EPISODE OF WILD PLANT KINGDOM

And now for an episode of Wild Plant Kingdom:
(Please read it in the voice of Marlin Perkins for full effect.)

Sal and I have been on the elusive trail of the Amorphophallus Titanum, also known as the Corpse Flower, a flower that we have been trailing for nearly a decade. This flower is unique in many ways because it only blooms every seven to ten years. Its blossom holds for about twenty-four hours (if we are lucky), and the bloom itself smells like dead animals and rotting human flesh.

Amorphophallus Titanum literaly means "misshapen giant penis." (I'm just going to leave that right here. It doesn't have anything to do with the rest of our report, but it is a fact that many women can attest to witnessing at least once in their lifetimes.)

We have attempted to smell the blossoming Corpse Flower before. Our travels have taken us numerous times to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, so many times, in fact, that we now know our way from the zoo to Yankee Lobster and the Harpoon Brewery without needing the expressway nor GPS. Despite going to the zoo every day for two straight weeks, the flower, aptly named Morticia, did a quick bloom in the searing heat and was quite done emitting her fragrance by the time we arrived hours later. These expeditions made us both great pals of the scientists in charge of the greenhouse and semi-experts in the life cycle of the misshapen giant penis flower.

While visiting Morticia, we also saw a small sprout of a Corpse Flower, a dinky little leafy plant named Fester. It is Fester that we have come to see today, and, despite our best efforts, we are almost too late. Fester has bloomed on a Sunday, so we rush in on Monday (at the mercy of Covid reservation times).

We are on complete autopilot as we sail through the Roxbury-Dorchester-Jamaica Plain triangle, arrive within five minutes of our required entrance time, and head almost directly to the flower. Sal is distracted while learning about the sex habits of two young giraffes from an overly-sharing park ranger. We make our way past the playground, along the kangaroos, and chat with the emu who follows our steps from its side of the fence.

Finally. Nirvana. We stand in a short line to get our chance to see and smell Fester.

It is not the absolute disgusting and hideous experience for which we have been hoping, and our years of quest seem for naught.  However, blessed be, if we stand at a certain angle, remove our Covid masks, use our hands to help swish the air forward, there is no doubt, no doubt at all, that we are smelling Fester's corpsey stench.

Yes, indeed, we came, we saw, we smelled, we conquered.

To be honest, though. Sal and I would love to see the bloom completely open and to be bowled over by the odor, so overcome in fact that we dry heave. Dry heaving over the Corpse Flower would be THE ultimate experience.

With that reality in mind, people, please keep us informed of any more Corpse Flowers you might hear about that are ready to bloom. Although this was a small conquest, we are still willing, sort of like King Henry VI, to go once more unto the stench, dear friends.

YEAR-END LIFE CYCLE OF A TEACHER

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it,
And I feel fine.

Life of a Teacher at the End of the Year: True Story

• After hours of calculating term #4 data (and still not finishing it), I fall asleep at my desk with the pencil in my hand.
• I drag myself to bed at midnight (early) and sleep straight through until 5:30.
• I look at the beautiful sunrise and think, "I should go kayaking early..."
• I fall asleep again.
• At 6:30 I am awakened by the same thought, "I should go kayaking before work and before the state park gets too crowded."
• I promptly succumb to sleep yet again.
• At 7:25 the alarm goes off.
• I roll over and say out loud to no one in particular (okay, to me, I say it to myself), "Get out of bed, Bitch, you're missing the day!"
• This is Hit the Wall time, kids, and it ain't pretty.

Fast-forward a couple of days:

• Google Meet finally gets an update where I can see all of the students at the same time.
• I try to do a Google Meet with each class on the last day.
• Two classes in, it is obvious that this isn't working -- everything keeps freezing and I keep getting kicked out of my own classes.
• Crash and Burn
• At noon, I cancel my last two classes, announce that it is a true half-day, and tell everyone via email to have a fabulous summer.
• At 2:00, the official end to my last day, I get into my car, drive directly to the liquor store, and buy myself summer ale and bubbly.
• By early evening, I have cracked open a beer and a book. Summer is here.

NEIGHBORHOOD LIMERICKS

My daughter complained recently that she has not been the subject of the blog in quite a while. Part of this is because she has been working nonstop, I have been working nonstop, and Covid-19 has put a stop to anything remotely fun and interesting to do. There are only so many times that we can sit on the porch with face masks, Zoom trivia, and pass like ships in the night while doing laundry.

Finally we get a decent day, too hot, as a matter of fact, so we decide to sit outside. The mini pool that she ordered has not yet arrived, so I bring out plastic storage containers that we fill with water.  Yes, we are those people, the ones who will squat their asses into a vat of cold water on an amazingly toasty day regardless of how many people pass by our heavily trafficked street.

In honor of being those people, and in honor of my daughter wanting to be in the blog again, here are some limericks I penned while enjoying the low-rent version of a side-yard water park.  Enjoy!

On our street we party in pools
To stay so excessively cool.
We spray all the water
Like crazy old otters,
And eat lots of pasta fazool.

The neighborhood gang is agog,
Pretending they are polliwogs.
They question of me,
"Hey, when will it be
That you write of us in your old blog?"

The gang say they'd like me to pick
A blog topic with them in it quick.
I write these poems three,
But they still badger me,
So here is your damn limerick!

SIGN OF THE TIMES

I hit the wall at work (at home).  My constant twelve-to-fifteen-hour days have taken their toll, but I am finally at a near-stopping point.  The planning, thank goodness, is complete.  The hardest part about this whole thing is being away from all of my materials and resources and actual flesh-and-blood students and co-workers.

At long last I am allowed into school for one hour -- that's it; exactly sixty minutes -- to pack up my room.  Anyone who has ever taught anywhere for any amount of time will attest to the reality that sixty minutes is barely enough time to grab our own personal stuff, dispose of any food items that might have rotted away over the last eleven weeks, and possibly lock down things we'd like to keep, such as electric hole punches and independent reading books.

I go in, stuff whatever I can into the trash can, the recycle bin, and my closet that never locks, and I move stuff around to present the appearance that perhaps I really did try to "put away materials."  The administration has been cleaning out lockers, so there are gray trash bags lining the hallways like some kind of post-apocalyptic laboratory.  I am alone in my end of the building for a while.

Then comes the squeaking.  Something is moving through the trash-bag infested hallways, and it is making an "eeeeeeeeeeek eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekeeeeeeekeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkeeeeeeeeee" sound as it approaches my room.  I look out and see a teacher from across the hallway wheeling a decrepit plastic cart toward her room.  Loaded onto the cart are empty trash bags and cheap folding totes, and the effect creates the illusion that she is wheeling dead Jabba the Hutt down the hallway.

That's when it hits me: This place is a morgue.  It's a morgue of a dead year, dead dreams, dead memories, dead possibilities, dead learning.  The school year has been forced off the highway into the trees at breakneck speed, and it pretty much died on impact.  Oh, sure, we have all made believe that it is alive and thriving on life support, but let's face reality: This year is brain-dead.

I pack up what I can carry in both arms, about sixty pounds divided into four bags, and waddle my way out to my car not so much because of the extra weight (I am strong enough to carry a full-grown human) but because I am short and forgot to tie up the handles, so I am literally not tall enough to carry my own junk out of the school.  Of course, my car is parked far away and under a tree, so this quarter-mile journey feels like a death march, and my arms ache by the time I set things on the tar to reach for my keys and pop the trunk.

As I am shutting everything down and walking toward the driver's door, I turn one last time to take a final look, as if I cannot even fathom that this is the end of it all for the year.  That's when I see the sign.  Yes.  Oh, yes, of course.  Such a perfect, fitting, poetic sentiment staring back at me, blocking the view of my room's windows.  Well, stupid sign, just don't be a predictor of my fate in September; this has been hard enough, cruel enough, distasteful enough already.  I snap a picture of the sign and, with a wry grin, get into my car and pull away from the school one last time, watching the words disappear into my rear view mirror as I turn away into the street:

Do not enter.