BALANCING ACT AND THE HAZ-MAT TEAM

I’m reliving the last few years of my life through my bank statements.  I haven’t balanced my checkbook in a long while, and I have been hoarding receipts.  Today I sift through all of those receipts, getting organized to make the final balance and see how horribly I’ve screwed myself by being so lazy.

I used to balance my checkbook to the penny every month almost as soon as the statement arrived.  Then I started balancing kids’ accounts, too, and then I had two kids in college, and then the third kid went to college, and then I also went back to college yet again.  I feel like I’ve spent a large part of my adult life taking classes.  The checkbook balancing became an exercise in making sure there was something still in there when I hit the ATM.  Money’s available?  Must be balanced.

I don’t have any excuse, though.  I have relatives who’ve been patiently waiting for two years now for me to plow through a box of family photographs, but I can’t do that yet.  I have to balance my checkbook first.  It’s the last giant hurdle holding me back after the weddings and graduations and sporting events and thesis-writing that have occupied my time and brain.  I am so dedicated to the cause that I never even change my clothes today.  I am still wearing the exact same clothes I went to bed in last night -- plaid flannel pants and a lightweight long-sleeved t-shirt.  Sexy, I know.  Try and hold yourselves back.  (I did apply deodorant and pull my hair back.  I have some pride, you know.)

I should be deeply ashamed of myself for my financial negligence.  I’ve managed to misplace two statements – I’ve no idea how – from 2009.  Yes, 2009, and yes, I do need them.  Don’t judge me; I feel stupid enough as it is.  I go to the bank website, download and print out the now-online statements for the part of 2014 that I don’t find in still-unopened envelopes today.  The bank only goes back as far as 2010.  Damn.  I’m going to have to put in the formal request for those two documents.  Of course, the bank website only allows me to request a month, as in a full month.  The statements run from the 14^th of one month to the 13^th of the next.  I guess that means I have a 50-50 shot of requesting the correct ones.

The best part about today, so far, anyway, is the shredder.  I’ve had that baby rolling for hours.  The best feeling in the world is the purging of the old crap I don’t need anymore.  I find a blue folder mysteriously stashed amongst the pile of junk.  It is crammed with receipts from Christmas … 2010.  Yup, so if anyone wants to return anything, I’ve got you covered.  No, wait – most of that folder is now in little straggly paper bits.

This process is somewhat like looking through a giant scrapbook.  I come across the hospital receipt for when my son busted his foot and missed most of his JV soccer season.  There are old beach parking receipts that I saved because I used my debit card.  I find receipts for when I went crazy from a stressful year at work and cut off all of my hair (it took three appointments for the horrified stylists to understand my incoherent babbling, terrified to go near me with scissors lest I bite their fingers off). 

I also find receipts for restaurants that I have absolutely no recollection going to – The Pizza Factory?  I ate there? I don’t even know where it is.  And CVS claims that Extra Bucks “never” expire.  Really?  Because I’m going to try out that theory soon with the few I uncovered hiding in the years-old stash.  CVS owes my $5.45, and I intend to collect, damnit!

Some of the receipts are so old that the ink has faded away.  I sort of kind of guess where they’re from.  Honestly, I’m not that worried because anything I put on the debit card will appear on my statements.  But it’s all about the orchestration of it all.  The papers and the numbers and the statements and the registers … they have to synch; they must play beautiful music together.  If they don’t, if my checkbook ends up looking like a Stravinsky score, I’ve no one to blame but myself (and Igor and his cacophonic notes). 

Sunday I am supposed to go to various places – a party, a tournament, the store (I’m out of milk), and I desperately need to shower and change my clothes.  I have a feeling, though, a sinking and awful feeling, that the mountain of receipts and statements I spent all day sorting, filing, and organizing, will prevent me from getting much else done.  If I can wrap up years of financial ignorance in the span of one weekend, I’ll amaze even myself.  (If I find extra money, I’ll be even more amazed.)

In the meantime, don’t send out a search party.  I think I’ll be okay.  As long as the steady whirring-grinding sound is coming from the den where I have given my usually mobile shredder a permanent home (I moved a bookshelf to plug it in --- that puppy isn’t moving), you won’t need to send out a search party or paramedics or the haz-mat team (though the latter is probably needed already).   Ignore the screams of torture and the wailing of mistakes and the screeches of agony when I’ve used up the last pencil eraser trying to correct my mistakes (went through an entire eraser already today).

When it’s all said and done, the checkbook WILL be balanced … and that will make one of us.

GIVING THEM SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT

I have the most uptight and yet most rip-roaringly hilarious students this year.  They will be lackadaisical about doing homework, then damn-near crap themselves when grades come out.  I have some who do absolutely nothing at all in class, then completely ace (and I mean decimatingly so) the exams and writing assignments.  To say they’re ultra-picky about every single fraction of a point would be an understatement.

I suppose it’s better to have them too concerned about their term-end grades than completely indifferent … right?

(I want this tissue box!)

Until I realize I need more boxes of tissues.

As the end of the term approaches, it is time to give a whopper of an exam.  I choose a teleplay we’ve read in class, one that we’ve work-sheeted to near-death, and one that synthesizes the few notes we have on same-old-same-old concepts, like plot and theme and conflict.  It’s all old paper to them, and they have the notes, study guides, and review sheets ready to go.  They know the material when I ask them pre-test questions.  They make flashcards.  They seem ready.

After the test is over, I hear both “That was easy!” and “That was hard!” so I figure it must be a reasonably fair assessment.  The writing portion is a two-day, open-book, take-home, workshop-in-class-the-day-before-it’s-due assignment.  Completely fail-safe … if just they would do what I ask them to do.  (Therein usually hides the dilemma.)

Naturally, the grades are all over the map when it’s said and done.  They know it, and I know it.  But truly, it’s all going to be okay.  This is term one of seventh grade.  Life really does go on after and in spite of it.  At least, someone old like me knows this.  To these kiddos, though, life can be all about that almighty numerical qualifier.

This is where it starts to get comical.

I am about to hand back the exams, when suddenly the entire class gets up, first one at a time, then a couple together, then in small droves.  They descend upon the lone tissue box like radiation victims grabbing for iodine.  “Don’t hand the tests out yet,” they implore, “we have to get ready.”

Ready?  For what?

I look around the room, and all of the students are holding tissues to their eyes.  They’re ready now.  Ready for the waterworks.  Ready to cry over their grades.

Me?  I bust out laughing.

In the decades I have been teaching, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.  So, I do what anyone in my teaching shoes would do. 

I torture them.

Yup, I wave the stack of tests in front of them and tell them that maybe I should wait until tomorrow to return them.  This brings gasps of horror.  One girl almost cries over the mere thought.  Another student agrees that it would be better to wait.  A small group attacks him verbally, demanding he stifle himself so I’ll hand out the exams.

I cannot help myself.  It’s impossible for me to fathom how wound-up they are over their averages.  Part of me is happy they’re so conscientious; part of me is disgusted by their attachment to numerical validation; part of me, I’ll be honest, is peeing my pants watching them all sit there with white tissues pasted to their faces.

In the end, I return the test scores, and the kiddos see that they did rather well, some remarkably so.  One young man yells out “Hurrah,” tossing his unused tissue into the air like a cheerleader’s pompom flying out overhead.  They laugh, a couple grimace, but, for the most part, they have survived.

No one died from getting an average score.  No one will be beaten for bringing home a 97% instead of a 100% (at least, I hope not).  No one will be denied admittance to Harvard for a grade seven test on The Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” 

I still need a new box of tissues, though.  Guess I’ll be investing a dollar in their education.  After forcing them all to hysteria (ala Rod Serling), it’s the least thing I can do for the little cherubs.

DARK NOVEMBER

Dark by 4:30.

I don’t know why, but every November I somehow convince myself that it really doesn’t get black-dark before 5:00 p.m., and every November I am still surprised that sundown occurs around 4:30. 

Each afternoon this week, I have rushed out of work at the first legal moment, only to be sadly disappointed by the severe angle of the waning sunlight.  I rushed through a walk the other afternoon, barely making it home before it became too dim to see the fallen sticks poking through the leaves that covered the sidewalk.  I was inches from poking my eye out on a small branch that I didn’t see until it slapped me in the face.

November, I love Thanksgiving, and I do enjoy the consistent good-sleeping weather.  But this early darkness shit?  Not working for me.

I know it will get worse before it gets better, but I can’t stand it.  I keep looking at the clock, wondering if it’s bedtime yet since it has been dark for hours.  Nope … not bedtime.  Dinner time, though.

I can make it.  I know I can make it.  I know mid-December is the turning point.  The problem is that I don’t want to be wishing November away.  I guess I just wish it didn’t have to be so dark in the morning and so dark in the mid-afternoon, and, unfortunately, this just so happens to occur during poor, innocent, minding-its-own-business November. 

Oh, okay, November.  Must suck to have everyone complain and whine about you.  I’ll try to love you for more than just Thanksgiving.  You have Veterans’ Day, too.  And sometimes you even let it snow.  And you’re weeks shy of the holidays.  Not only that, but I put my tree up and start decorating in November. 

I guess we’ll keep you, then.

But if you could work on that sunlight thing, I’d really appreciate it.

POLITICAL HAIKU ... OR ... HIGH COUP

Haiku … or high coup?

Politics can be extreme

Revolution – yes.

Elections are done

Stop your bullshit because now

We are friends again

It seems so eerie:

No more ads on the TV—

Safe to turn it on

Idea: Movie

“I see dead career Congress!”

Call it The Sixth Cent(s)

Yup, my state’s still blue

Guess that’s no Welfare Reform

Get your freebies here

I am unenrolled

Both parties are too extreme

Whack-jobs at both ends

At least I voted

Those who didn’t, shut your face-

Whiners can’t complain

Oh well.  Chance to breathe

Will probably be short-lived:

Presidential race…

PRETENDING TO WITNESS A DIFFERENCE

This afternoon while coming home from work, I barely miss being involved in a multi-car collision on a busy and dangerous major thoroughfare.  My co-worker is in front of me by about forty-five seconds.  I stop in the parking lot, hesitating before I pull on to the school’s long driveway, so I can fish around for my glasses.  I need my glasses for reading, and I’m on my way to vote.  It’s imperative that I be able to read the ballot.

I lose sight of my co-worker’s small blue car, pass by another co-worker’s red SUV, and head further north, my mind completely on the election. Up ahead of me I see a black car across the road, as if it is trying to turn and has been blocked, so I slow down.  The car is not in the middle of a turn, though.  It has been spun around sideways.

As we all come to a stop in the middle of the four-lane road, I quickly scan what’s going on.  Someone is lying down in the dirt on the other side of the road.  She’s not badly hurt as she throws herself onto the ground then quickly stands up again.  Shock, I surmise, she’s probably scared out of her mind and dazed at what just happened.

There are several people on that side of the road there to help her.  A construction van of some type has pulled over, so I go back to the business of letting people cut in front of me to go around the scene to the right.  The dumbass driver in front of me and to the left, though, ignores my flashing lights and obvious gesture to let him or her into the traffic pattern.  The driver seems completely absorbed in looking over the scene and drives way too close to the disabled black sedan. 

As I come around the accident, I see the other half of what is going on.  A read car has been completely smeared, its entire passenger side destroyed, scraped, pushed in.  I cannot see if anyone is still inside.  Several cars have pulled over onto the sidewalk, and someone’s horn is beeping … beeping … beeping.

I make the split-second decision to continue on my way.  I don’t really know much first aid, I don’t recognize the cars involved, and I didn’t witness the accident.  If I am to stop now, I’ll be in the way.  Seriously.  When I am asked, “Why did you stop?” I doubt “Because I’m a gawker” will suffice.  The police will tell me to get my stupid ass right out of there.  So, without waiting for the middle man, I get my stupid ass right out of there.

This accident, though, is moments old, perhaps only seconds.  No emergency crews have yet arrived nor do I hear any sirens.  I take a few breaths and thank my glasses for once not being on my head, for delaying me just that much longer that neither I nor my colleague managed to be involved, or at least she wasn’t because I don’t see her car – unless it has been catapulted somewhere off the street.

I poke along behind some slow-bees all the way to the polling place in my town, about seven miles from the accident scene.  I am extra-vigilant looking for traffic patterns, doubting directionals and easing up on my lead foot.  That could have been me had I left on time.  I feel as lucky for myself as I feel horrible for those involved.  I sincerely hope that there are no major injuries … or worse. 

Yes, I vote.  I vote in this crash-and-burn political arena that I’m not sure will be any better than nor painless than the massive collision I have just passed.  I doubt the police and firemen can help out this major collision of self-absorbed professional and perpetual career politicians.  At least here in the polling place while standing in the voting booth, I can pretend to witness a difference.