Posts Tagged ‘friend’
He came on Friday, reminding us all how true it is that, as one of America’s founding codgers noted, fish and visitors stink after three days. He called one of my close female friends in a moment of crisis.
Newly graduated in December 2007, he had made the unfortunate choice of leaving CalPoly with a plain, ol’ business finance degree. That’s the degree linemen choose — in the business department, the prerequisite bar is usually set so low that Mike Tyson would earn his summa cum laude, even without threatening to bite off his professors’ ears.
As a finance graduate might understand, because there is such a great supply of business majors, there is very little demand. He’s been living out of his car since he left school, and hasn’t had a job since he boneheadedly quit his internship. He’s made a lot of mistakes.
Of course, he swears he’s made up this time, that he has a few good job opportunities on the horizon. Press a little harder, and you’ll find that these opportunities are no opportunities at all. They entail selling insurance, providing your own leads and working solely on commission. I’d rather work for Alec Baldwin.
Moreover, our friend is eternally awkward, and has no idea how transparent was his sucking up. Nicole would ask him: Want to do a puzzle, friend?
Sure. I love puzzles, dude.
His unenthusiasm was palpable. Or, a different friend would ask another: How’d you like hiking up in Yosemite?
It was sweet. Once we got to the top of our mountain, there were all of these hot chicks, especially Nicole.
I’m told he laughed his way out of the shock and horror the within-earshot Nicole gave him. He was the definition of pathetic, and almost the second definition of sympathetic. Early on his last day in Nicole’s apartment, he broke the shower head. Not because he intended to, but because he forced it in a direction it was not at all inclined to swivel. He was pathetically sympathetic.
Until, of course, he in confidence he tried to make what he’d play off as another misfired joke.
I didn’t want to take advantage of my mom or my sister, so I’ve been taking advantage of my friend Danny and my friend Nicole. Heh-eh.
My facial expression told him that I was not the kindred spirit he imagined me to be. He stuttered a bit, and clumsily tried to cover up his tracks with a few more of his one-and-a-half laughs.
Someone is in a dire need of a reset button, so it’s too bad God hasn’t seen fit to make ‘em. Part of me believes it’d just be a waste, anyway: A guy like that would just bone up and make the same mistakes the second time around.
He left on Sunday, proving once and for all that fish and visitors can stink within three days, as well as after.
Couches are like cats. Once they’re outside, they don’t easily go back inside.
One of the typical hang-outs for my circle of friends has a collection of ratty couches we keep outside, on the concrete patio or unmown grass. It’s perfect for barbeques, as long as you don’t mind your cushion full of dirt, spiders and dried cat urine.
For whatever reason, a roommate at that house I helped move decided to bring one of these couches along for the ride to his new school district. After a year-and-a-half as an outside couch, he’s going to bring it inside, to his spacious shiny new apartment. I know that new middle school band directors don’t get paid much, but this still has to be a bad idea.
Even as we loaded it on the truck, it leaked filth onto the floor of our U-Haul. One of the guys, full of charm and wit, said:
I have never seen couches shit.
We all have, now. This is one couch that won’t easily go back inside without stinkin’ up the place. It’ll need two bottles of Febreeze and three days worth of vacuuming before it even nears cleanliness.
If ever I visit, I hope I don’t catch any diseases.
Part One of Four in my series on my two master teachers.
One master teacher is authoritarian. She expects a lot accomplished, and a lot of planning for lessons. Teaching is her second — third? fourth? fifteenth? — career.
She expects me to master every classroom system she’s established over her 16-odd years, every slightest procedure.
Journal every day; while you take attendance. Quizzes every Thursday. Detentions for tardies and absences. Extra credit for Kleenex.
She mentors student teachers every spring.
I met her last spring while working off my observation hours as a sub. As I passed through the hallway, I noticed a former editor of mine from my school newspaper.
I stopped by to say hello, and I was introduced to my friend’s then-current master teacher and my future one. Once I got to know my master teacher better, we discovered that I had met her husband from her first, only and current marriage — an August-September romance — through a previous short-term radio gig at the same college.
Small world.
This master teacher criticizes, scrutinizes, prosyltizes. She isn’t worried about my ability to talk. She’s worried about my ability to teach, though she’s worried less and less.
I’ve gotten better, and still I have a long way to go.
