one small corner of the universe

• I forgot that tonight was “career night” in my library administration class. We were instructed via email to dress professionally, as if we were attending an interview. When I got to class I had a smiley face sticker on my right boob, snot on my left shoulder, and enough cat hair on my black polo shirt to make a kitten. Good thing I already have a job.
• I found out today, due to oblivion, the inability to read, or just plain denial, that the group assignment I’m working on for the aforementioned administration class is due one week earlier than I thought, and that there is ANOTHER assignment, one I didn’t even know about (see previous re: inability to read, etc.), due FOUR. DAYS. BEFORE. GRADUATION. I did not have this assignment on my little Checklist of Sanity, and so it simply did not exist–until a classmate physically showed it to me at the very, very bottom of the syllabus. Still, I kept pointing to my checklist, saying, “But it isn’t on HERE,” and she kept saying, “But it’s here, see,” and I was like, “But look HERE, it’s not HERE on my LIST,” and it went on like that until I crammed the syllabus up her left nostril and ran away.
• Lately I have spent quite a bit of time in the presence of groups of children whose teachers are trying BY GOD to educate them and learn them how to read stuff in those book things, but mostly it doesn’t go well. Today’s teenagers are accustomed to typing into Google the topic they have been assigned to “research”–for example,The pros and cons of moving large American companies to Latin America–and then writing down, NAY!, copying and pasting into Word, whole chunks of information they have not even read. Never mind that the article, according to its HUGE GIANT BOLD title, is actually about Pros in the American Baseball League who con large moving companies into taking Latin. Or, you know, something else totally unrelated to their topic. My point here is that these children do not know how to read, and until someone figures out a way to Google an actual book, Lord Jesus and Buddha help us all.  I actually witnessed this conversation today during a world history class during which the students were supposed to be researching topics related to terrorism:

Kid: I can’t find anything on my topic.

Teacher: What’s your topic?

Kid: Al Qaeda.

Teacher: I see. What are those things there in your hand?

Kid: I don’t know, books. There’s nothing in them, though. I already looked.

Teacher: What are those books about? See there, on the covers? The titles? What are those books called?

Kid: I’m not sure, Al Somebody. Is he a terrorist?

And recently, during a peer observation of a fairly bright, above average honors 9th grade English class–the kind of class that makes me miss the classroom just a tiny bit–a girl raised her hand after reading William Carlos Williams’s “Danse Russe” and asked, “What’s a kathleen? Is that, like, a name?” Like, I’m totally NOT making any of this up, yo.

• And finally, Feeny specifically requested that I discuss the topic of Mia and tampons, which is listed on my Virtual Sticky Notes. Sorry, E., it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. See, what happens is, when I go into the bathroom for any purpose, Mia follows me and requests “dese, dese, dese,” which is Baby for, “Hand me that object there, Woman, before I fall over and bang my head into the linoleum out of pure boredom!” Sometimes “dese” refers to a makeup brush designated for pretend makeup brushing, and sometimes “dese” refers to a few strands of Mardi Gras beads that live in the bathroom to occupy small bored people, but most of the time “dese” refers to a box of Kot.ex tampons. She likes to take them all out of the box. Then she likes to put them back in. Then she likes to take them all out. Then she likes to put them back in. Then she likes to line them all up on the floor. Then she likes to hand them all to me one at a time. And then she likes to put them all back in the box. And sometimes she likes to put them all in the trash. And that is why “dese” are out in the open all the time, and not just a few days during each month, because I will do whatever it takes to brush my teeth, wash my face, and pee in peace.

*I actually heard both of these phrases in casual, normal conversation today. Ah, the language of the South.