Category: Ramble

Just writing stuff about things, and things about stuff.

Down Under

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A colleague of mine regularly parks over the lines in the parking lot.

I’d post a picture, but I wouldn’t want to be accused of internet shaming them. Suffice it to say, it’s bad enough and regular enough for me to notice it and hold a slow-burning grudge over the matter.

I mean, you park a couple inches over the line now and then … that’s one thing. But you park with the parking spot line going straight down the center line of your car, no — you either did that on purpose or you’re making zero effort at all to pay attention, either of which is absolutely unacceptable. And yeah, okay, I park in one of the hidden side lots at the school, and there’s maybe eight or nine cars back there in an 80-spot lot, so it’s not like anybody is clamoring for the spaces, or even like anybody is parking on top of each other. We all, by unspoken agreement, leave at least a space between our cars, for some reason.

But no, this coworker regularly parks over the line in flagrant disregard for society. I see you, rule-breaker. And I hate you.

But the other morning I saw said co-worker pulling in to park (over the line, as usual). Said co-worker was playing their music exceptionally loud. (Too loud, if you ask me, and I’m glad to say it in that get-off-my-lawn tone I’m getting too good at lately.) Which really should’ve made me even madder.

But they were blasting Men at Work’s Down Under, and on a list of songs it’s okay to blast in your car at my age, this one is near the top of the charts. (Not as high as Africa, of course, but we won’t quibble.)

And, hearing that music, I hated them a little less that day.

A little.

Because who can maintain a grudge when listening to that song?

Incidentally, I’d never seen the music video before, and if you haven’t, well, do yourself a favor.

Age of Crisis

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So you know how you can sort of measure how old you are — what generation you belong to — by the first national crisis you remember? (For me, it’s the Challenger explosion — I believe I was six at the time).

Teachers play a similar game, except we do it with our students. For example, it was a rough day for me when I realized that I am no longer teaching anybody who was alive when 9/11 happened. My students these days had not been born yet — weren’t a twinkle in their parents’ eyes, even.

Which had me thinking … well … where’s their first crisis moment coming? These things roll around generationally, so one seems due.

And it hit me. COVID is their crisis moment. It just doesn’t feel like one.

Think of your moment. It’s just that, a moment. The Challenger going up in two pillars of smoke in the atmosphere. The Twin Towers coming down. The carnage at the Boston Marathon. (Smaller scale, but still nationally covered.) Lots of souls, tragically snuffed out in an instant.

Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster - HISTORY

With COVID, you can’t point to that moment. You don’t have that strong sense of memory burned into your brain, that piece of you that somehow always remembers I was sitting in the classroom, three rows back, when the teacher rolled the TV into the room and turned it on… Because COVID has been going for months. There is no moment.

But make no mistake. This is the moment.

Here in the ‘States we’re knocking on the door of 200,000 people dead from this thing. (Unofficial numbers are certainly staggeringly higher.)

Roughly 3,000 people died on 9/11.

COVID has given us as many deaths as sixty-six 9/11s, and it’s far from finished. Put another way, it’s giving us roughly one more 9/11 every 3-5 days.

A 9/11-level loss of life every few days.

How could COVID not be this generation’s crisis moment?

And we still have people in our country pretending it’s no big deal.

Maybe that is the real crisis moment.

Go Between

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A student asked me to say “hi” to another student yesterday.

The student receiving the greeting is a student he had texted, from my classroom, only a few minutes prior — and one he would text again, later in the evening.

But he still wanted me to say “hi” to him when he came in the next day.

See, our school is doing this “hybrid” schedule where we essentially have two student bodies alternating days in the classroom, so if your last name begins with a B and your friend’s last name begins with a W, it’s entirely likely you may not see that student at school until January.

So now, like Juliet’s nurse, I’m passing greetings from one group to the other, relating stories of what happened on Monday to the classmates coming in on Tuesday… even though these kids are all in contact with each other at the jingle of a text message.

I guess there’s still something about the human contact. Something in the fact that even though they don’t see each other, they do still see me; they share that experience, at least, and that’s something. Kind of like knowing that your long-distance girlfriend is looking up and seeing the same moon hanging in the sky as you talk on the phone into the night.

Right before she hangs up on you and runs out the door with Todd.

WHY, SHEILA??

Behind the Mask

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Masks are like, so hot right now (or I guess, depending on your circles, anti-hot).

I’m one of those ultra-cautious types wearing one almost everywhere, which is to say I wear it at work, and I wear it to the store, and that’s just about it because I’m not going anywhere else (seriously, you should still be staying at home if you can). So I’m wearing it a lot. And because I teach theatre, I’m sort of professionally interested in the things we do with our faces.

And I have caught myself smiling behind my mask more often than I would think I might. Which strikes me as odd, because in normal times, I smile all the time: that tight-lipped, not-quite-full smile (as JoCo would say, “the kind that doesn’t come with teeth”).

The fake smile, in other words. Which is, of course, my mask in non-mask wearing times: the chipper, friendly-but-not-too-friendly grin.

But when I smile behind my mask — and again, I’m doing this more and more often — it’s not the fake smile. Why would I need to fake it? Nobody can see it.

Strange how wearing the mask makes me — comfortable, I guess? — enough to show emotions, even though it covers those emotions up.

Chillin’

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Fall is attempting to arrive — finally — and we can put that firmly in the category of “good things in 2020”.

Fall arriving means mornings with temperatures in the 50s, which is my favorite. Morning runs with a temperature between 50-60 degrees are some of the best things about running, putting aside that running is obviously the key to eternal youth.

But fall not yet having fully arrived means daytime temperatures still hanging close to 90, which is not my favorite. There are only so many clothes I can take off before public decency laws get broken.

Daytime temperatures in the 90s means the A/C is cranked up to eleven in my school, which is good, but in my tiny office room, which I’m pretty sure does not have its own temperature sensor, the air just keeps blowing and blowing, and I have to bundle up.

Honestly, another shirt — and maybe some gloves — would not go amiss.

This can’t be good for my body or my brain; every time I leave the building I have to deal with the shift, so I’m either charging fully suited-up for the cold into the 90-degree heat or plunging jacket- and hat-less back into the frigid depths of my office.

Routine is all kinds of busted today, but I did get some chapters edited, so progress marches along.

Happy Tuesday.