Thursday 9/21

Unfortunately, I must report that the little inspirational chachkas have now been permanently banned from the classroom. This is because of two things that happened.

(1) People started insisting that their cell phones were inspirational chachkas; and

(2) when the Colonel outlawed the cell-phones-as-chachkas, Beanie Babies began appearing in place of the phones.

Or, more accurately, in FRONT of the phones. Do you know that the average cell phone is completely camouflaged when it’s tucked, all comfy-like, against the belly of the pink “Awareness” Beanie? I only know this because that was the Beanie Shakita brought in. I wouldn’t bring in anything like that, after all! I mean, I never collected the bears. In my Beanie days, I was all about the ocean-going critters. (And Inky the Octopus does a MUCH better job of hiding a cell phone than any BEAR.)

An interesting discussion started after the Colonel announced the end of cell phones, etc. A few of the football guys started arguing that they were using the phones to text message, which was WRITING, after all, and how was that so different from writing in journals?

“Do you feel your text messages are poetic?” the Colonel asked the football guy who was the cell phone protest ringleader (haha! ring leader!). I can’t remember his name, but I know he had a concussion last week from running smack into the goal posts when he was scoring a touchdown, though no one was within ten yards of him at the time. Perhaps the concussion, I started thinking, had jolted him into a higher level of intellect, because his argument about the cell phone was not sounding so bad.

“Yes, I do,” he said to the Colonel.

“May I read them?” the Colonel asked.

“I guess,” he answered.

The Colonel then flipped through the guy’s messages, read them to himself for a few seconds, and then said, “May I share them?”

“I guess,” the football player said.

So, the Colonel headed up to the board, grabbed his purple marker, and wrote this:

so boi wut up?

trifin

aiight. where u git that bama shirt?

yo! it’s tight! chics checkin it out, freak.

jes some rah rah. nah mean?

fo shizzle

“What IS that?” the Colonel asked, after he had stared at it for a minute.

“It’s fly, you know, sort of like rap,” the football player said.

“Rap. Interesting. But what does it say?” he asked.

Feeling rather bored and wanting to add a little life to the afternoon, I raised my hand and said, “Oh, stewardess! I speak jive!”

Which is from my #2 all-time favorite movie and a line I thought all of my classmates would immediately recognize, but only a few laughed at my little fun. The rest just looked at me as if I were a lunatic, or an adult, or some other equally out-of-touch breed of human. This was reinforced when the Colonel said:

“That’s from Airplane. One of my favorite movies. Yes, go ahead and translate, thanks.”

After a very large sigh, I gave it my best shot:

What’s up?

Nothing.

All right. Where’d you get that bama shirt?

Hey! It’s great! Girls are looking at it, you weirdo.

I’m just kidding. You know what I mean?

For sure.

The Colonel did some serious nodding after that, and then said, “Bama?”

“That’s, uh,” I said, “kind of stupid-looking, or like—”

“His shirt,” the football player said, pointing to the guy next to him, who had apparently been the person he was texting with.

This, of course, got things REALLY out of control.

“SO, WOULD ANYONE,” the Colonel started saying at a decibel level higher than that of the room, “LIKE TO REWRITE THIS IN THE STYLE OF MAYA ANGELOU?” Which was obviously a desperate attempt to bring the focus back to what he was actually trying to teach at that point in time.

“Maya who?” the football guy asked. “Is she in this class?”

(Quite obviously, the concussion had not had the intellect-jolting effect I was thinking of.)

“Rap IS poetry,” Shakita said. “Why aren’t we taking it seriously? Shouldn’t it be in a poetry unit?”

“Alternative poetry forms start the week after next,” the Colonel said. “Page three of the syllabus.”

(Another point for him. He moves ahead by one, to bring the score to 3 for the Colonel, 2 for Shakita.)

I was just trying to catch Richard’s eye, but he either never looks up, or he looks down just before my eyes reach him, EVERY time. Strange. Some people are hard to figure out— they’re mysteries. Or, to use a vocabulary word I have recently learned (one that means RIDDLE), they’re enemas.

Not a big deal, though. I just wanted to thank him for running with me at practice yesterday. I know he could have gotten ahead, but he kept my pace. (Which, admittedly, got so slow at some points that I may have even been going backward.) The “warm-up lap,” as it turns out, has a big stretch in the woods, and when I realized that, I was a tad bit freaked because I knew I was not going to be able to keep up with the footballers, and there I would be, ALONE!, with foxes or bears or killer rats, or those nasty monsters like in the movie The Village. (Could happen.) So, when my (so-called) teammates started zipping past me, it was really nice to find Richard there.

I was a little concerned at first that he might start tripping over tree roots or slipping on slugs, but it wasn’t like that at all. He actually has a gracefulness about his running that is very natural. Like a deer, in a way. He didn’t SAY anything (which is also deer-like, come to think of it), but that was fine. It gave me some time to think about my next step in the mission to be more like my best friend . . .

Having given up on trying to be athletic and trying to be smart, I was feeling like I had run out of options. But then—loping along silently next to deer-Richard—I was struck with a profound thought. Giulio, I realized, had not been at all deterred from his interest in Brady, even though he hadn’t seen her get ANY hits so far at her games. Perhaps, I got to thinking, when it comes to Brady’s athletic shape, maybe it is more the “shape” than the “athletic” that interests him.

And this idea inspired my new plan, which is to:

GET BOOBS.

(Ideally, two.)

I’m really just working through the details now, but I think the first step will have to be a diet. To gain weight. Though all the teen magazines would consider someone like Brady a bit on the pudge side, the truth is that she has always been a guy-magnet. She has been quite good at repelling (or being clueless about) these guys—up until now, of course—but there have been boys-aplenty chasing her around the baseball field over the years, trying to tag her out . . . if you know what I mean.

(I don’t know what I mean, but I thought maybe you would.) (But I’m writing to myself, so I AM you. And I still don’t know what I mean.) (NEVER MIND.)

Exercises on top of the weight-gaining diet would probably be pretty important so I can sculpt the shape I need. I don’t want the new poundage to end up, uh, on my END, for instance. I’ll have to do some research about that, so the weight is channeled properly into my bustline. Perhaps there’s a Web site with information. On second thought, I will research this a different way. Keywords related to that particular subject might produce some very scary results online.

Shakita is holding up one of zher sign-notes. I’ll be right back, after I write back. (Ooooh! Clever one!)

Okay, the note said: MEETING IN ROOM E14, VOTE FOR GENDER NEUTRAL OFFICERS.

So I wrote back, under that: I’M A MEMBER?

And zhe wrote under that: I NOMINATED YOU YESTERDAY, AND YOU WERE VOTED IN UNANIMOUSLY.

So I wrote: HOW MANY MEMBERS R THERE?

So zhe wrote: 3

At that point, I kind of happened to look over at Giulio, and he was kind of happening to look over at us, and I’m guessing he kind of happened to be reading our little note exchange. Which kind of happened to make me feel very strange because of what kind of happened on the way into class today.

You see, Shakita asked him if he wanted to join the Gender Neutral Alliance, seeing how he was all supportive during the e.e. cummings incident.

His answer: “Sorry, Shakita. Good luck with the making of your club, though. It sounds very great, but I cannot join because I am a straight person.” And then he went to his seat, apparently under the impression that the Gender Neutral Alliance is about something other than . . . whatEVER it’s about.

And now I’m one of the three members, so he must think . . .

I will pretend all that hasn’t gone on, because it will only complicate the plans for my entire future life.

Yesterday I told Brady I wanted to start working out, and I asked her what types of exercises she does to “stay in shape.”

“I do calisthenics and stretches each day,” she said, “but I assume you want to work on lats, traps, and abs, so I’ll focus on large muscle groups for you.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, so, naturally, I nodded, figuring there might be SOME logical relationship between “large muscle groups” and “boobs.”

And then she proceeded to show me the exercises, which took at least 45 minutes.

“How do you find time to do that once a day?” I asked.

“I do that set three times a day,” she answered.

So, motivated by that, I’m vowing to fit exercises into my schedule every day, from now on. It’ll be tough, but if Brady can do it, so can I! (That isn’t even CLOSE to being true, or POSSIBLE, but it sure felt good to think it for a nanosecond.) The real question is: What can I take out of my busy schedule to make room for this new routine? The daily aromatherapy bath? My biweekly pedicure? The exfoliating scrub? Relaxing hour on Facebook? My homework?

BINGO! That’s IT!

Maybe I’ll take a break from the hard work on Saturday, though since Brady, Giulio, and I are going to the National Gallery of Art in the afternoon. It was so nice of Brady to include me. And I only had to ask sixteen times.