started listening to her, she's become much less annoying. She's a Junior now, and she still comes to see me every day.

However, she worries me.

For one, she dates much older guys, guys in their twenties. This wouldn't concern me overly, but she is not particularly emotionally mature, and the guys she dates are even less so. In fact, they tend to be chronically undereducated, unemployed, and living with their parents. A very high percentage of teenage girls who get pregnant have older partners. Some of her partners have already fathered children, even! I'm a little worried that she's going to get knocked up. We have a lot of safe-sex talks. Right now her period is 6 days late, but she says she's been "clean" the last month, so hopefully it's nothing serious.

Two, these guys she dates are often verbally abusive. They borrow money from her (money she earns by working at Build-A-Bear; she is not overprivileged by any means) and don't pay her back. They control who she spends time with and who she calls on her cell phone. Recently one of them grabbed her and scared her so much that she locked herself in a bedroom and called the cops. It turned out that he had several warrants out for his arrest (drug related), and the cops took him in. She got a temporary (10-day) restraining order against him. I was so proud of her for doing that! The day he got out of jail was the day it expired, and her parents refused to take her to the court house. They told her that it would probably make him angrier, and that she shouldn't renew it because he would come after her. RAAAAR. I hate her parents. They have so little concern for her well-being. They let her 25-year-old black boyfriend stay the night in her bed, but won't drive her to get a restraining order against him when he abuses her? RAAAAAAR. I encouraged her to renew it anyway, and she got in touch with the female police officer who helped her file the original papers. So yay, the crazy boyfriend is out of the picture.

Okay, and three. The last thing that concerns me. I think she is too attached to me, especially lately. I mentioned that she comes in every day, but she comes in every day multiple times. She skips class to come see me (I've started refusing to talk to her if she's supposed to be in class). She writes me email and talks to me on instant messenger. She has been drawing pictures of me, me with my cats, in a convertible, with my boyfriend, in a house, etc. Yesterday she came in and decorated my computer with Hersey kisses. She offers to go get me food and sodas at lunchtime. Today she brought me hot chocolate before school. She just came in between classes to say, "Have a great second period, Ms. Avis." She asks me daily if I am going to be here next year. I feel like she has a crush on me. I don't know what to do about this.

The good thing that has come about is that she has gotten much more interested in going to college. I showed her how to look up the required courses for transfer at the local community college, and she got very excited. She wants to be a lawyer. I'm glad she's dreaming big.

She still annoys me, but I also care for her a great deal. I don't know how to encourage her not to give me so much attention without hurting her feelings.

AUTOPASTICHE
(Sounds German and Interesting, doesn't it?)

I realized this weekend that my car is older than 95% of the students that I work with. Depressing. 1985 doesn't seem that long ago. Of course, I was in second grade in 1985, so maybe it was that long ago.

My car some kind of problem every three months. This month it was the tires. In August, the fuel pump relay wasn't grounded properly. In May, both fuel pumps were replaced. Before that, the alternator. Before that, the power steering belt. Before that, the timing belt. And so on. In January I am thinking maybe the transmission. Or the exhaust. Which reminds me, she is making some kind of squealy noise that sounds like a belt problem, so I may not have to wait until January to find out. I resent her as much as I love her as much as I fear her. I named her Alicia, and I was going to get one of those oh-so-trendy name necklaces with curly gold script to hang on the rear-view mirror, but I'm poor, too poor for jewelry that I can't wear myself. Anyway, I don't even wash her, I just wait for it to rain, and a gold necklace seems extravagant for a dirty old behemoth of a station wagon that literally has pieces falling off of it.

Last week, after I'd had the new tires put on, I was driving to work and heard a CLANG on the pavement. I knew it was my hubcap. I even knew which wheel it came from: the one that had the flat tire. I imagined my little hubcap rolling and rolling, glinting in the sunshine, off to its own little hubcap adventures. I didn't have time to stop and find it, especially when the traffic was that heavy. I figured a crappy car with only three hubcaps is still a crappy car. Small loss.

On the way home that night, after 9, the street was quiet and dark. I drove extra-slowly past where my hubcap had escaped, hoping to catch a glimpse of metal, but the gutters were stuffed with leaves, and no little hubcap went winky-winky at me in the dark. It was probably too much to expect it to be there after 10 hours, anyway. People pick up hubcaps. I think. Actually, I don't really know and I'm making that up, but for some reason I think there's some black market hubcap dealing. My little hubcap probably got mixed up in the underworld of the hubcap trade. Yeah. Okay, moving on. For some reason I made a U-turn and went back to look around for it. And why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I pulled Alicia up in front of a nice tract home and left her engine running, and jogged to the corner to see if perhaps the hubcap had rolled farther than my imagination. No, no, it was gone, definitely gone. Who would want a stinking 1985 Volvo hubcap, anyway? Stupid. Then I kicked some leaves around in the gutter, and lo and behold, there she was! My own dear little hubcap! "I'm so glad you found me!" she squealed, and lifted her arms to be picked up. I took her back to the car and now she is riding on the front seat with me until I take the time to hammer her back on with the butt-end of a screwdriver. The end.

email rant du jour

I am irritated by the passive, mealy-mouthed Democrats around here. It's strange how Republicans often define the tone of any particular
debate/campaign/whatever. Like they define the terms: "Pro-Life?" Since when is that a technical term? Why are Democrats using it? When did the Republicans get the moral high ground? Why are Democrats pandering to them and their "war" on terrorism that includes war on anyone who doesn't completely acquiesce to their agenda? And how did "liberal" become a bad word? It's so frustrating, and even more frustrating is that it drives caring, thinking Democrats away from the party. The prolifery and (limited) success of third parties is a great sign for a sea-change in politics, but as Democrats are scattered among them, it leaves the largest voting bloc in the hands of the conservatives. How frightening is it that GWB may win a second term because of Democratic disaffection?! I sincerely hope that the DNP gives us a candidate to rally behind in 2004. Gore might be able to do it if he keeps speaking his mind and runs an issue-focused (and non-pandering) campaign, but I'm not sure he's what we need, what with his practically-Republican wife, apologetic tendencies, and propensity for endorsing wars. Sigh. I might have to vote for my dad.

I'm a bandit!

Kind of. A lazy yuppie bandit.

On Sunday, while my car was in the shop getting its new shoes (ahem, tires) put on (which were, incidentally, ridiculously cheap, apparently a side effect of having an "older" car), Royce and I made a little clandestine trip back to the stack of free books in the library. There were just so many good ones I'd left on the shelf, and Royce wanted a shot at them, too. We had to sneak in, because the alarm was armed (it was Sunday, after all) and my security code doesn't work on the library even though I have a key. However, since the school has a sound-activated alarm system, I knew that if we were absolutely silent, the alarm wouldn't go off. We were almost silent. Mostly almost silent. Anyway, we didn't get caught, and we made out like bandits even if we weren't actual bandits. In retrospect, we should have worn masks and black spandex or something, just for effect, instead of wandering in with huge cups of chai (labelled ROYCE by the friendly Starbucks guy***...the ultimate clue, really, that we very nearly left behind when we staggered out with our piles of books) and jangly keys and clumsy shoes. It was not a very well-planned infiltration, but it was fun nonetheless. And we got to drink aforementioned huge cups of chai while we infiltrated. It was a leisurely kind of cat-burglary.

[*** The person in front of us in line at Starbucks (cup labelled JASON) ordered a grande decaf skim caramel macchiato. I was duly embarrassed on his uber-yuppie behalf. Do you like how I stole this little footnote-but-not-at-the-foot idea from Mimi Smartypants? That's because I love her. I love her because she is brilliant. You should visit her site even though I would rather you didn't so that I can keep her all to myself.]

So what about the loot? A bunch of history reference books, including an entire set of The Cambridge Ancient History, all gazillion volumes (12?), a history of Russia, and another of China. I dug up a handful of hardback classics, including Gulliver's Travels, some Mark Twain, and a Stegner novel. Any book that looked remotely like something I'd like to own. Anything that I'd like my future kids to pull off the bookshelf and read. Anything that would make me wince if I saw it stranded in a trash can or gutter. Royce went for his usual Ludlum paperback fiction. Michener, too. And more, I'm certain. Honestly, I haven't even gotten around to sorting them all out and taking off their icky library slipcovers. It's like Christmas, but better, because when did you ever get fifty books for Christmas?

To continue with the book-related theme, I also went to Border's this weekend. We sat around in the coffee shop for a bit and then I had a crazed bargain-shelf experience that involved buying anything that looked remotely interesting. I got a couple of cookbooks out of the deal which, once I get my act together, will factor significantly into my New-and-Improved Life Plan. The NILP, for those who aren't familiar, is the plan where I do lots of laundry and never procrastinate and cook delicious healthful dinners every night. The plan is new and improved, and the life is new and improved, too!

Oh God, but I did not adhere to the NILP on Sunday and Monday, as Royce and I went and got some new evil computer games. Sims Unleashed (mediocre) and Tropico (evil and addictive game in which you're the dictator of a tropical island), which we played Sunday evening and pretty much all of Monday. I stayed up until 5 a.m. playing Tropico on Sunday, which meant I slept in until 1, which meant that I couldn't go to sleep last night until 2, which resulted in an extremely cranky and headachey wakeup at 5:30. For a couple of hours I was reading a biography about Henry VIII, so my dreams were a weird conflation of dictatorships. I dreamed that my little cat was "the Rightful Queen of Capitalists" but had not yet come of age, so I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that she was a good capitalist and was learning how to be Queen and would be ready to rule very shortly. Then when my alarm went off I kept telling myself that I didn't have to get up until the Queen said it was the right time.

Urgh, tonight I have an evening program, so it's going to be another 14 hour day, and two colleges came this morning during my lunchtime, so I haven't eaten either. I'm cranky and impatient, although at least the sleep-deprivation headache and nausea have faded into a kind of comfortable drowsiness.

This is list of the books I got from the library. There are about ten thousand more that I'd love to rescue but I don't know if I have space on my bookshelves. You'll note that I went for the classics. Some I've read but don't own (Bell Jar and Brave New World, etc.), others I've never read and would like to (War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, for starters). I also rescued some of my favorite childhood books, and more non-fiction that looks like it might be useful and/or entertaining.

Fiction (in no particular order):

The Member of the Wedding, McCullers
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone
The Age of Reason, Sartre
Tess of the D'Ubervilles, Hardy
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Brave New World, Huxley
To Have and Have Not, Hemingway
The Bell Jar, Plath
Madame Bovary, Flaubert
Silas Marner, Eliot
The Trial, Kafka
The Wings of the Dove, James
Turn of the Screw, James
The Ambassadors, James
Cannery Row, Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck
Franny and Zooey, Salinger
Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare
Four Plays, Shaw
Night Flight, de Saint-Exupery
War and Peace, Tolstoy

Non-Fiction:

A Short History of Russia
New Dictionary of American Family Names
Webster's Dictionary of Proper Names

Childhood Favorites:

Wind in the Willows, Grahame
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konigsburg
Dune Messiah, Herbert
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, Lofting
Doctor Dolittle's Post office, Lofting

There are more free discard books in the library. Hardback fiction, oh god! I'm not going to be able to carry them all to my car. There's a group of students taking the high school exit exam in there now, so I can't go dig around, but after lunch I'm going to revel in bookishness and probably fill my apartment to the brim with dusty-smelling tomes that haven't been checked out in the last 15 years (that's apparently the criteria for discard--I noticed that they're tossing a bunch of Steinbeck novels just because people aren't reading them! It's blasphemy! Not that I am a huge Steinbeck reader, but I'm going to rescue as many as I can).