Note: I have been rather meticulous in recording to this blog without censorship or embellishment the scribbling I did in those old manila Los Angeles Unified School District notebooks no matter how misanthropic, mundane, or embarrassing, but for the first time I am omitting an entry because it would have destroyed the relative anonymity I've hoped to preserve since said entry depended on the etymology of my actual surname and some phylogenetic speculation on my ancestry and a childhood memory which was a bit too self-conscious as opposed the strict banal reportage which seems to have been the rule here (It had been written in response to a prompt during a multicultural retreat that was really a racist commune that discriminated against white people based on the color of their skin). Once that taboo of omission had been broached, it was no great leap to arbitrarily skip another entry which was not worth the ink expended, and then another and then it became difficult to identify where, if anywhere, an entry was worth the ink expended, and I finally settled just as arbitrarily on the following:
4/15/98 W 8:25 AM
Finished journal number 22 yesterday. This one already had writing in it, but it was the only one I had left at the house, left over from that "multicultural" "retreat" last year. Weird how the date from last year, 4-14-97, was yesterday and at random I am writing in here exactly one year later to the day that I would have been had I continued here a year ago.
I have to lead the kids in a rehearsal for the morning assembly next week.
6:00 PM I'm at night school. In the car on the way over here I thought there were some things I was burning to write. They're gone now, though. I wasn't sure whether or not to open the classroom doors before class. I usually do, but then my students stream in wanting to talk, and I wanted to write, and technically the class hadn't started yet. What happened to my ideas?
I opened the door. The daytime teacher has her class put the chairs up on the tables so the custodians can sweep the floors. They are a bit heavy, plastic seats and metal legs, and a toddler, the son of a couple in my class, almost pulled one onto himself, but I happened to see him and sprang over and caught the chair before it fell on him. Yes. I'm a hero. He might have had his skull crushed.
What else? The Dodgers were snowed out today. I worked on Jim a little. What about Shirelle? What happened to my ideas? I was stuck at a red light. I asked my students if brisoso is a word. I thought it might mean breezy. They said it was not a word. Though they rely on my Spanish fluency in our communications, sometimes they like to ridicule some minor grammatical error in my Spanish, with no self-awareness as to the irony that they are there to learn English of which they know nearly nothing. Maybe it makes them feel the playing field has been leveled, makes them more comfortable in their second-language acquisition. Nearly everyone arrives late. I write the lessons on the board while I wait for them to arrive. Today, I'll finish this while I wait. I'll have to remember to return this pencil to the desk where I got it.
I'm always a little paranoid on Pico. Some guys were unloading a large plate of glass from a truck. They were parked along the curb and unloading the glass on the traffic side of the truck. I didn't see them at first. I was in the other lane, stuck behind a car waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic to turn left on Crenshaw. I wanted to go around him, but a bus was stopped in the other lane, blocking the view of the guys unloading the big plate of glass. As the guy in front of me inched forward enough space opened up between him and the bus for me to squeeze through. Another car got there before me and I zipped in behind him, and he suddenly braked, forcing me to abort my maneuver. "Fucking dick!" I said out the window. That was when I saw that he was slowing down because the guys were unloading the plate glass before him.
So that's two anti-climactic, disaster-averted stories for one evening.
What else? How rude that I haven't begun my class. Yeah, like they worship punctuality. I think I can show that distance-learning video about money tonight. I smoked at home. I did my third person. The Mariners and Indians cleared the benches. The Big Unit Johnson got two up near hot-head Lofton's ear.
4/15/98 W 8:25 AM
Finished journal number 22 yesterday. This one already had writing in it, but it was the only one I had left at the house, left over from that "multicultural" "retreat" last year. Weird how the date from last year, 4-14-97, was yesterday and at random I am writing in here exactly one year later to the day that I would have been had I continued here a year ago.
I have to lead the kids in a rehearsal for the morning assembly next week.
6:00 PM I'm at night school. In the car on the way over here I thought there were some things I was burning to write. They're gone now, though. I wasn't sure whether or not to open the classroom doors before class. I usually do, but then my students stream in wanting to talk, and I wanted to write, and technically the class hadn't started yet. What happened to my ideas?
I opened the door. The daytime teacher has her class put the chairs up on the tables so the custodians can sweep the floors. They are a bit heavy, plastic seats and metal legs, and a toddler, the son of a couple in my class, almost pulled one onto himself, but I happened to see him and sprang over and caught the chair before it fell on him. Yes. I'm a hero. He might have had his skull crushed.
What else? The Dodgers were snowed out today. I worked on Jim a little. What about Shirelle? What happened to my ideas? I was stuck at a red light. I asked my students if brisoso is a word. I thought it might mean breezy. They said it was not a word. Though they rely on my Spanish fluency in our communications, sometimes they like to ridicule some minor grammatical error in my Spanish, with no self-awareness as to the irony that they are there to learn English of which they know nearly nothing. Maybe it makes them feel the playing field has been leveled, makes them more comfortable in their second-language acquisition. Nearly everyone arrives late. I write the lessons on the board while I wait for them to arrive. Today, I'll finish this while I wait. I'll have to remember to return this pencil to the desk where I got it.
I'm always a little paranoid on Pico. Some guys were unloading a large plate of glass from a truck. They were parked along the curb and unloading the glass on the traffic side of the truck. I didn't see them at first. I was in the other lane, stuck behind a car waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic to turn left on Crenshaw. I wanted to go around him, but a bus was stopped in the other lane, blocking the view of the guys unloading the big plate of glass. As the guy in front of me inched forward enough space opened up between him and the bus for me to squeeze through. Another car got there before me and I zipped in behind him, and he suddenly braked, forcing me to abort my maneuver. "Fucking dick!" I said out the window. That was when I saw that he was slowing down because the guys were unloading the plate glass before him.
So that's two anti-climactic, disaster-averted stories for one evening.
What else? How rude that I haven't begun my class. Yeah, like they worship punctuality. I think I can show that distance-learning video about money tonight. I smoked at home. I did my third person. The Mariners and Indians cleared the benches. The Big Unit Johnson got two up near hot-head Lofton's ear.
Labels: Lowlife LA Literature
posted by johnz at 9:41 PM
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