I Feel Like I Should Write Something

Though maybe I shouldn’t, since I don’t have much to add. Nothing in my life seems to have changed much since I moved here almost two years ago, especially once the dust had settled.

But having nothing original to say never stopped me before!

• Cminor7 will come up for his second consecutive weekend tomorrow, mostly for help with school. Finals Week is coming. I have to confess that when he asked, at the train station waiting for his train, whether he could come back tomorrow, I was kind of hesitant. I haven’t had a free weekend in a while, and his visits sometimes cost me money I don’t have, and like a schmuck, that’s all I could think about. Until he was on the train, rolling toward home, and it sank in that my son needed my help, and might not be asking for it all the time in the next few years. So I called him when he was on the train and told him to plan for coming up again. He said okay.

Being a schmuck and a dad at the same time is bad.

• I am thoroughly sick of Pub Quizzing. Barry and my quest to play every night that it was played this week netted a profit (after beer) of $30 or so, and three outright wins, one top five finish to compete for cash, and a tie vs. each other on separate teams last night. It was fun hanging out with my friends and destroying many, many lesser nerds. But, yeah, if I see another Bingo Trivia form I’m going to throw up.

• Finally found this song, a fragment of which I’d had in the back of my head since 1997. I had a few notes, a girl’s voice, a snippet of lyric. Every few months or so, I’d do a random Internet search, trying to find it based on the only lyrics I knew (something like “take me down”). Until one of the Tuesday quizzes, when the quizmaster was playing it over her laptop during an interlude. Turns out the song is called “6 Underground” by a group called the Sneaker Pimps. Huh.

I generally don’t go for dissonance in music, but I like this.

One of life’s little mysteries, solved.

• The music test I’m writing for the test prep company in Texas is only half done, and has to be finished by Sunday. I have to get 50 more questions written by then, and properly formatted, all of this while hosting Cminor7. I’ll find a way, though. I always do.

Well, almost always.

Bizarro World

This may be hard for you to believe, but I have, at best, a passing familiarity with comic books. Mostly because I think they’re stupid. Don’t try to argue that they’re really “graphic novels,” or that they’re causing us to redefine the word literature, or that Watchmen was daring and revolutionary. All three statements are weak and stupid, and I don’t have time to rebut them.

Still, I am aware of the fact that, to comic books and the geeks who read them, there is something called “Bizarro World” in the Superman … universe, or whatever. In Bizarro World, everything is the opposite of what it is in this reality—Superman is evil, up is down, Michael Jordan hit his last shot against the Utah Jazz in 1998 and called it good instead of coming back with the Washington Wizards and embarrassing himself, etc. But if there is such a thing as Bizarro World, I’m living in it as we speak.

Witness:

• I am a member of exactly no online dating services.

• I have $500 in the bank (thanks to some tutoring revenue… and a lack of dating services and the women who come along with them), so I can pay a couple of bills, plan something fun to do with Cminor7 tomorrow, and buy things with my debit card without holding my breath.

• (On this point, I must say that I’ve had my debit card declined exactly once in the past four years, so my anxiety whenever I use it is pure paranoia. But really: Is there a sweeter word in the English language than “Approved”?)

• Where was I? Oh yeah: I am caught up at work with my Portland Public School requirements, or close enough to caught up that I’m not worried about it right now.

• Oh, and this is epic: At work, Teacher B finally put on some boxing gloves and pretended to spar with Scottie, one of our coworkers who’s constantly Teacher B’s verbal punching bag. Well, Scottie’s an actual amateur boxer, and when Teacher B was weaving around him in the rec room, Scottie ducked one of his phantom punches and just dotted him in the nose. Pow! Just a tap, but it was in front of all the girl students, and I’m sure Teacher B wasn’t expecting it. It had to hurt. Teacher B immediately stripped off the gloves and more or less ran from the room. The tormentor became the tormented! Bizarro!

Anyway, maybe the world isn’t all that flipped-around, but the day has had an otherworldly quality to it. I don’t know what to make of it.

Here’s what isn’t bizarrro: I miss women. It’s driving me a little crazy. Four months ago, was I really nude hottubbing at a party with The Equestrian, watching her make out with another woman? Maybe I imagined the whole thing. I don’t know. I got a text from The Australian tonight when I was tutoring a kid in writing, basically begging me to come down to Eugene because she doesn’t have her daughter. It was tempting, because the male reptilian part of my brain imagined that I could drive down, get drinks with her by 10 p.m. (even Eugene doesn’t close that early) and, gee, who knows? But I do know that she’s dating some professor, and that if I were asked to sleep over at all, it’d be on the couch. So fuck that.

Besides, I’ve got to get back to work. I have 75 music theory questions to write still. This test is tougher to write than I ever expected. I can write a good music theory question, but holy shit, is it hard to craft a good one that won’t expose me for the total fraud that I think I am.

Now that’s something that’s not bizarro.

Okay, Enough of That

Surprise, surprise—the book’s not done, though it is in much better shape than it was the last time I wrote (a month ago? two?). I have noticed that killing the blog didn’t do much to free up my writing time. All it did do was clamp down a pretty good outlet for daily typing. Kept my fingers strong, if nothing else.

…

…

…

(Shut up.)

Anyway, it was nice to hear from so many of you. I’ve Facebook-friended a couple of you, which is great, because I’d always been curious about who my regular vistors were. Turns out you’re all as cool away from my comments sections as you are on it. (And if any of you would like to Facebook with me, let me know. If you’re into that sort of thing. And, you know, if any of you ever visit here again, which I doubt.)

So, since I was away…

• I dated someone I really liked. And by “dated” I mean we went out four times, and really hit it off, before she claimed to want some time to think things over. Which meant as she waved at me from her apartment door, I knew I wouldn’t see her again, or hear from her, and I haven’t. That was one month ago.

• Work is work. Lots of stories there, but few of them worth boring you with. I am secure in employment for now. I am teaching astronomy as an extra class. Which I really enjoy, especially because the students who signed on to take the class (all pretty hard-core boys in an already hard-core school) are really into the topic and ask great questions.

• Cminor7 is great. Thanks for asking. Last night, we friended each other on Facebook temporarily, only so I could help him with his algebra homework. I knew we’d be de-friending each other again afterward (per our treaty) but while he was typing his questions to me via chat, I had to, as a dad, snoop on his page a little. I am delighted to report that he is, by all appearances, a great young man with lots of friends. My favorite part was where one of his friends posted an admittedly funny response by invoking a masturbation joke. Cminor7 responded by saying “lol… keep it PG-13, please.” I don’t know why he did that, whether The Ex has access to his page, or what. But I like that he’s trying to keep some semblance of decency in an very indecent teenage environment. I also notice that he’s listed “Interested in: Women” on his profile, but he tends to be very shy about answering comments from girls that he’s friended. A chip off the old block. Anyway, yeah, it was snooping on my part. But I can’t be in his life on a regular basis, and as a parent, I couldn’t not look, and you would have done the same thing, and you know it.

• This is the fifth anniversary of leaving The Ex, that overcast Saturday in May 2004 when I rented the apartment on Broadway and sent this weird, strange, sometimes wonderful adventure a-spinning. The phrase “Five Years” seems to invite lots of introspection and analysis. Which I don’t feel like doing. I’m single now. Most of my time I spend by myself, and if you ever make the decision to leave a relationship, you need to be comfortable with the idea of doing just that. I am, more and more.

• Have spent time with J, the exact nature of which shall be between us. Not much to write about. She’s moving to Columbia in July or August to teach there for a year. To think that a little more than a year ago we talked openly of how we might someday get married, have children, all that. In fact, there was a brief period when it was an absolute. Such a thing would happen. Now, because I knew better, and so did she, it won’t. For the best. Though sad, a little.

When I left The Ex, I assumed—no, knew that I would be married again, probably within a year or two. But now, that doesn’t look certain at all. In fact, it looks unlikely. I guess it was a silly thing to assume for nerdy, broke guy who was hitting the downhill side of his 30’s, had no hair, and doesn’t like going to the gym. I am strangely accepting of this.

• Pub Quiz adventures roll along. We play once, sometimes twice a week. Since starting a little less than a year ago, I have won first place 15 times. Seconds and thirds, which also award me a little bit of money, are so numerous that I don’t bother to count them. Last night, a woman on one of the other teams, YMBP, told me that its members have yearly Festivus parties, inspired by the old Seinfeld show. One of the Festivus events is the Airing of Grievances. The team’s grievance at last year’s party was the appearance and sudden dominance by my team, because before we showed up at the Belmont Inn on Thursdays, YMBP used to win all the time, and now they don’t. The woman who told me this tried to be funny about this, but it’s clear she was actually holding in a little bit of bitterness about it. The nice guy part of my personality feels bad for YMBP, because it’s clear this was something they really enjoyed. But my ego is certainly delighted to learn that we have inspired something so wonderful as a Festivus grievance.

• Okay, maybe I can keep this going now.

• P.S. In case you’re wondering whether the time off made me any more healthy or self-aware (in a good way), the answer is no. I’m exactly the same guy that I was a year ago, even. Pray for me because of this, as I will pray for you.

Yeah, This Time I Mean It

Okay, bloggy buds. Editor B just returned the book. Draft No. 5, and I guarantee you there will have to be a Draft No. 6. And 7. Possibly 8. Please God, not 9. That will kill me.

It’s 550 pages long, filled with detailed, wise, wonderful notes (thanks, Editor B!!!), fragmented, butterfly-clipped to itself in two places, and, thanks to me, a complete mess. Oh, and I don’t have an ending that works, the middle part sucks, and I’m still not sure about the first six chapters (regardless of Editor B’s kind words).

Still, I really want this book to work out. Even if it doesn’t sell, I want to do what any writer wants to do: make something beautiful. Can this book ever be beautiful? I don’t know. In places, it already is. Overall, it’s like a gawky adolescent: clumsy, uneven in personality, and covered with acne.

It’s going to require my undivided attention. So if you’re one of my regular readers, the blog is definitely going on hiatus, possibly for good. In fact, I haven’t done anything with it in a week, which was kind of a bad sign.

Those of you who still drop in regularly, please keep in touch! I’ve probably posted on your site, so you have my email address buried in the notices. Getting an email from any of you would be really great, especially since I’m not going to have as much time as I’d like to check in with you. And yeah, I’m on Facebook now, so trust me: I’d gladly add any of you.

(Lady K, SF, Mrs. A, Kimmi B, Cat, RubyMom, Willow, Editor B, and don’t forget the divine Miss M, Cmajor7, you idiot… You’re the perfect examples of why I love women. You all give me hope that everything’s going to work out, for everyone.)

As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that my life is virtually identical to what it was when I started posting almost a year ago: I’m still single and befuddled by women (and by myself whenever I’m around them), still frustrated and angered by my ex, still stressed about money. Let’s hope some of that changes soon. Especially the money part—and I think we all can raise our chipped glasses of cheap wine to that!

Here’s hoping:

• Cminor7 will get that first elusive hit.

• My trip to the Bay area on April 23rd (thanks for the tickets, Chief!) will give me a much needed break.

• That I won’t get laid off.

• That everything will work out.

Okay. Thanks for putting up with me.

Blessings,

—Cmajor7

I Like to Draw

Drawing doesn’t always like me, but sometimes we strike an uneasy truce.

I wasn’t considered the artistic one in the family. My brother tended to soak up the attention in that department, which, believe me, was deserved. I once found him in his room, laying on his stomach on the floor next to a Spiderman comic book. Spread out in front of him was a huge piece of butcher paper, on which he was reproducing the cover book, only four times bigger. Spidey was swinging in from the left on his Tarzan rope of web, kidney-kicking some dude into a brick wall.

The reproduction was perfect.

Jon got that gift from our mom, who was a pretty fair artist herself. Like them, I wanted to draw stuff as a kid, always felt compelled to do so, but couldn’t seem to do anything worth a damn. My airplanes looked like sausages with jagged legs. My cars flopped along on wheels that either were too big or too small, and always more egg-shaped than round.

It wasn’t until I started to draw cartoons in high school that things started to open up a bit. Taking a lot of mechanical drawing classes and having a high school job as a draftsman in a lumber mill helped, too, with stuff like neatness, line, and perspective. After I started putting that stuff together, some of the ability I got from my mom started to come into focus, though always in something of a primitive manner. But I kind of like the primitive. Remember the cute little cartoons on the Rolling Stone reader mail page? I used to like those a lot.

It’s been a while since I had the occasion to draw anything. Not having any kind of special “drawing purpose,” I still wanted to sketch around yesterday. Sort of as a little test for myself, I wondered if there were random word generators online. Sure enough, there are.

So, I hit the random button ten times, and resolved that I would draw a picture for the first ten words that came up.

Here’s what the machine said:

1. slide
2. trunk
3. don
4. game
5. teapot
6. pipeline
7. boat
8. bar
9. wish
10. observation

A couple of them I found annoying, right off the bat. How do I draw a word like “observation”? Or, “don”? Then I remembered that vague=opportunity; this axiom should apply to random doodling as well.

I got to work. Most of these are from memory, except where noted:

I don’t like the slide drawing much. I clearly needed to incline the ladder a bit more. Toddlers tend to shy away from vertical climbs. Also, my slide needs the little legs at the front. What was I thinking?

Anyway:

Eh… I don’t like that one. Next:

Yeah, on this one, I was like, “don… don…what the hell.” I couldn’t think of anything. I can’t draw people very well unless I’m really, really focused, and not even then. So I couldn’t draw, say, “Don Knotts.”

Then, I remembered Godfather II.

Get it? “Don”?

Anyway, here’s the next one:

Yeah, I don’t like that one either. That’s where my pen ran out of ink, and I had to switch to something that wasn’t as ultra-fine. Crap.

Keep trying, C:

I like my teapot.

What’s that blob off to the right of the teapot, you ask? Why, I drew all of ten little drawings on two sheets of watercolor paper. The blob is the adjacent drawing, which involves Alaska, of course:

The corresponding blob to the left is, of course, the teapot. Or, perhaps it’s the impending boot heel of Russian oppression. I understand there’s a growing secessionist movement in Alaska, of people who would like to break away from the United States and have their own country. Yeah, enjoy dealing with Russia, guys. They’ve always been super neighbors. Just ask Lithuania.

Next up:

I think I did the best job of all of them on the boat, mostly because I didn’t try to draw it from memory. (Thanks, Google Images.)

Next:

I know, obviously I can go a lot of different ways with “bar.” I was thinking about lead pipes, or stuff like drunk dudes and fistfights, but then the Hershey’s idea came out of nowhere. Probably because I often like the path of least resistance (except when it comes to women) and it’s kind of hard to screw up a rectangle. Though now I think of it, a row of little bottles of booze would have been fun to draw. Maybe next time.

Almost done:

I would have drawn a genie’s lamp, but I already kind of went there with the teapot.

And finally, I kind of like how I resolved this one.

Ghosts of 2006

Via Facebook:

Dani has a boyfriend. Finally. She’s beautiful but was always too irresponsible and crazy for me.

Erika is getting married this summer. Sent me a nice note. I haven’t written much about her, but she was G without the chaos and the rest of it. I really liked her and I wish things had gone differently—the end of the relationship with her finally convinced me that I needed a little bit of help. It’s cool, though: Enough time has passed that I am happy she’s getting married.

And on the same day I heard from Erika, I had dinner with Elizabeth. It was nice to reconnect with her again. We’ll hang out more. Would say more about this, but I won’t.

• I have hurt my neck and can’t turn it very far to the left. Happened last night as I was undertaking the very risky behavior of lying on the couch. Didn’t sleep at all and had to cancel tutoring with the Immigrant Twins, because driving out to The ’Burbs was going to be problematic. Plus, I didn’t have anything prepared for them, since I’d half expected the parents to end the arrangement. But they didn’t, and they do want to see me next weekend. It’s fine. I have ideas now for what to do.

• Tutored last night with The Doctor II’s son. I feel like I’m kind of making things up as I go with him, but he did do some good writing work last night. It kind of seemed to come out of nowhere. So I pounced on it. Got myself two more sessions for next week.

• Work is becoming something of a nightmare, or at least an unsettling dream. Our state registration report is due on March 31 (Tuesday), and part of that is having all teachers fingerprinted with the state. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until it was too late that one of my teachers isn’t fingerprinted. So, hopefully they’ll be nice about it while the prints are processed. Aside from that, I’m three days behind on my reports and am just barely caught up on grading. And then there’s the school improvement plan we’re putting together, and all of the new curricula, and the syllabi I have to rewrite for every class.

Somehow I will find time to teach math.

• Cminor7 can’t come up for the game. He’s got practice, and besides, his mom ditched him to go to the coast (urge to buy voodoo doll rising… rising… falling … RISING…), leaving him to get to practice on his own. We’d hashed around skipping practice, and me going down to get him. But there’s no way I can drive two hours down and two hours back with my neck like this. And besides… practice is practice. This isn’t Little League anymore, and he knows it.

I admire him for sticking with baseball. He is one of only a few freshmen on a team with mostly sophomores and juniors. He’s got a long-term view on the whole deal.

Honestly I don’t know what I’m going to do with the tickets. I could go, and take Teacher B or someone else, but sitting on bleachers in the rain with my back and neck like this doesn’t sound like a good time. Still, if Oregon lays down a whoopin’ on OSU, I want to say I was there to watch it happen. Plus, I paid $37 for these things.

• I’m hungry.

Friday, March 27, 2009

More for me than for you:

• Cminor7 continues to be a freshman on a JV baseball team, which is to say he’s not playing as much as he likes, and so far has no hits. But he has had two diving catches. I have not yet seen one of his games, due to distance, but he has three coming up in April that I will be attending. We also have Civil War baseball tickets at PGE park tomorrow. If his practice is early enough, he can go. That is, if his mom will literally meet me halfway in Salem so we can make the game.

Odds of that happening…?

• Tutoring tonight, tutoring tomorrow (the immigrant twins). Thought the latter would cancel on me by now. Apparently, I misread ’em. Maybe.

• Pub Quiz last night: kind of a slog. The new quizmaster is kind of struggling to find his footing, dealing with a bar full of drunk assholes—that’s the true hazard for any quizmaster, it seems, the combination of alcohol and people who are in the house expressly because they think they’re so smart. Anyway, he’s getting worked the way I used to when I was a substitute teacher. Mass chaos at the end of the night. They asked a question I knew, actually had it written down, when the first place team completely lost its shit. Turned out they hadn’t heard what the choices were (the first place team gets to pick the category) then freaked out when they heard the question because they didn’t know it. So they asked again. I got it right again, but then again, a lot of teams did. When the dust had settled, we bet one point less than we should have to finish in the money. (Thanks, Teacher B!) Anyway, it was a tough quiz and we were fortunate to be in the money at all.

Oh, and Beige Food? Yeah, whenever we finish below the 50th percentile (which doesn’t happen to us often), our team never gets up and just bails 30 minutes before the quiz is over. You guys apparently did. We didn’t even notice you leaving.

You taught me something tonight, Beige Food. I took two years of college French, but wasn’t aware that “beige” is French for “pussies.”

• Have reconnected, via Facebook, with a woman I dated, briefly, three years ago. She’s young (30) but I remember liking her a lot. Very sweet, very smart. I let the situation unravel; part of it was the fact that I was still in Eugene. Anyway, seeing her tonight.

Chapter 93

I grew weary of my situation, as pointless as the weather. But life would not leave me. The rest of this story is nothing but grief, ache and endurance.

High calls low and low calls high. I tell you, if you were in such dire straits as I was, you too would elevate your thoughts. The lower you are, the higher your mind will want to soar. It was natural that, bereft and desperate as I was, in the throes of unremitting suffering, I should turn to God.

—Jann Martel, Life of Pi

I Glimpsed the Finish Line

Last night, a disturbing dream:

I was old. Not suddenly old, just old. In the dream, I was carrying around several more decades. I was 85 or so, and puttering around a darkened bedroom, much like one I have now. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. My face was sunken and sad, but this didn’t shock me in the dream. It’s funny how dreams often work: We have instant knowledge, and all the backstory we need to propel our story forward. I held in my head countless unpondered memories between now and when I’d be 85.

The saddest thing is, in that haze of sudden knowledge, nothing stood out.

I was simply old. Much of the rest of my life from this moment (pushing 40) forward to that one (pushing 90) had apparently played out with little excitement or importance. I don’t even remember, in the dream, thinking about Cminor7, or where he might be.

I don’t remember being afraid of death in the dream, because who gives a shit? I was mostly just sad that the end, wherever it was, had drawn near, and I was almost done. There would be no more adventures as I know and hope for now, no more women, no more schemes. It was done.

This dream bothered me all day.

• • • 

I don’t know what came first, the old man dream or the dream about the baby polar bear. Because last night, I also dreamed I had a baby polar bear.

I don’t have any pets, and don’t plan on having any. For one thing, my parents raised dogs, and there were always ten or eleven around at any time. My dog curiosity about dogs was satisfied early. And cats, though they might bring a mellow kind of company to the world, essentially don’t know you exist, except at mealtime. Dogs are in it for the food and shelter, and I think we all know this, but at least dogs pretend to give a crap.

They also need more time and attention than I can give right now. They also poop on things. So, I’m not terribly interested in having pets. Plus, I like being able to go anywhere I want, whenever I want, and not have to worry about what I’m going to step in when I get home.

But I’d give up all my freedom for a baby polar bear. Especially if the baby polar bear grew up and agreed not to eat me—but would eat or at least give pause to anyone I didn’t like. That would make about the best pet you could have.

Plus, you could recline against it on the floor like a giant, breathing, protective couch, and watch TV.

So, yeah, last night, in addition to dreaming I was an old man, I dreamed I had a baby polar bear. The polar bear was my friend. It was pretty cool.

Win-Win… Win… Win-Win-Win… Win…

After work, I raced out to The ’Burbs to tutor one of my regular clients. She’s a cynical, sarcastic eighth grade girl who has become somewhat less cynical and sarcastic as she’s gotten better with her math. Funny how that works. When I was done helping her, I raced back to my own hood to meet with a new client, a freshman boy who thought he was hopelessly behind in algebra.

He is no longer hopelessly behind in algebra.

Which isn’t to say that he’s out of the woods yet. Tonight, in one hour at Opposable Thumb, we had to cover factoring, FOIL-ing, and zero-product equations—little of which he understood going in. That’s a lot to quickly teach a kid who failed his first semester of algebra, and is retaking the first semester while trying to keep up in the second.

(This two-semesters-at-once idea must have seemed like a good plan to someone at his school. “Hmm… here’s a kid who didn’t take pre-algebra… but we forced him to take algebra in September anyway. Then, we failed to keep him going in the first semester, and as he failed, we didn’t get him any help—I know! Let’s have him take both semesters at once! Brilliant!” But I digress.)

(No, wait: I can hear teachers complaining: “I have too many students!” This is true. But part of the reason your classes are too big, Public School Teacher, is that you make too much money. Well, I should say that you make too much money to turn out failing students… while at the same time bitching about class sizes. See, I don’t have a problem with you making $50,000 to $60,000 a year, I guess. I’d like to make that kind of money again, too. For nine months’ of work.)

(Whoops, that was mean. It’s actually nine and a half months. … No, wait. Christmas and Spring Break. It is nine months.)

(Ah! Zip it! I did that schedule for ten years. It’s a cake deal and you know it.)

(”But C! My class size is still too big! I can’t help everyone!”)

(Okay… if you’re a math teacher, do some simple math: The more money teachers make, the fewer teachers we can hire. Which means your classes will get bigger, which means your students will get less of your attention, which means more of them will fail, which means more and more parents will need to hire me.)

(And don’t go bitching that we could hire more teachers if we spent enough money on education. We spend billions on education. The Republicans—who, I admit, can be assholes—aren’t going to give you any more money. And even with the billions you have, kids come out of school without the skills they need. Partly for reasons the schools can’t control, but also because a lot of teachers don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Or know plenty, but don’t give a rip. And most of you know what I’m talking about.)

(Which I guess is a good thing, for me, since I get to make a little money on the side cleaning up a tiny bit of the mess. It’s also fine, since I’m temporarily not a public school teacher and make significantly less than you do, despite having more experience and (from the looks of things) being better at what I do. So I’ll tutor on the side and do what I can that way. The trouble is, few parents have an extra $100 or so a month to afford my fee. Even fewer have the inclination to call me in the first place. Because maybe since they’re spending several thousand per kid in income taxes to keep the schools running, they shouldn’t have to.)

(Where was I going with this?)

(Oh, I was railing on teachers. And usually, only Republican assholes rail on teachers. But I’m not a Republican asshole. At least not since I left the Republican party and became a Democrat again. Now, I’m just an asshole. But I’m a good teacher. And yeah, one day I hope to get back into the public school ranks and make a fatty, non-Cisco paycheck. I’ll gladly take it. But you can bet I’ll work my ass off for it, and I’m not going to make anywhere near as many excuses as you guys do. I’ll save the bellyaching for my summers off and my Spring Break (how is that Spring Break, anyway, guys?) and my PERS and my four thousand holidays.)

(No, but seriously, and I mean this: You’re entitled to every dime you get. You’ve got student loans stemming from the overpriced master’s programs the state forced you into taking, and some of you work hard enough to make up for the uninspired slackers among you. Just don’t bitch about the class sizes, and as hard as many of you are working, find the energy to work a little harder for kids like the one I worked with tonight.)

(Goddammit.)

• • • 

Anyway, in the hour I worked with the kid I did get him squared away, or at least pointed in the right direction.

At the beginning of tonight’s tutoring session with the high school kid, I asked him to rate his comfort level with his missing work on a scale of 1 to 10. He said 2.

An hour later, I asked him again. He said he was at a 7.

[That's right, public school teachers: I got him from a 2 to a 7 after sixty freaking minutes! How about that? Did anyone at that school of yours have an extra hour to spend with this kid? Anyone? ... No? ... What?... You're going to blame the kid for being a slacker? Nonsense! This was a good kid! In my day job, I do work with kids who truly don't give a shit—though 90 percent of them don't care because no one gave them enough help when they were younger, in addition to all the other problems they were saddled with from birth.]

[But this kid tonight was respectful and wanted to learn. And he knew the basics! He could add and subtract negative numbers... with a tiny bit of help. He could multiply variables... with a reminder or two. How hard could this have been for you to fix? How many more kids like this are languishing in your classes and not sleeping at night because they don't get what you're trying to teach?... No, I gotta stop this. I'm just getting pissed off.]

[No, wait: And I can't find a public school job up here in Portland? Are you serious? I have to bottom feed on the table scraps of your failure? Really? The only reason I'm not dropping F-bombs all over this post is because I get a feeling someone's going to find it and trace it to me... and like I said, I'd like a shot at working in one of your classrooms. Maybe. Someday. If I ever get a chance.]

• • • 

So, the kid I worked with tonight had a 7 out of 10 in comfort level when I was done working with him. He’s definitely not out of the woods. But he’s getting better. His mom came to pick him up when we were done, and after giving me a crisp Andrew Jackson, she made a follow-up appointment for Sunday.

They left happy. The boy in question will no longer be slamming his hand down on his homework because he wants to understand, but can’t. The mom will no longer argue with her son, because she wants to help, but can’t, but also doesn’t want him slamming his hand down on his homework at the kitchen table.

I also left happy. I had $20 that I didn’t have an hour before, and even though I’ve got plenty of dough in the bank, I was able to go to Zupan’s and buy the following items:

• two pounds of almond-coconut bulk granola.

• one quart of milk

• two pounds of sugar

• a bunch of bananas

The kid got math. The mom got peace. Zupan’s got part of my $20. I got change, and breakfast.

Zupan’s will pay part of one worker’s check, and maybe they will be .0000001 percent less likely to lay that employee off. That money will circulate into the economy. The clerk will use their paycheck to buy stuff, and then someone will take that money that they spend and buy stuff with it, and so on.

The economy will be that much less likely to melt down.

I have helped to save the republic, all because I helped a kid with his math.

Nope. No need to thank me. Happy to help.