9 April 2008

Two hours ago, the A.P. summed up the day in Iraq: "Errant mortar shells slammed into houses and a funeral tent Wednesday, leaving three children among the dead during clashes in a Shiite militia stronghold under siege by American and Iraqi forces." That's right, "errant mortar shells." ...When did Little Lord Fauntleroy get a job writing for the A.P.? Errant mortar shells? Why flatten my lovelocks, those were surely meant forMuqtada Al Sadr, and the knaves that are in league with him, not for those unfortunate children! But alas! I am impressed, I suppose, that they've finally found such really horrible writing to fit the usual horrible news from Iraq. It's appropriately appalling.


All across America, it's the first full-blown sweltering sunny day of the most abysmal, impoverished, gasoline-starved year yet. All down the interestates, and at long, unhappy traffic lights, nobody has their windows up. Nobody can afford to run the air conditioner. Gas is impossibly expensive. Pity us.


I have this kid in my class who's a real twat. I can rest assured he'll never find out I'm talking about him online, because he's too much of a twat to know I mean him. Even when I say: "hey kid, I'm not going to tell you the fucking point of the story I asked you to read while you're taking a quiz on the story I asked you to read. I like you, but you act like a twat. Twat."

Generally, I love my students. I mean that sincerely, fully. I have an unaccountable, or unfamiliar, pride in my work, at least when I work as a teacher. And I feel genuine affection for my students generally. I feel like I've got a really big responsibility, teaching them. That's so corny, but it's authentic, and instinctive, so I'll go with it, and admit to it. I have a probably undesirable, probably paternalistic instinct, too--a protective instinct of some sort. And that's dangerous. Because, while I'm exceedingly passive with most things in life, I am disproportionately, unhealthily protective of the people I love, or am charged with protecting. I mean really way too protective. I get homicidally angry when somebody threatens or abuses the people I am supposed to protect, or the people I love. That's why I say this: I will kill you if you keep acting like a twat, kid. Stop bothering other people while they're taking quizzes.


On an entirely different note: while driving home (from teaching the twat, et al., about Frank O'Connor), as I watched gobstopped with my fuel gauge impossibly twitching and sagging, faintly falling before my eyes (I really saw this happen today, staring as I did with all the morbid, intense scrutiny of a self-pitying fuck stopped in traffic), it occured to me that, yes : I have so much honey, the bees envy me. Somebody's radio was playing that song, everybody's windows were rolled down. I feel stupid, but that realization really made me happy.