So I have this new routine, which is that at the beginning of third period most days, one of the teachers with whom I have a very old, if not so much close anymore, friendship, comes into the library on her prep period, and we go for a walk together and get coffee. I have this sense that once the Chum retires in June, this individual is going to be needing a diary name, because she's one of the few oldtimers left and I'll be spending a lot of time with her. Which is not relevant to the story, except as foreshadowing of my future.
Anyway, on the way back from the cafeteria to the library, we stopped in the Main Office to check our mailboxes, and as we were leaving, I heard someone calling me: "Mrs. Chai! Mrs. Chai!" as in, I've been calling you for ten minutes and you didn't hear me. Which is probably the case. I turned around; it was the principal's secretary, who is new since last year, and who is, frankly, dumb. As in not smart. As in not intelligent. It's really difficult to describe the level of not smart this individual is.
So I turned, and when she saw she had my attention -- from across the room -- she began to speak to me in a whisper, you know, where people move their lips but make almost no sound because now they're trying to keep the conversation quiet. I let her go on until she was finished and then I said, loudly, across the room "I'M DEAF." Which got a chuckle from everyone, including my coffee buddy. (Ooh, that's it. Coffee Buddy.)
At this point, she had the sense to wait to talk to me until I was standing next to her. It's not, as Coffee Buddy later pointed out, there are whole lots of hearing impaired people on the staff to keep track of. It's just me. I was amused.
Thanks to the wonderful golfwidow, I now have a new hobby to occupy my time. It's librarything.com. You can imagine why I was so easily sucked in, although this is not, strictly speaking, cataloging, although it says it is. (I'm just throwing around my librarian-type weight here.) Not that I have any idea why someone at home would want to really catalog their book collection, although I did that for practice when I took my first cataloging course. (Not a worthwhile enterprise; almost all of my books were fiction, which doesn't present much of a cataloging challenge.) Anyway, I'm having fun with it and I'm put a widget on my page. (Any day now.) I'm adding titles to the list slowly but surely. I can put in audibooks too, which I like, but not DVDs, which I would like to have in there since I'm a collector of those things. But it's fun; take a look.
The class that I had in this afternoon was a class of snots, at least while I was talking to them for a three-minute max introduction to what they were doing. What I had here was a senior English class that would euphemistically be described as "low ability level." Whether or not this is an accurate reflection of their "ability", whatever that means, I don't know. I know that this is a group of fully grown, emotionally immature adolescents. The boys, anyway; none of the girls presented any sort of behavior problem. The boys would murmur to each other or hum while I was talking.
Now it's not that I haven't dealt with this sort of thing before; of course I have. It's just that this time, as I did whatever I did, I was thinking: and in six months, these boys will be out in the world, and how is this snottiness going to work for them then? Not too well, I suppose. Again, not that this isn't an age-old problem; there have always been kids who are nasty to teachers in high school because they can be, and then they go out and get jobs, or, God forbid, join the service, and they are forced to change their behavior 180 degrees in an instant. I'm just wondering about how they do that, and if they're capable of it, why they don't do it just a little bit earlier. That's all.
I'll admit it: I'm a wuss, a wimp, a weakling. It's cold out, and I don't wanna go. Anywhere. According to weather.com, it's 31 degrees. If you happen to be chaos or irisheyes, well then, you're laughing your ass off at me right now. Go ahead. I'm not ashamed. Just cold. The thing is, I went to work and I'm home and I just don't want to go out anymore. I have something to mail to K, but it will wait until I'm on my way to work tomorrow. I need a couple of things at the supermarket, but I'll stop on my way home. Tomorrow. I'm in and I'm not going out again until I have to. Turns out that there's another performance tonight of the play that I didn't go to on Saturday, but I don't think they're going to be putting it on in my living room, so, sadly, I'll pass. At 6:30 am, I will run outside to put the cat litter in the trash and start up my car. I'll go out again when the car is warm and then I'll go to work. I expect to stay indoors for the day, and once I'm home, I'm in. I hate winter. Where's an all-powerful lion when you need one?
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I'm watching Gilmore Girls
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
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