very fast. things to do.
turns out my Ethics class (hilarious enough on it's own) , second time around was going to be Business Ethics - though I was never told that detail - , in Room 129 at the far end of a huge open aired mall. Of course, I have one minute to make it to class, have never seen the room, don't know where it is. I am utterly unprepared. I grab some stack of unrelated papers to look like I have something. I am distracted along my way by a free giant cookie and coffee which I leave behind directly. I run into an overly friendly, returning student who I have been calling "Biteme"; she corrects: "Miteme!" Whatever. It is at this point, actually, that I learn - from her - I'll be teaching Business Ethics and not plain ol' Ethics. Oh shit. I try to get as much information about what it's supposed to be about as possible. I find out it will be the same group I've just had but who are now signed up to study an advanced, specialized type of practical ethics.
Soon I am behind a girl who jumps from a platform about thirty feet down onto an escalator, falls: boomboomboom.. not good. I think I will have to do the same but find the start of the escalator that goes higher and higher. It's windy as hell and I hold on for dear life, dreading mostly that this will be part of my regular commute to class. I walk/drive/fly (I dunno) through a tunnel in which, leaned up against the wall are all the students' snowboards. The tunnel winds around and it's impossible to see ahead but those boards are a real hazard. Outside the tunnel, I see some of my regular students playing hackey-sack outside, waiting for me. Because Miteme has told me it's my same group, I walk up (late but) looking like I knew where I was going. Okay, so there is more about Susan Mitchell, my poetry teacher who had dropped me off in a kind-of closed up neighborhood earlier and told me to contact her at 3:30 when her class ended so she wouldn't worry about me but I never did because I was so lost and befuddled in so many ways; her worry was another background pressure to this whole thing. (trans: quit dicking around and work on your book, dummy!) Something later about Patrick, my ex, who is now seeing Megan, my 18 year old student, which surprises no one.
In class - I am to be found kind-of fussing at the white board and writing inscrutable points (kind-of like my current class: ambitious in scope, kinda sorta somewhat interesting, very under-construction). We consider leaving early but I buck up and tell them to move their boards, safely - have someone in the front of the road and someone behind on lookout so they don't get run over, then move their boards at least to one area at the beginning that is out of the way, or remove them altogether, etc. I am impressed with my focus, leadership and clear directives.
A few of them move their stuff. Often they leave things in a worse place - right in the middle of the road. Suitcases open, etc. Disordered things spilling out. What are they thinking??
I ask them if they can understand a word I'm saying. I had given them really specific directions to help them get rid of their .... I see now.... their ..boreds....which are really in the way and making it hard to get through the dark tunnel safely and without getting completely squished.
---teachmares on the weekend. notfairnotfair.
