My beautiful mother, my beautiful daughter and my lucky, lucky self: Thanksgiving 2009.

… are not so fucking entertaining when it’s your own child. Your own severely verbally limited four-year-old who is puking and crying, who can’t tell you if it hurts or not or where or how much, who knows the words for how she feels but can’t get them out, who has an almost impossible time even confirming or denying the words you try to supply for her.

Just saying.

Mrs. E and the Big Mistake (continued)

It is a truth universally acknowledged generally recognized known to the few stalwarts who have put up with my presence for any length of time that Mrs. E has only two strategies when confronted with potential personal crisis: a) unplug the phone, curl up in a ball on the bathroom floor and lock the door or b) dive headfirst into the deeps and attempt to surf the roiling waves of human strife with honesty (rudeness), integrity (bullheadedness) and wit (sarcasm). Both involve nausea, cramping, vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, chills and a constant heartrate only slightly lower than a hummingbird’s. Neither is fun to watch. Neither works very well.

B never, ever happens until she has been forced out of the bathroom.

Thanks to The Kid, I didn’t even have time for the puking to begin.

Before the next morning’s announcements had droned away into oblivion, he had managed to inform every one of his pep squad patronesses that Skateboy had found one of Mrs. E’s old boyfriends online! He didn’t know, he couldn’t see it!! Skateboy wouldn’t tell him anything; he said he didn’t remember!!! They should all ask her about it right away!!!!

Tumult commenced.

TeacherFace was assumed. I may be limited in many respects, but my TeacherFace is prime.  ( A very perceptive young woman once said, “It looks like you’re trying to decide whether you want to bother killing us or if you’d rather we just dropped dead.”) Avoidance would only feed the beast, but I needed time to think, and bought thirty precious minutes by announcing that we would discuss whatever I chose to discuss on this topic in the last five (damn) ten minutes of class, not before, and that any audible or visible (this means you, Note Girls) speculation before that time would have immediate and dire consequences… and then I started stuffing Shakespeare down their gaping maws as forcefully as ever I could.

And thinking hard and panicky behind a slightly modified TeacherFace.

Hmmm. No details, that was for damn sure. “Dating” was what we did, “breaking up” is what happened… and wasn’t that about the real extent of it? Okay, I was a bit myopic, but I was also twenty years old (looking out at the infants) and sure, he was a bit more upset than I had expected but hey, at least I was always honest and most importantly, it was ten years ago. On the other hand, what about all that stuff I’d heard? On the other hand, who knew how accurate any of that was? On the other hand, what about his mother appearing like Hamlet’s dad that night? On the other hand… enough with the hands. I was already a bit freaked out about the whole “hey, look who you can find online” thing, and avoiding exes was standard practice for reasons that were… Wait a minute, wait a minute. TEN YEARS AGO. What was I thinking? Who was I, Helen of Troy? Eurydice? Salma Hayek? Get over yourself, Mrs E, I mentally commanded. Jeez. Ego, anyone? Anyone? Mrs. E, superstar, who the hell do you think you – drifting! Drifting! Get a grip! Be right back!

When I returned from the bathroom, it was 10:35 and the little angels were ready for blood.

• Yes, I knew the person Skateboy had found online.
• No, I wasn’t telling anyone his name.
• Yes, we dated.
• Next question.
• I was twenty, he was almost thirty.
• It’s different when you’re older, Freshman Girl With Senior “Boyfriend.”
• We dated.
• Dated.
• Ask that one more time and you fail the semester.
• Yes, he apparently has a job which could involve Shakespeare and which Skateboy had found online.
• No, I won’t tell you what it is.
• Sure, I’ll you what he searched on. Try “none of my business.”
• No, I hadn’t e-mailed him.
• No, I saw no reason to.
• No, we just broke up.
• No.
• No.
• No… what? What?

With less than a minute left to go, with the Furies snickering madly just out of audible range, The Goddamned Kid had shot his final bolt with accidentally deadly accuracy.

• Well. Huh. I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe… maybe he could talk to you guys about his job. Or at least answer some of your questions… maybe… it does sound interesting…

Once again, the intoxicating vision of educational relevance dazzled my poor, overwrought young teacher’s brain. The Furies slapped their collective knees and doubled over, giggling. The words of doom escaped me once again.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

finale to follow

Dickens on the Strand is this weekend. A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a new top hat for the Dude because his old one is a bit worn. Extra-large head = extra-large hat. Unfortunately, the people at T–H—-.com sent a large, which, given the egg in question, simply will not work. So I checked the invoice (yep, XL) and left a lovely, friendly message last night on the company’s answering machine, including the invoice number, the problem, and the fact that I knew there was no way to get a replacement in time, so I’d just return the hat for a refund and the cost of return shipping, thank you, good-bye. Very clear. Very low-key. Very my mom. And by the way, I’m a repeat customer…

So today I get this e-mail:

Hello Ann,

I was told that you phoned and left a voice mail last night. The person that received the message said there was a problem with the size your received. I phoned and left a voice mail but thought I would follow up with an email. Can you tell me what the problem is?

Thanks,

J—

Okay. I thought the voicemail was clear (you sent the wrong size), but hey, thanks for responding so quickly. I replied:

Sure! I ordered an extra large and received a large, which looks completely ridiculous perched on top of my husband’s great big head. Since we’re leaving Friday for Dickens on the Strand, I doubt you can get me a replacement in time. So what you can do is wait until I ship it back to you (today) and reimburse me the original cost and the cost of return shipping. I’ve attached the invoice for your records.

Thanks,

Ann

Supernice. Hypernice. Niceness exemplified.  Birds sing, butterflies flutter. Then I get this:

Ok, sorry about the error. Be sure to package the hat up well, to prevent damage. When the hat returns and assuming it is in new shape, I will have your card refunded.

Sorry again,

J—

Excuse me? “Sorry, but don’t screw up the packaging and by the way, don’t use it this weekend and try to send it back as new?”

Oh no you didn’t, J. Oh no you didn’t.

My response skipped several steps on the polite escalation scale.

Yes, it will be in new shape. I don’t buy dresses for special occasions and return them afterward, either.  I realize this is certainly an issue for retailers, but perhaps it’s not the height of good customer relations to mention it.

Assuming you plan to refund my card, please be certain to include the return shipping.

Ann

Don’t assume, however, that I’ll be shopping with you again.

Lois at The Inn at Fulton Harbor called today to confirm my reservation for the third weekend in January. Not only is she a lovely, articulate and extremely competent person, she told me there’s an actual whooping crane boat tour which leaves from the pier on their beach.

Whoop!

Thinking of taking a knitting bag, a camera and my own silly self here:

to be near here:

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

to see these:

and perhaps some of these:

and certainly a sunrise or two, and the boats at the pier and the ocean outside my window. It may seem strange to go to the beach in January, but in South Texas that’s a prime time for nature and quiet, cool days and windy nights.

Wrote to the innkeepers tonight for reservations – fingers crossed.

for a fellow multi-faceted lunatic

1. Paranoid: You’re lying to me, aren’t you? Everyone lies to me.
2. Schizoid: Who cares what you think, asshole?
3. Schizotypal: The birds want you all to be quiet now. Tweet tweet woof.
4. Antisocial: Shut up or I’ll shoot you again.
5. Borderline: I’m going to kill myself now and it’s your fault.
6. Histrionic: Has anyone ever in the history of pain suffered under undeserved criticism as I am suffering now?
7. Narcissistic: Perhaps you should talk to my famous friend the psychotherapist to adjust your inaccurate opinion of me.
8. Avoidant: _________.
9. Dependent: You’re right about me. You’re so, so right. What do I do now? Could you make me a list? And call me every day to make sure I’m doing it right?
10. Obsessive-compulsive: According to the DSM-IV, I only meet five of the six necessary criteria for that particular diagnosis, and having taken the test eighteen times I think I know best.
11. Depressive: *bleeds quietly*
12. Passive-aggressive: You’re probably right. What’s for dinner? No, I’m not angry. No I’m not. Why do you always ask me that? What’s wrong with you?
13. I’m afraid. I’m alone in here. I hurt.

I think I hit at least eight of these in a recent conversation… and that’s not even trying hard.

Crazy is à la carte, not prix-fixe. You pay for everything, but you can have all you want.

It can happen anytime – after Thanksgiving. It can happen anywhere – but if you live in South Texas, you know exactly what I mean.

Perhaps you’re driving home from dropping your child at school, in a blissful haze at the resumption of a semi-normal routine. Perhaps you’re innocently wandering the aisles of a department or grocery store, idly wondering if that leftover Jello mold is still good and if you can get away with leftovers just one more night.  The seasonal deluge may have begun for retailers, but in the non-selling world one holiday is over, the next is a safe distance away. Ignore the sparkly displays of clamshell-secured happiness, glide serenely past anything red or green. Surely a day or two of non-festivity is allowed…

Then a twang. An opening note. And José Frickin’ Feliciano, dark glasses twinkling, cuatro firmly in hand, is gleefully humping your auditory canal once again and it’s Christmas in South Texas, like it or not.

Y’all.

(I published the first part of this before and took it down; now parts 2 and 3 are finished and I thought what the hell. Sue me. Part 1 is below.)

Mrs. E and the Big Mistake (continued)

Because of course, I was lying through my lovely veneered teeth.

We had dated, if the definition of “dating” can be understood to include “screwing around during a season of summer rep before Ms. Euphrosyne had matured enough to end an existing relationship honestly, thereby employing the classic technique of using the fling as a catalyst with no intention of ever taking it, or him, seriously.” It had seemed so perfect, in a sleazy way. He was almost ten years older, living and going to graduate school across the country in the fairytale world of C___________, and most importantly, he had played the end of the summer beautifully in harmony with my narcissistic needs.

Yes, it was fine that we date other people. Yes, we should stay in touch. Yes, maybe we could arrange a meeting at some unspecified future time, but there was to be no pressure, no obligation. I was nineteen, a late bloomer in full and raging efflorescence, and the last thing I wanted was a commitment of any kind. He was almost insultingly fine with that. I cried when I left my new friends that August; I could barely speak to the man I truly had a terrible crush on; I said good-bye to the fling with not a flutter of regret, and he was just as calm.

Strange, though – staying in touch apparently meant letters, actual letters from that faraway land, almost every week. Phone calls, never oppressive but always when promised. A near-surprise visit in November for my birthday, which involved some hasty rescheduling and even more annoying buzz in the incestuous little world of the theater department. Finally, an invitation to spend the holiday season in California: first in the sunny south, then up to San Francisco and the hills and valleys beyond to meet his brother and celebrate a late Christmas with his mother and stop by his father’s and spend New Year’s Eve in the Castro and anyone with half a brain reading this now can see what was coming. All I heard was “free vacation and hey, as a bonus, more sex.”

This is how, at the tender age of twenty, I was blindsided by a proposal to leave A______, move to C__________ and live happily ever after with a man I barely knew. That’s when it ended. Although he hid it well until my plane took off for Texas, the extent of his rage became apparent not long after, when he responded to a friendly “How are you?” note with a big fat “How the hell do you think I am?” Ouch. Game over. And if I’d read him wrong, or not at all, at least I’d been honest (I said to myself) and that was what counted (I reasoned) and that was that (really). No guilt there. Well played, Ms. E.

Except… enmeshed in that same small world for the next fourish years, I kept hearing things. For the very next summer, due in large part to a hazy knowledge of C_______an geography, I took a job at a repertory theater not five miles from where the fling’s mother still lived. She happened to be very good friends with the lovely woman with whom I stayed, who happened to be married to the company manager, who happened to have employed both the fling and his brother when they had happened to attend the very same college where I was now working. Small, small, painfully small world. It wasn’t long before my name got back to his mother. And that summer, and the next two I spent there, I heard things, bit by bit, from people who knew me and people who didn’t.

One of his classmates, rather obviously in my hearing, recounted how he didn’t date at all that previous autumn, telling his friends he was in love with a girl in Texas, but everyone knew that meant he was gay because who would even do that? The next year, an undergrad with a terrible crush on him cornered me in the sanctum sanctorum of my dye room and spent two hours describing her hopeless infatuation and the bitch, unknown to her, who’d dumped him. She may have made him cookies; by the end of the diatribe, I was wide-eyed with terror, convinced she knew the truth and was only waiting for a loud enough dryer cycle to push my head into a boiling vat of dye.  His mother sent sweet inquiries about my health every single year… and then, in the last weeks of my last summer there, in the first weeks of my first marriage, she appeared quite literally out of the darkness one evening outside the costume shop. I could not fathom why. I still can’t.

But by then, I felt like shit about the whole damn thing. Not always, of course, and not even frequently; I had plenty of wretched behavior to occupy my time and consciousness for the next few years. However, when it crossed my mind, that glow of self-satisfaction was long gone. Superficial dishonesty was one thing; willful blindness, I had begun to see, was deception of a deeper dye.

One sheet of cheap printer paper; one grainy photo; one obnoxiously curious kid. One mess to avoid at all cost.

(to be continued)

(I published the first part of this before and took it down; now parts 2 and 3 are finished and I thought what the hell. Sue me.)

Mrs. E and the Big Mistake

There is no doubt that I showed spectacularly poor judgment; not head-through-a-windshield or hey-I’m-in-jail poor judgment, but poor nonetheless. In retrospect, however, I feel a substantial portion of blame (and isn’t that what it’s all about, really?) should rest squarely on the skinny shoulders of The Kid Who Should Have Been in Honors English. You always get at least one in the chaos of wildly varied adolescent humanity that is “regular” freshman English: the transfer whose records haven’t made it yet, the eighth-grade binge drinker who is now sober with a 1.3 grade average, the emotionally disturbed introvert disguising rage as apathy, or the most depressing type, the hard-drugging 17-year-old total waste of potential.

The Kid in this instance was a classic transfer delay. He was polite, he was smart, he knew all the answers, he was a typical late-maturing male – he was exactly like most of the guys in all my own high school classes. Fortunately for The Kid’s health and well-being, he was also funny and rather pretty, a favorite with the regular English pep squad girls, although their approval did not extend to thinking of him as a potential sexual partner. The popular girls adopted him, petted him, laughed at his jokes – and you can bet your sweet ass that meant most of the boys did not give in to their natural instinct to kill off the weakest pack member. Even the most hormone-addled teenage boy knows you don’t kick the hot chick’s dog. So The Kid, unlike most of his misplaced kind, enjoyed a relatively peaceful scholastic existence.

The Kid did, however, like to wait for his ride home in my room after school, which I permitted the infants on the understanding that a) they could be ejected at any time without cause or warning and b) I, Mrs. E, was in complete control of the music and finally c) if that music contained the occasional naughty word I, their beloved teacher, was not aware of it and could not be held responsible for any potential juvenile delinquency NIN might inspire. All was well. Sometimes my little after-hours fiefdom racketed with boys falling off random horizontal surfaces; sometimes it reeked of fruity lip gloss and hair spray; rarely did it lack an infection of teenagery. The Kid in particular showed up regularly, occasionally with a similarly-proportioned male friend, usually alone.

It was in January, the beginning of our second semester, when the unwashed masses returned to face the second half of their freshman year and the semester grades from their first half. There was moaning. There was wailing. There was tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth. There was intense interest, not so much in doing classwork or showing up, but in that magical mender of all things grade-related: EXTRA CREDIT. I was not inclined to oblige, partly on principle, partly because I was engaged in the big build-up to starting Romeo and Juliet with kids who for the most part had never heard of the play. Or of Shakespeare. Or apparently of page numbers… anyway, it was a hectic time. We did language exercises with the “little words” that throw first-time readers off so badly: “thee” and “thou,” “hence” and “thence.” They practiced taking notes from my oral history of the wives of Henry the Eighth disguised as a saga of the Old West, with Hank the powerful rancher collecting and discarding wives from the surrounding ranches and cities in the pursuit of a son. We looked at a model of The Globe and reenacted typical audience behavior in the late 1500’s. They were interested. They were unafraid. They were ready.

Then we opened the book.

One day of looking at fourteen lines of clearly annotated large-print Shakespeare with every other word defined on the side of the page, and the howling for extra credit began anew. I gave my usual speech about doing the minimum required amount of work and coming to class; they resorted to begging; the bell rang and I said,”I’ll think about it.”

The next class day, twenty-something people who could not collectively remember the date, a pencil or the location of the wastebasket remembered those four words.

“Fine,” I told them. “Here’s what we’ll do. Right now, as a group, give me people whose modern-day careers require them to read Shakespeare. Quiet Girl, write them on the board.”

We got quite a list, really – actors, directors, English teachers, librarians, etc., with the drama kids contributing wildly fantastical creatures like costume designers and stage managers. Then, in a halo of pedagogical relevance, I threw them the bait.

“Now go online (many of them still didn’t have computers at home, but they had library access) and find a job requiring some knowledge of Shakespeare which we haven’t already listed.” Pencils began scrabbling.

“Mrs. E,” said one youngster,”How many can we each bring in?”

“Ah!” I said, aglow with my own cleverness. “There’s the catch. Each of you can bring in only one, and there can be no repetition. That means if you bring one and someone else brings the same one later, you cancel each other out and neither gets credit. If that happens, you have the opportunity to try again, but the deadline remains the same.” So much for sharing research, you little buggers, I said to myself, and dismissed them.

That very afternoon, one of my collection of skater boys wandered in after school with his board (contraband on campus) and a piece of paper in his other hand. The Kid was on the other side of the room reading something appropriately uncool. Skateboy made an unusually direct line to my desk, handed me the folded paper, and said,”I found one.”

“Already?” I enthused, teacher-style. “Good for you! What is it?”

“D_________ c_____,” he replied, and I realized he was lowering his already-quiet voice to avoid being overheard by the one person in his class whom we both knew had absolutely no use for extra credit. It was the principle of the thing.

Still holding the paper, I played along and quietly said,”Skateboy, that’s great. I haven’t even heard of that – what did you search on?”

“How to _____ like ____________.” (the reason for my unusual reticence will soon be clear)

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, and opened the paper, and saw a picture, and had a funny feeling, and read a name, and blurted out loud, “Oh my God – I know him.”

Mistake number one. From the back of the room, The Kid called out, “Know who, Mrs. E? Who do you know?”

Here’s where I got lucky. My instinctive English teacher response of “Whom, not who” gave me just enough time to realize that 98% of this subject was not within my boundaries of acceptable sharing material, which were fairly broad but well-defined. No sexual anything, no drug or alcohol stories, no politics and only PG-13 rated anecdotes from well in the past. Personal interests, yes; private life, no. There was no way in hell I was letting out any more than I already had.

By now The Kid had bounded over a few desks and was leaning over my monitor trying to see the paper.

“Dude, don’t look at that,” protested Skateboy. “That’s my extra credit.”

“He’s right,” I said.

“Like I need extra credit,” huffed The Kid. Skateboy and I exchanged a look. Score one, I thought. Now there’s no way my little skater friend is giving up this name.

“So do I get it?” he asked, and when I nodded, he picked up his board and ambled away content.

The Kid would not be appeased. “Okay, don’t tell me the name, but what do you mean you know him?”

Mistake number two. Thinking that a little information would satisfy his curiosity, I told the small blight, “Skateboy found someone with a Shakespeare-related job, and I realized that I went to college with him. Remember I told you guys my first degree was in theater?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “So are you going to e-mail him?”

What? A complete blank. Look, I’m not of this generation. I don’t share the need or the desire to connect myself with every possible person in the online world. Besides, although I hadn’t had much time to reflect, I had a strong bad feeling associated with this name, and if The damn Kid would leave me alone for two seconds I could remember exactly what it was…

“So are you? Were you friends? Did you go out with him, Mrs. E?”

Cut this off quick. “NO, we did not date.”

“So why don’t you e-mail him?”

Shut up and let me think. What was that bad feeling? “Isn’t it time for you to go?”

“Not for five more minutes… e-mail him, Mrs. E! Maybe he’ll tell us stories about you in college.”

Oh Christ no. What was it? “Out!” and I pointed to the door.

The Kid took his dismissal with his usual good grace, gathering up books and backpack and heading for the door. “See you Wednesday, Mrs. E!” he called back.

No answer from Mrs. E. In ten, maybe fifteen seconds of uninterrupted thought, every memory had fallen into place. I had recognized the unpleasant feeling associated with this face and name.

It was guilt.

(to be continued)