A glimpse of life lived lecturely.

Today during lecture--given by Professor Mario Brothers--I noticed that my neighbor had fallen asleep on the shoulder of his other neighbor. She seemed slightly annoyed by it, but they were acquaintances so she wasn't too upset by it. I laughed, thankful for myself and amused at someone else's misfortune. I also liked that we were in the second row, the Splash Zone if you will, since you're so close to the professor that if he spits when he talks you will get wet. It's like the first few rows at Sea World or a Gallagher performance. Anyway, if you ask me (and you are asking me because this is my fucking blog), to fall asleep within any professor's Splash Zone takes chutzpa to a new level. Instead of discretely dozing off in the back few rows of a huge lecture hall where the professor's weak eyes won't notice your closed ones, you choose to position yourself close enough to the professor that his lapel microphone can pick up your snoring.

Anyway, after a lengthy mental digression, my thoughts returned to the subject of the lecture. Well, actually my thoughts returned to their normal subject during that class--noting which words the professor has trouble pronouncing. But then something horrible happened. I sensed my neighbor shift in his seat. And then, horror of horrors, I noticed his head sleepily traveling from his other neighbor's shoulder towards me.

For any stranger reading this blog, you have to understand that I don't like being touched. It's not about germaphobia....I don't know if I have OCD or if I'm just weird, all I know is that I don't like being hugged, I don't even like handshakes, and I just generally do not like people who get too close to me. I usually make a genuine effort to forget about this problem when I'm around friends and family, but even with my own brother I would get very upset when he would fall asleep on my shoulder during car trips. So you can imagine how horrifying it was to see a stranger's head approaching and looking to do that very thing.

In fact, here's the theme from Jaws to provide a soundtrack for what I'll write next:


And so his head slowly advanced towards my shoulder. No no no, I prayed silently, please dear G-d....Buddha....Jesus....Krishna....whoever. Please for the love of all that is holy do not let him reach my shoulder. But my prayers fell on deaf ears. I had to come up with an escape, and quickly, because I only had seconds left before his head made contact with my shoulder. Realizing that I was sitting in an aisle seat, I figured I could just lean out of my seat towards the aisle. Surely his head would stop its journey eventually, and I could just sort of huddle in my corner. And so I leaned out....and his head kept coming. So I leaned out more.....and his head kept coming. Eventually it got to the point where I was leaning so far out over my armrest that I resembled a towel on a clothesline....or like a fat, dead fish just kind of flopped out, with my fat bulging over the sides of the armrest. This was as far as I could go without flipping over my armrest. And trust me, I considered it. I wasn't sure if the armrest could hold my fat, but I just held on and prayed that the advancing head would stop.

But it didn't. The head finally landed on my shoulder. Actually at this point, because of my sort of weird crouched/reclined posture it landed on my arm. But whatever, all that matters was that a stranger was now sleeping on me. There were a few minutes where I silently thought about what to do, if I had to wake him up or if I would just have to suffer through class, when suddenly and completely involuntarily my body, as if deciding to take matters into its own hands, just sort of had a spasm. It was the sort of spasm that wasn't dramatic enough for the people around me to notice, but it was strong enough to wake up Sleeping Beauty, who suddenly bolted upright, snorted, and said something like, "Huh? What?"

And then about two seconds later he had conked out once more. Thankfully he didn't use my shoulder as a pillow again, but I kept a wary eye on him for the rest of class just in case. It became apparent, however, that this guy was incapable of sleeping without a shoulder-pillow, because for the rest of class he would sort of doze off....his head would sort of drift backwards...and then BOOM! His whole body would seize--like literally the whole body would seize, and his arms and head would flail around--and he'd sit upright, completely startled and awake. And then within a few seconds the process would repeat itself. I spent a few minutes watching his cycle of falling asleep, then suddenly completely spazzing out, trying to stay awake, and falling asleep again, and I imagined he was probably thinking to himself, ZzzzZzzZzzzz *SNORT!* HUH??? Where am I? Oh shit, was I sleeping in class? Okay, I can't fall asleep again, I gotta stay awake....but....but maybe it'll help me concentrate if I just sorta tilt my head back and....zzZzzZzzzzZZZzzzz."

While this cycle took a few minutes for each revolution during the beginning of class, by the end of class it was happening every couple of seconds. Honestly, I even entertained the thought that he was having a seizure. But once I realized that he was indeed still just falling asleep and waking up repeatedly, I started laughing. In the middle of lecture. Which was about burning widows on pyres in Hinduism.

I looked around me and realized that no one in this 100 person lecture even noticed the guy who was having what looked like seizures every couple of seconds. If you ask me, not noticing stuff like that is a waste of coming to lecture.

/

Why me?

How come whenever I try to tell someone who has called my cellphone that they have dialed the wrong number they refuse to believe me or don't even acknowledge that I told them so? There's a similar story on this blog from somewhere in the last two years, and in addition during my sophomore year of college my phone number somehow got placed on an escort service's website. So those were also some pretty interesting calls.

Today I got a call from an LA area code (even though I'm in the Midwest, my phone number has an LA area code...but not the same one that I got the call from, for the record). Anyway, the conversation went something like this:

Guy: Hi, this is X calling, just needed to know the address to bring the tow truck.
Me: Um....there must be some mistake.
Guy: So was the address La Cienega?
Me: I didn't order a tow truck.
Guy: Cuz we're on our way to La Cienega and--
Me: I think you dialed the wrong number, I didn't--
Guy: We need to know the address.
Me: .....I'm. Not. In. LA.
Guy: Oh!

Seriously, how does this person get through life?

Techno Remix of Life

It's been a strange 24 hours. Last night I found a techno remix of the song "Kumbaya," which pretty much makes me life complete. The video for it is vaguely racist: A bunch of black guys in tribal gear are fighting (to a thumpin beat), and then this strange white guy, baby boomer age, has a revelation, and he sort of dances around with a cape and tribal paint and brings the gospel of love to the "savages." ...And bringing the gospel means standing in front of blue screens of sunsets and mountain tops, and dancing and reaching his hands to the sky as if in prayer. It is perhaps the funniest representation of what I consider to be the funniest song of the planet.

Anyway, this morning I walked into the bathroom on my way to my second class and found a girl wearing nothing but a hose. A garden hose. Wrapped around her body like strapless dress or something. There was a sort of awkward moment where I debated whether or not to just turn around and leave, like I had just walked in on an intimate moment, but that would throw me off schedule. After my initial surprise, I realized that she was probably just preparing herself for an art project, since I was on the same floor as many art classrooms...and this thought was strangely depressing. When I see bizarrity (yeah, that's a word now) in the world, I want it to be real. I don't like things to be bizarre intentionally, because that ruins the magic of the situation. I prefer when people are bizarre without trying, because to them their particular brand of behavior is normal. The weirdos I love are the sort of people who wake up and say to themselves, "Of COURSE I sing the Hokey Pokey loudly while I'm on my way to work," or "OF COURSE I look and act like Jesus." It's not a statement or choice, like dressing yourself in a hose for an art project is.

But eventually I left the hose girl and went on to my class taught by an Italian. I'm trying as much as possible to avoid giving dentifying details that could potentially embarrass someone (not that they would be reading my blog, but I'm just careful of what could turn up in a google search), so I'll just say that he teaches in the humanities. So, that narrows it down. But whatever, so I always try to be sensitive to foreign people, since I was once foreign and sounded about as smart as a babywipe when I spoke Hebrew....but sometimes it's just so hard. Today the prof kept using a word that sounded like "jomatical," like maybe five times. And I worked up a sweat trying to decide whether this was a word in English I didn't know or whether this Italian guy was just making up English words left and right. I wish I had tried that in Israel, making up words. Let's say you're pretty damn good at Hebrew, but you can't remember the word for "figuratively." So instead of embarrassing yourself by asking, you just totally whip up a new word out of the blue, but say it with such confidence that the natives wonder if they're the idiot.

I gotta say, I love this prof. He reminds me of a puppy. I think he's afraid of the microphone/speaker system, because every day he gets startled by the sound of his own voice in the speakers behind him, and so every day he asks in this sort of soft, wounded voice, "Is it too loud? Can you hear me?" And no one in the class responds, not even with simple yes or no gestures, and instead keep quietly chitchatting among themselves. So the prof says to himself in his little wounded voice, which is picked up by the mic and broadcast throughout the lecture hall, "Hmm...well, I think it's very loud...so....hmmm.....how do I do this...?"

Just a brief digression: my prof doesn't actually look like Mario. But he's Italian. So....they're probably somehow related.

I also really like that he, like most charming foreign people, doesn't quite use the right word. On several occasions he has said something like, "Just listen for a few more minutes and then I will liberate you early." I love the idea of using liberate instead of dismiss. It makes class feel so much more dramatic, as though once we're outside the lecture hall we've earned the status of "refugee," having been liberated from the camp of immense suffering and involuntary captivity that is that class, and now we must wander as asylum seekers to our next class. As though each anniversary of our liberation from class will be remembered as VJB Day (Victory in the Journalism Building Day), the sort of thing I'll tell my grandchildren about.

After class I sought asylum in the neighboring building, one that shelters both the religion and classics departments, and I immediately made a note to never set foot in that part of the building ever again. Why? Well, its halls are filled with wandering professors, professors that I've had before but have not kept in touch with, the kind of professor who once knew my name and my opinions on things but to whom I've since become a stranger because of a prolonged absence. It's humiliating to be around them, since I don't know whether I should acknowledge them and have them look startled and confused to be greeted by a person who is an apparent stranger to them (as has already happened), or if I should pretend that they are total strangers to me--which, I've found, can result in them greeting me as an old acquaintance.

Today I saw two former profs walking together (an uber Jew and an uber Christian, funnily enough), and they were getting really close to me as they made their way down the hall. And I, completely out of any reasonable options, pretended to be suddenly struck by an overwhelming fascination with a crumpled up flyer that I found at the last second in my sweatshirt. This was a real game changer for me, since normally I just avoid awkward interaction with people by pretending I don't see them because checking the time on my watch can take up to five minutes. If I don't have a flyer on hand and I forgot to wear my watch, sometimes if I'm really desperate I'll even read a Skittles wrapper.

Here's sort of what my normal interaction aversion techniques look like:

"I'm so sorry I didn't greet you, but this is an absolutely fascinating piece of trash I just found. Even more interesting than my watch."

I often wonder to myself, "What are you afraid of, Sam?" And to be honest, there's nothing to be afraid of. I live for awkward moments, and there's nothing to fear with these profs. How can I fear a professor who walks like a gangly teenager, in a sort of upright slouch with his hands in his pockets? Or maybe even more terrifying is the prof who looks like a red-faced "Mr. Magoo."

But no sooner had I escaped those two professors than I ran into an even older prof, a man who--at his best--I knew as a creepy old man. A prof who knew me well when I was in his class, but with whom I never really had a warm relationship with, to put it mildly. Having just used my flyer diversion, I was unprepared to suddenly resume my battle position. And I panicked. So, of course, I did was any reasonable person would do....

I just turned around and started running.

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For once I'm not laughing

I just had a training session for volunteering at a nursing home with a pro-life group I'm in. I gotta say, I like the concept: we don't just care about babies, we also care about old folks. Unfortunately in practice it's the most depressing thing ever. I don't even know what was the most depressing part.....the smells, the eerie fact that the TV had paused on a clip from the "Dick Van Dyke Show" and none of the residents noticed... Anyway, it was one of the few moments in my life when nothing was funny. And for me, Sam, to find NOTHING in a situation that makes me laugh is truly rare. I'm the sort of person who has to stifle giggles during tragic moments in movies and during Yom Kippur services. But today...it was somehow more depressing than a funeral.

The only way I can capture what it felt like without actually being there is to suggest this:
Take the song "Indian Love Call," put it on loud enough that you can hear, but not too loud. Turn off the lights. Wear short sleeves and turn on the AC full blast, so you get goosebumps.



So when you're sitting in the dark, freezing, listening to this kind of creepy whistly song from the 40's, THEN you'll feel the unsettling feeling that I felt.

Those fascinating little creatures called CA's

If I were a producer of nature documentaries, the first place I'd go would be to a university. Not to watch creatures like sorority girls, frat boys, the theater crowd, engineers or any other group whose familiar is famous and predictable. Because, let's face it, you can pretty much predict and explain anything that comes out of their mouths.

But CA's? No. With CA's, the most you can do is predict, but never explain. Of course some of you readers (I don't think anyone is actually reading, since this blog has had such a long hiatus) who don't go to my university might be wondering to yourselves, "What's CA?" and "Is it contagious?" A CA, for those of you unfamiliar with this term used by my particular glorious Midwestern outpost of education, is the same thing as an RA. Basically the student who gets free room and board in exchange for letting you back into your room when your roommate has locked you out in nothing but a towel and for being a narc. At this school we use the C instead of R to stand for community, because CA's are supposed to be helping to create community. Frankly, I think that's a bit ambitious. I don't even know the names of the four girls I share a bathroom with, the girls germaphobes like me worry about catching herpes from from shared toilet seats, so the idea of this building being some sort of larger "community" that the CA is facilitating seems like an impossible dream. And yes, I meant to make a reference to "The Man of La Mancha."

In fact, let's take a break and watch Peter O'Toole sing a metaphor for community in a building of exclusively single rooms with no common areas:



In order to facilitate community building, CA's like to walk through the hallways late at night, usually when you've finally managed to drift off to sleep, and then loudly knock on your door to have their university-mandated face-to-face time with you. And so you're faced to either wait our their waiting (and, trust me, CA's seem to be experts at waiting for you at your door....through the crack at the bottom of the door you can see their feet sturdily planted and ready to wait out the apocalypse) or to come out, bleary-eyed with hair in a mess, and obviously and embarrassingly bra-less to have a never-ending conversation with someone whose existence is so wholly unimportant to you.

The first time my CA tried to have a late night chat, she made me temporarily forget my state of akimba (bra-lessness, for those of you who have forgotten Aw Eff terminology) by giving me a Jimmy John's sandwich. The next few times she tried to knock on my door late at night, I eagerly forgot my akimbahood and ran to answer the door, boobs swaying to and fro, because I thought maybe she'd be bringing more sandwiches or maybe something sweet, and a fat heart like mine is easily won over by such trickery. Because that's what it is: trickery. Treachery. DECEIT. She never brought me another sandwich. Instead she brought me epic conversations in which we both awkwardly stood in the hall and desperately looked for clues as to what the other person was interested in. I have to wonder if CA's actually enjoy these awkward conversations, as though the CA's themselves are not the epitome of awkwardness as most other students want to believe, but instead they're social geniuses who simply choose to adopt an awkward persona in order to enjoy watching other students sink even deeper into an awkward abyss.

But I've gotten wise. I know that my CA no longer comes bearing sandwiches. Now when I hear the CA approaching in the hall (marked by the sound of someone knocking on a door down the hall, followed by the deepest silence the hall has ever known, followed by the sense that the CA in wait is growing roots in front of a door down the hall), I turn off everything that makes noise in my room--fan, computer, etc.--and sit in dark silence. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly dramatic I like to pretend that I'm Anne Frank, and I'm listening to the Nazis make their way down the hall, knocking on each door along the way to mine, and if I even breathe too loudly I'll get carted off to a concentration camp of uncomfortable conversation. Shit that's offensive.

Anyway, what spurred this whole reflection on CA's is that this morning I went to take a shower, and my CA bumped into me on my way. And she, trying to make conversation, asked, "Hey, you going out?"
Look, I know I'm not really the greatest dresser. I know that I have two pairs of pants in rotation and that all of my shirts are basically the same exact model in a few different colors. But it's a little insulting to step out into the hall in a neon pink bathrobe, bright red crocs, and a blue towel draped across my neck like a reform Talit, and have people think that this is my idea of "going out" clothing. It really makes me think I should start trying harder to dress decently, because if my shower attire is a "going out"-worthy improvement, then I'm obviously never going to find someone willing to marry me. As Bridget Jones often worries, I'm going to die alone and my body will be found much later, half-eaten by my own dogs. But instead of saying any of this I just smiled and said, "Nope."

So she tried again, "So whatcha up to?"

And this was it, this was the moment where I realized that CAs are predictable but completely without explanation. How can they see someone in a bathrobe, shower shoes, carrying a towel and holding a shower caddy full of soaps and shampoos, walking in the direction of the bathroom (which is the opposite direction of the exit), and not know what they are up to? The ONLY explanation I can come up with is that CA's are actually the most creative people at this school. Only they can see a person completely decked out in shower attire and accessories and come up with more than one possibility for what this person could be doing. Honestly, I'm jealous of that kind of creativity.
.

Just feel like I should point out....

In an alternate reality right now I'd be putting on green.

In this reality I'm up late studying for finals and packing up to go home for Thanksgiving.

For the record...I finally believe that I picked the right reality.

Vote Hank Oreos for Congress

This past weekend I saw an emo-hipster Republican youth. I have to tell you, I didn't even know such a thing existed. I had volunteered to go canvassing for a Republican candidate in the suburbs and when the coordinator told me we were waiting on a volunteer from a local high school I imagined Hank the Republican from my high school.

Okay, that wasn't his real name. But we'll call him Hank, since I call everything Hank. Hank was my high school's token Republican. No, he wasn't the ONLY Republican in school, but he was definitely the only guy wearing a suit to school every day, complete with a symbolically red tie. This was, of course, Southern California, what I consider the most casual place in America, where people would sunbathe on top of their cars during breaks and lunch, where people couldn't be bothered to change out of last night's pajamas and instead just threw on some flipflops. And here Hank was, immaculately dressed in a fine suit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe put together, accessorized by an American flag lapel pin and quite possibly the most perfect set of teeth I'd ever seen (until I came to college and met a guy who consumes flouride like a normal college kid would consume alcohol, and whose teeth actually turn pitch black in photo negatives). I guess the best word to describe Hank would be "groomed." The guy had made it clear from an early age that he intended to be president, and from what I can tell he'd been shaking hands like a pro since the age of eight. I'm guessing that if any of us at high school had had babies he would have been right there, kissing them. Ultimately what I remember about Hank was his sense of humor. During classes, no matter what the subject, he'd make witty remarks and clever jokes about Democrats. It didn't matter if we were studying history or trigonometry, he'd find a way to make a political joke. A friend and I took to calling him "Marmaduke," like the cartoon dog, because just as the cartoon's jokes were always about "Oh, Marmaduke, haha, you're such a DOG!" so too were Hank's jokes about "Oh Hank, haha, you're such a REPUBLICAN!"

Anyway, that was my idea of a high school Republican. But when this other kid we were to go canvassing with finally showed up....I almost burst out laughing. He was the skinniest thing I've ever seen, wearing tight, dark jeans. He had like rubber band-ish jewelry around his tiny wrists, and he was wearing a tight, dark t-shirt that said something about saving Darfur. His hair was pitch black, and it sorta swooped across his face, all emo-like. Oh man...

So anyway, we went door-to-door, handing out fliers and talking to people. Most people just didn't answer the door, either because they weren't there or because they saw we were holding fliers. Frankly, I wouldn't have opened the door to me either. Occasionally people would answer the door. I really liked it when we would start talking and the person who opened the door clearly had no idea what we were talking about. I enjoyed their half-embarrassed, half-confused expressions. I gotta admit, I only volunteered to do this because my life was pretty dull and I was hoping having some awkward encounters with neighbors would liven things up. Soon after I started I started feeling really bad for the people we were approaching. I felt kind of like this:

Ding dong!

"Hi, I'm ringing your doorbell and annoying the shit out of you on a Saturday afternoon on behalf of Hank Oreos. You are probably confused out of your mind since you most likely were not even aware that a primary was coming up. Can I hand you a flier while you stare blankly at me and wonder what the hell I'm talking about? Theeeeeeenks. Now I'm gonna talk for five minutes about irrelevant crap and political jargon that you don't really understand....but that's okay, because I don't really understand it either. Anyway, Hank Oreos is a strong Republican candidate, and I'm gonna tell you to vote for him in the primary, but you're probably not going to remember his name anyway, and let's face it, they're ALL Republicans in the primary, so you probably don't even give a shit. Oh, how cute, your dog has come up to say hello! And now it's barking incessantly, giving me the perfect opportunity to get the fuck out of your face, and for you to close the door, maybe give the flier another cursory glance, and then throw it away. Thanks so much for your time, have a wonderful day!"


Later on in the day an older gentleman opened the door. We started talking, and then he said very calmly, "Can you wait right here? I'll be right back..." If we were back in LA I would have screamed to my partner, "RUN! HE'S PROBABLY GETTING HIS GUN!!!!" but my partner didn't look the slightest bit concerned, so I kept my mouth shut. He came back and went off on a rant that started with, "Do you know what I just saw on the news?" and after a long rant about taxes, healthcare, homosexuals, Barney Frank impressions (he did a GREAT Barney Frank impression), the cost of a college education, unemployment, and war, ended with a warning that America is going to soon erupt into another civil war. At one point he asked me what I wanted to be. I said, "A teacher." And he said, "Good. So you can't ever get fired." I wanted to shoot back that that's not a proper reason for being a teacher, but my partner interrupted me at that moment.

During his long rant I was sort of nodding my head along to what he was saying (but only during the rare moments where I agreed with him), and at one point he snapped at my partner, "I don't get it, why is she nodding her head?!" And I was suddenly horribly embarrassed and stated the obvious, "Um....because I agree with you?"

In any case, everyone we encountered, minus this older gentleman, were amazingly NORMAL. You know, families and whatnot who are just chilling at home on a Saturday, with dogs and kids and whatever. And that was pretty cool to see.