Being Mean

The best part of becoming friends with someone is when you can start making fun of them to their face. My friend Josh Dodds and I are at this very point in our relationship and I am loving it. Mcdonalds style. Today after we went to a brunch with a bunch of people we vaguely know we sat on my couch for an hour making fun/gushing over each other.

JD: Jess, I just love your hair. Maybe you should do it like this (starts playing with hair.)
JB: I like my hair. You are obsessed with my hair.
JD: I am obsessed with hair in general. Why is it so greasy?
JB: I put pomade in it.
JD: You put grease in your hair?
JB: Yup. Do You?
JD: Well, you know, I got to. You don't have to though.
JB: It gets puffy.
JD: Like frizzy?
JB: Like Puffy. Big.
JD: I don't think so. I think it would be fine without it. Do you put it in when it's wet or dry?
JB: Both. It depends. I put it in dry today.
JD: You should put it in wet.
JB: It's not as effective. I like the way it looks now.
JD: Yeah, it looks good.
JB: Exactly.
JD: I don't know Jess. It feels nasty.
JB: Nobody told you to put your hands in it.
JD: Right.

Oh and when I wrote "the best part of becoming friends with someone is when you can start making fun of them to their face." What I really meant to say was, "The best part of becoming friends with someone is when you can shamelessly talk about your hair and the other person actually cares."

Special Ed vs Specialer Ed

Last Friday my friend/teacher partner Erika and I were strapped for lesson plans so decided we were gunna give our ragamuffins what they really want: an intermural-special-ed-dodgeball-throwdown. Erika and I both teach Separate Day Classes with special ed students, but in very different capacities. While Erika's students are struggling to remember the letter A, mine are screaming,"I'll fuck you in the ass!"

The most important distinction here is that Erika's students are in Special Ed primarily because they have a Specific Learning Disability or have been labeled "Mentally Retarded." My little hellraisers' disabilities, on the other hand, are due to "emotional disturbance." Students in my class very rarely have any cognitive deficits. They are just filled with rage.

So obviously pitting these two groups against one another in dodgeball was the most logical thing to do.

We penned the band of outsiders in a fenced in area, split the court in a half with purple chalk and let them at it. In a matter of minutes Erika's students had all been hit roughly ten times and at least three of my students were on a time-out from throwing above the neck and attempting to insight a riot. Ms. A's kids huddled at the back of the fence dancing and singing around generally ignoring the balls whipping past their faces, while my precious babes loomed over the purple line with blood dripping from their mouths screaming countless taunts, teases, and degradations of the soul. It was quite a sight to behold.

I, being a charitable and slightly vengeful person myself, joined Erika's motley crew and cross-haired all my favorite students- Jesse Owens, Hip-Hop, Spider-Monkey, Bo-jangles, Ziona Get-It-Straight, Cornbread and Ms. Fierce, beaning them all with a Ms. Baer ball to the knee caps. Suckas! Of course they showed me absolutely no mercy and I ended up running off the court with my tail between my legs and my arms cradling my head, screaming "STOPPPPP!!!"

In any case. If you are ever bored and have two special ed classes at your disposal, I encourage you to go to your neighborhood dollar store, purchase 8 rubber balls and head out to the nearest blacktop. It will be the best 8 dollars you ever spend.

Hands-On Learning

This week I went to the SFMOMA with one of my favorite students. She's a third grader and the definition of precocious. It was her first time going to any museum EVER even though she had seen them on TV and stuff. For the sake of confidentiality- let's call her Ziona- her self-proclaimed alter ego.
I am going to break down our adventure into top 5 incidents:

Incident #1: On the way to the moma is a park called Yerba Buena gardens. It's really beautiful and has all sorts of water features. Ziona is in pure heaven. She's a total water baby, and is pulling out all her change to make wishes for Martin Luther King and I am going to assume, her father, who passed away 4 years ago. In defiance of all logic and celebration of all possibility- every wish she makes is about the resurrection of her father. I watch her tenderly and make a similar wish of my own.

Incident #2: We are still at Yerba Buena and Ziona is obsessed with the water. Sitting there serenely she sweeps the water with the tips of her fingers:
Z: This feels like Barack Obama's Handshake.
M: What do you mean?
Z: Cold.
M: How do you know Barack Obama's handshake is cold?
Z: No answer.

Incident #3: We get into the museum and it's like shooting a gun to commence a race. Ziona is OFF! and I am forced to walk way more briskly than my usual museum stroll. I catch up to her just in time to see that the first thing she does at the sight of art is go right up to that sucker and put her whole hand on it. Smack.
M: Oh uh, don't do that.
Z: Why not?
M: Um, cuz you're not supposed to, and.....(she's off again)
By the time I catch up with her she's getting yelled at by a docent because there's a pool table sculpture with very meticulously placed balls atop it and Ziona is reaching over to grab one. My need to explain the rules has passed and Ziona sulks for a mere two seconds, "I don't like that lady," and is Peuwh...off yet again.

Incident #4: There is a video featuring a man dressed in drag slowly moving about a white room and fondling a pearl between two white gloved fingers. After running in and out of the room roughly 13 times Ziona keeps returning to the video, making little comments like, "What is she DOING?" "That's a man." "OHHH a pearl!"
Me: You seem to really like this video.
Z: I just wanna keep watching it because it doesn't make sense.
M: Do you think it has meaning?
Z: No
M: What if it did have meaning? What would it be?
Z: Slow-motion
M: Like being patient?
Z: Yes.

Incident #5: Ziona wants a subway sandwich so we decide to leave. On our way to the car we encounter another water feature, different from the one in Yerba Buena. Within seconds she's got her hands in it.
M: Does this one feel like Barack Obama's handshake?
Z: No.
M: Why not?
Z: Too cold.
M: Oh.

Needless to say we had an excellent time. I don't think I saw any art that day, except of course, the art of being, which Ziona has flawlessly mastered. In the car ride back she asked me if diamonds really do come from Africa and we had a wonderful conversation about questioning leadership. "I love this," I thought and turned up some Justin Timberlake real loud for drive back home.

Friends Tell Friends...

...When they have something in their teeth, or on their face or hanging off their shoe. For years, I have had an overwhelming urge to tell strangers with babies slung all over them that they have something on their shirt, head, back, ankle... Like a piece of schmutz ketchup. I never actually say it. But I always think it. And damn if it doesn't crack me up. EVERY-SINGLE-TIME.

Dinner

Mama brought ducks
With their little heads cut off
Kept em in a separate Tupperware
From the carrots
She dumped em in the
Frying pan
Sparks of broken water
Shot out at her
Face and hands
Burning her skin.

She barely jumped back
Let her skin burn
Watching those dead ducks
Fry. Fry. Fry.
Burn. Burn. Burn.

Nobody said nothing
When we ate the
Carrots
And the duck.
Mama’s hands all
Bleeding onto the plate.

Excessive Mischief

Recently a student of mine was written up by her bus driver for spitting on another kid. I am hoping this was her attempt to experiment with what she has been learning about hedgehogs- that they spit on each other for over 20 minutes at a time (Nobody knows why!)- and not her determination to be bus bully of the month. In any case, when I received the written notice there was a section of boxes catagorizing the offense. There was, of course, the violence box, swearing, moving around, yelling, disregard for authority boxes: Typical stuff. But to my sort-of delight, my student's deviance had been marked EXCESSIVE MISCHIEF.

Ha. I thought, Excessive mischief. How poetic: Implying that a certain amount of mischief is acceptable, if not encouraged. That mischief is an inevitable and essential part of being. Heck, I remember throwing pop cans out of the bus when I was in grade school, bagels out of cars in high school, doing donuts on the quad in college. Mischief is a one of the thickest fibers of life, and I'd like to think that this write-up document whole-heartedly acknowledges this tried and true fact.

There is a line, however, between mischief and Excessive Mischief. Being mean, dangerous, and gross is exactly where that line exists and my student definitely crossed it. So I tied her up and stuck her in a cupboard for about twenty minutes, while blasting Sheri Lewis's Song That Never Ends through a set of headphones I taped to her head and am pretty sure she'll never do it again. Conditioning folks, it's all about conditioning.

She will be back on plain old type 1 mischief in no time, I trust, and hope that her endeavors are as full of the wonderous joys of youthful mischieviocity as hiding toxic fish sauce in the back seat of your friend Maya's car in order to get back at her from when she sprinkled your lawn with instant mash potatoes. But the second that shit gets excessive, it's all lamb-chop baby, and there's no turning back.

Party B = Movie Me

Ever drank copious amounts of whisky on a school bus adorned in latin regalia, with 30+ beautiful strangers, making you think you are in a diesal ad for jeans.

If the answer is yes then you have clearly been on a Mexican Party Bus.

No?

Life is short. Why are you reading this blog?

This past Saturday I attended my friend April's 30th b-day Party B. I now know what it is like to live in a movie. To be surper saturated, have my own personal sound track- "Apple Bottom Jeans, Boots with da Furrrr," and smile with my teeth.

The whole night was a rain soaked blur of Santa Clauses (SF's annual SantaCon), full moons, excessive chanting, BOOZE, juking, drunken intimations, r and b music and the obligatory karaoke throwdown, all dolled up in the magic of holiday lights and cheer. AKA a movie about being young. In essence it was this:


I don't know what it is about hipsters but they always have someone taking incredible pictures of themselves while drinking heavily and wearing red lipstick. When I saw the above picture, I was like- WHAT?! That's my life? A Christmas rom com in the city? Indie flick? Seasonal Sprint commercial? I love it.

Needless to say, beyond the glitz and glamour of Party B = Movie Me there is always the cold hard reality. Indeed it was me eating a Whopper at the bar, shortly before devouring a deepfried brautworst that, I eventually found out, had fallen on the floor. It was delicious. And Yes, I was smiling, down to the very last bite, teeth and all.