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THE FIRST THING YOU notice about Davison Gonsalves—aside from the fact that he looks like a baseball-capped, acne-sprinkled knockoff of his father—is his tattoos. Apparently the “tribal” designs and kanji characters so popular with his peers were not obnoxious enough for him. Giant brown centipedes writhed repulsively on his arms as he reached up to grasp the lintel of my office door.
“Eh, Aunty Molly!” Davison gripped my door frame, showing off his muscles and blocking my exit. “Check it out. I’m back in town.”
“Look at that!” I chirped. “You sure are.” I suppressed the impulse to clutch my head as pain stabbed through my right eye.
“Don’t get your hopes up, though.” His grin showed off his expensively-straightened teeth. “I’m not staying long. I had to pick up some transcripts and stuff and Dad said I should come by and say hi. Eh, how you like my new bedroom? Sweet, ah?”
I couldn’t begin to think of an appropriate response, and Davison didn’t wait for one. Sherry had turned around in her chair and was eying him with interest. His deep-cut tank top was designed to show off as much ink and muscle as possible while still technically serving as a “shirt.”
Davison released his grip on my door frame and sauntered into my dim office, overpowering the tiny space with a noxious plume of cologne.
“Hey.” He dropped his voice about an octave. “I’m Dave.”
Sherry took his hand and held it in both of hers. I could have leaned over and waved my arm between their two faces and neither of them would have blinked.
“I’m Sherry,” she rasped coquettishly. “Like the drink.”
Somehow, she managed to signal to Davison (sorry, I mean Dave) that she was dying for a smoke, and he indicated he could oblige her. She had apparently forgotten about the pack of cigarettes in her purse. I reminded them smoking was not permitted in the building, which was fine with them. They left my office together, giggling and leaning in close to each other as if it were freezing and they had to conserve their body heat. My wall thermometer showed eighty-one degrees Fahrenheit.
When they had gone, I logged onto my computer and accepted Sherry’s friend request. Pat refuses to “friend” students, but I don’t see the harm. It’s a nice, low-commitment way to stay in touch. For me, the asynchronous, take-it-or-leave-it interaction of social media is an agreeable substitute for face-to-face conversation, which I find exhausting.
I’m even online friends with Kathy Banks. Or was friends, I should say. I checked my contact list and felt a chill when I saw her account was still active. Well, of course it was. Who was going to deactivate it? I was tempted to click through to her wall to see whether anyone had written on it, but decided it would be too depressing. Instead, I spent about thirty seconds perusing my contacts’ baby pictures, food photos, and pithy quotes. Then I packed up to go to class.
My sunglasses steamed up as soon as I stepped out of my building. Between my misted-over vision and my pounding headache, I nearly walked right past my classroom door. I groped my way inside and switched off the overhead lights. Hazy daylight filtered through the blinds. The classroom was warm and humid, the feeble air conditioning no match for the wall-to-wall bodies.
“Good morning,” I murmured as I fumbled with my sunglasses. I winced as they clattered onto the floor. I retrieved them and stuffed them into my bag.
“We’re going to try something different today. We’ll keep the lighting dim. Just as they did in the Hawthorne Studies.”
A young blonde woman raised her hand.
“Excuse me Doctor Barda, but didn’t the Hawthorne Studies—”
“Yes. I know. You’re absolutely right. We’re going to keep the lights down anyway.” I turned to the whiteboard, only to find it covered with Rodge Cowper’s class notes. The students arranged themselves into their discussion groups. I spent the first few minutes of class erasing Rodge Cowper’s notes from the whiteboard with one hand while shielding my eyes with the other.
A leader knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
Become a leader by following best practices.
In it to win it!
The last phrase stayed on the whiteboard, no matter how much I scrubbed with the eraser. Rodge, or someone, must have written “in it to win it!” with a permanent marker. I hoped I would make it through the class period without my skull exploding like a shrapnel grenade.
Sherry slipped in half an hour late and silently joined her group. A few minutes later, they called me over. Sherry had her laptop open.
“You were right, Dr. B,” she said. “That face recognition software is out there. We might wanna do something with it. But we’re having trouble coming up with a business idea. It’s true sunglasses can fool the software, but any sunglasses work, so you don’t need special ones.”
Standing next to Sherry, I was hit by the stench of cigarette smoke, mingled with Davison’s powerful cologne. My stomach, already feeling delicate, rebelled at the sensory assault. I slowly inched away from Sherry to stand at the opposite side of her group’s table.
A young woman in her group piped up, “We had the idea that you could put cameras in nightclubs and have something online like, right now there’s sixty percent girls and forty percent guys, and people would go to wherever the percentages are the best for them. But we found some bar in Chicago already doing that.”
Someone else suggested, “What about a service that finds your high school classmates using yearbook photos? For class reunions?”
Then Sherry said, “Nah. I don’t like it. The creepiest kid in your high school would use it to stalk everyone else.”
“That might already be happening,” I said. I wondered about my own online presence, and whether my photo on our college’s website could lead to anything embarrassing.
Sherry laughed, “Guess you can’t keep a secret these days. We all better behave ourselves.”
“That’s great advice, Sherry.” I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to still my throbbing headache.