This week in Hutchinson.

On Sunday, like every spring Sunday, the over-middle-aged men of Hutchinson get out their 50s and 60s topless classic cars and drive down Main Street, their receding hairlines and long, gray mullets whipping in the breeze. Gas-stinking black clouds of exhaust blow out of their mufflers like a french inhale.

Yesterday after school, a couple of days before prom, one of my juniors came running into my classroom. Do you have a mirror? I need a mirror! Zit! I hate this zit! And she proceeded to yank my cabinet open and pinch at her chin in my mirror. Ew. I said. You better not get your zit juice on my mirror. She was so into her squeezing, she didn't hear me, and telling this story makes me want to throw up.

We went outside with chalk today, to do grammar on the sidewalk; in a warning to the students, I said you may only write your sentences on the sidewalk. I don't want to see your names, I don't want to see any genitalia out there...and a student in the front row looked at me quite seriously, perplexed, and said who's genitalia?

Today the man across the street crouched in his yard, and with a flathead screw driver dug each dandelion out of the ground the way one digs a splinter out of his skin.

Today I learned.

That one of my former students only has 9 toes because her sister ran over the left pinky toe with a bike.

Gotta love flip-flop season.

A pinhole of light.

I'm not a fan of parent/teacher conferences--not because I hate meeting parents, but because they often require me to show up on days I'm supposed to have off. Or they make me work from 7 in the morning until 8 at night with little breaks, which in turn makes me want to die.

But, I actually do really like talking to parents. I'm actually pretty good at it, if I can pat myself on the back--because the parents who come are the ones who care and are willing to have an open dialogue. And I just like watching their faces as I say wonderful things about their kids. It feels good.

And, the little pinhole of goodness today came when I talked to J's mom. I'd emailed her last week to tell her how much he's improved in class (he's a special education student), and I told her that he wrote one of the strongest essays in all of my classes--it was just that good.

She said that she asked J to see the essay, and he said he'd lost it. But then he found it--and she said she hung it on the fridge, and they told J they were very proud of him. And then she said that J said I can't believe my teacher emailed you about that! And then that after he said that he said: I have to go do homework.

And then she said that he said I really think Ms. Prokott believes in me!

And when she told me that, I really teared up. In fact, I'm tearing up right now. I do! I do believe in him! He's amazing.

And the other parent, the one of the kid with the Mr. Clean speech, the one who will rock college so hard said to his mom, Mom, Ms. Prokott likes that I'm weird.

Almost makes the 14 hour day worth it, eh?

This post is called: why the fuck is anybody a teacher.

Well, today I had a mental breakdown at school. It was odd, because the morning started out so well. This morning, I was like hey, I kind of feel caught up on shit. And then the day happened, and I hated my juniors, and I watched 30 3-minute (one eight minute) freshman speeches, and then I subbed the last block of the day (free $21.50--just enough copay for one appointment with my psychiatrist--holla!), and then I made a to-do list of everything that I had to do before next week, because there are conferences next week, which requires two mandatory 14 hour days at school, and then I started sobbing at my desk (luckily the door was shut, the students were gone, and it was more of a quiet sob) because that to-do list was so, so long and so, so impossible, and then I wrote a sub-note, and then I made a worksheet that kids could do when I was gone, and then I "ordered" my sub online, and then I organized all the papers in neat little stacks with step by step directions for my sub, and then I got the fuck out of there, and then I cried on the way home, and then I packed my hardcover 1950s suitcase, and then I drove to Albertville crying and singing along the way.

The odd thing about today is that there were weird little highlights alongside the shit. It's just that everything, everything came crashing down, and the thought of this marathon week ahead of me with conferences makes my legs so weak I think they're going to give out and I'm going to fall to the ground in a legless puddle.

So, there are three thousand things I should be doing other than writing a blog right now, but goddammit, if I don't write this down I'll never remember how fucking hard this is--and then I won't have as much reason to get stinking drunk every day this summer.

So, cheers to the start of this weekend, the weekend wherein I had to call in sick so I could get caught up on my work. Doesn't seem fair, does it? Yeah, it's not. Again, I signed up for this shit, so let the poop storm come on down, come on down, let the shit get caught in my hair and crust up nice and shitty.

*

Let me take you through my day today, if you will. Come along on this journey. Ride, captain, ride upon my Hutchinson High School mystery ship:

(side note: dear lady at Caribou: there is no such thing as a 5K marathon. Fuck you.)

15 April, 2010.

7:00. I get to school. Because it's speech day and because the frosh have "sales pitch" speeches, they are all dropping their shit off in my classroom. I have Snuggies falling out of my cupboards, I have Joe Mauer's bat swinging thingy in the corner, I have posters and coffee mugs and guitars and amps and night vision goggles and tennis shoes lying all over my classroom.

7:30, 1st block: the kids are all jacked up (or as they say, gassed) for their speeches, and I feel like I have a hangover even though I don't even remember what alcohol tastes like, it's been so long since I've had it. We get all set to go, and I find a desk to sit in and the speeches begin.

I am sold the following products: Nikes, an ipod touch, hand sanitizer, a "Bumpit", another ipod, a Snuggie, an idog, a hockey helmet, and a Gretsch hollow-bodied electric.

Highlights:

*Did you know that the "Bumpits" have a hollywood style? Holy shit. It looks like someone is blowing a giant bubble under her hair and it's about to pop. The Bumpit speech wasn't nearly as ironic as it should've been, but I was impressed that the Bumpit had a little tiny Bumpit just for bangs, so I'll probably give her an A.

*When the hand sanitizer girl went (the best speech of the day), someone asked her if it was possible to eat hand sanitizer, and I almost said, yeah, if you want a cheap way to get drunk, and then I giggled to myself because if I had said that it would've been so inappropriate. She also showed a video she made of a bunch of pictures of different germs set to heavy metal music, so I'll probably give her an A.

*After the hockey helmet kid went, he asked if I wanted to wear his hockey helmet for the rest of the day, and because it was 8:20 in the morning and I was punchy, I said, sure, why not and then I put it on and it stunk like sweat. So I said, LJ, you've got some stank in this helmet, but then I just kept it on with the hopes that someone would walk by my classroom and see me wearing a hockey helmet to teach and automatically think I'm awesome.

*The kid with the---

(Excuse me. So, I am sitting next to this Mexican man at Caribou who is with his infant son (they're wearing matching polo shirts) who has been dicking around on his computer for the last hour. This man just left Caribou to go outside with his webcam to walk around his, apparently, new car to show the people on the other side of the webcam. But he left his baby in here by itself. So, I'm sitting next to this baby in this car seat, whose father is outside. What. The. Hell. ...okay. He's back. Whew. Because I have enough Mexican babies at home, and I can't take this one, too. Plus, they lose market value so quickly.)

...anyway, the kid with the guitar went last, and played some tunes for most of his speech instead of giving it. The bell rang right after he went, so everyone ran out, but when he was packing up and putting his guitar away (and there were 3 other boys in the room, still) I said (and I shouldn't have) so, do you just play the Gretsch because it has a sweet f-hole? And then the kids were like WHAT? And the guitar kid said, uh, no, and then everyone laughed because their teacher said f-hole.

8:55, 2nd block: My juniors had a test today about world literature from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. I spent forever writing the damned test, but I think it was too easy, perhaps. But, there is only so much time to beat myself up over it. Anyway, I first handed out the independent reading assignment I created for them (it's to make a "sales pitch kit" for their book, wherein they have to research their publisher, find a target audience for their group, and write a fake "blurb" for their book, and design a small author tour for their book--in short, it's fucking awesome), and they were unexcited about my brilliance. (Douches.)

And then I handed out the test, and I said work on this project when you're done, since I asked you to bring your books to class today. And then people finished the test, and then they just sat there dicking around with their ipods instead of doing their work. And then I had to get up and go tell everyone dicking around with their ipods to do some (fucking) thing, because I was nice enough to give them work time today. And then half of them had to go to their locker, and then two of them came up to me and asked to go to the library because we need to get some independent reading books (to which I replied, you know these were due three weeks ago? to which they replied, yeah I didn't have time to find one) RAWR RAWR RAWR.

Of course, one kid, one of the super-douches, asked to go to his locker. He was gone for 7 or so minutes, and then he came back with just an ipod and sat down in his desk. And I said, I let you go to your locker to get some work to do. And he said, I literally LITERALLY have nothing to do. And I said, so, you just went to your locker to get your ipod? And he said, I have nothing to do. And I said, I just gave you a 45 point project to start. Put your ipod away and DO SOMETHING ELSE. And he said, what am I supposed to do? And I said, I DON'T CARE JUST DO SOMETHING. And then he played with his ipod for the rest of the hour and I just gave him the evil eye and he just didn't care because he is a piece of shit.

There are, I tell you, some days when I'm at school--that if someone offered to shoot me in the face with a gun, I'd say hurry up and do it, please, I'm so, so tired of talking and talking and nobody listening.

Of course, the highlight of the hour was a conversation with my Least Favorite Student (who wrote his research paper on the Holocaust and was one of the students who said he'd hunt gay people earlier this week):

[Prokott is working at her desk, creating a PowerPoint for Friday about Romanticism and shit--it doesn't matter what it's about; she's using excellent font choices. Least Favorite Student comes up to her desk with his test. He is on the last section of the test. Prokott looks up and smiles, welcoming his (likely fucking stupid) question.]

Prokott: Hey, LFS, what's up.

Least Favorite Student: Um, okay, I wasn't here when we did this in class. [points to Don Quixote section of the test]

P: Okay, you were called down to the office the day that we read the rest of Don Quixote. But you knew that we read that in class, yes? You came back at the end of class when we were done reading it?

LFS: Well, yeah, but I didn't know we had to read it--I didn't get to read it.

P: Okay, but you worked on that project about Don Quixote with your group all day yesterday that required that you read the story to complete the project, yes?

LFS: Yeah, I did that project, but I--okay, I just didn't have time to read it because I had to study for my math test last night.

P: But you knew you had to read it. You knew we had a test on it today, because I went over the test material yesterday in class.

LFS: Okay, well, I brought my book home, and I was gonna read it, but then I was paging through the book, and I couldn't find the story in the book.

P: [blinks in disbelief at his stupidity] Okay, but you knew we had to read it. Having a math test to study for, and "not finding a story" in a book that has a table of contents is not an excuse, So you need to take this part of the test. I'm sorry.

LFS: [sighs, heavily] THIS. IS. SO. UNFAIR! [walks back to his desk, makes disgruntled gestures at homophobic friend next to him]

Shoot me in the face, please.

At the end of the hour, I was all ready to give them a speech about maturity and wasting time, but the bell cut me off in the middle and they got up and ran out the door. Ran. And I went back to my desk and swallowed my anger like thick cough syrup.

10:10, 3rd block: After happy-fun-time with my douche bag juniors, I was not in the mood to hear more speeches, but the students were in the mood to give them, and I really had no choice but to listen. During third block, I was sold the following: a laptop, baseball cleats, a Sham-wow, an ipod touch, a cell phone, a baseball bat, World of Warcraft gear within the realm of the game, Reeboks, Cover Girl mascara, a Snuggie, night vision goggles, and the Slap Chop.

Highlights:

*The Slap Chop kid was one of the kids who went first. He thought it'd be a great idea to actually chop food for his demonstration, food that he'd been keeping in his backpack all day. Now. I have a sink in my room, because I teach in a science classroom, and that sink is on a science table-desk thing in the front of the room. So, this kid gave his speech (which mostly consisted of him unwrapping food from his backpack) and proceeded to "slap chop" it up for the class. Mostly he was giggling. But he pulled out some turkey, threw it in the contraption, and slap-chopped it. Then he wiped the turkey into the sink, in chunks, mostly still whole.

Then, he took out some cheese and said, it does cheese, too! Except this was a string cheese in a packet that had softened in his bag. He struggled to get it out of the wrapper and then he threw it in the Slap Chop. Then he tried to chop it, but because it was so melty, the cheese got stuck. Then he just grinned at the class. Then, he said, well, it doesn't do cheese as well. And he pulled the gum-like gooey mess from the Slap Chop and dropped it in the sink. Then he said, don't you hate cutting onions? Do you always cry? And I thought, no, oh no, please no, and he pulled out a whole onion and said, you don't have to peel it, even!

And then he slap-chopped the onion (you can even do it with one finger!) and then he pulled the diced onion from the contraption and threw it in the sink. Then, he turned on the water to clean it--so easy to clean!--and then his speech was over.

Then: Um, Ms. Prokott, this sink is all clogged and the water won't go down.

Then I stare in disbelief, clench my teeth.

Then, I smile, laugh a little and say, ha! you know T, that sink doesn't have a garbage disposal! The class laughs.

Then, the phone rings. It's the office. The secretary says, can you send T down, he has in-school suspension for the rest of the day.

So, T packs up and leaves, and I'm left with a clogged science sink, a classroom of kids, and 10 speeches to go. The plug is stuck in the sink. I have to get a scissors to pry it out, and then I have to dig my fingers through a two-inches of water, onion peel, string cheese, turkey mess and pull the mixed muck out of the drain so some water will go down. My hands stink like onion. They stink. It's been about 2 minutes, and the class has been watching me dig out this mess. I give up. I say, does anybody have any hand sanitizer? (Unfortunately, "hand sanitizer girl" was in 1st block.) Everybody says no. I say, no big deal, I'll just use some lotion. Then I lather up and sit down for another hour of heaven.

*The mascara girl decided to do her speech demonstration on a boy in class. An annoying boy who tries to rearrange my seating chart every day. The class giggled, his lashes really did look longer, and when the speech was over, he said, okay, Ms. Prokott, can I go wash this off? I looked at him, didn't smile, and said, no.

He said, ha, very funny. He got his pass book out. I said, nope, you can stay like that. And then I really didn't let him leave.

Also, since the mascara girl was selling a Cover Girl product, I said, hey, do you watch America's Next Top Model?

Yes.

Well, it's kind of like you were on the show, like when the models sell Cover Girl!

[She stares.]

[Prokott thinks] Fuck off, then.

11:20, 4th block: It's my last teaching hour of the day (save for that sub job) and I am sold the following: a football, a super bat, Swiffer wipes, a chrome snakeshead shift cover, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, a Palm Pre, Joe Mauer's bat-swing-thingy, nail polish, Legos, Red Bull, and an Xbox 360.

Highlights:

*The kid selling the chrome snakehead said you're mentally retarded if you don't buy this.

*The Red Bull kid gave the entire speech with a toothbrush in his mouth, and he chewed on it for the whole three minutes, creating a foamy, spitty mess around his lips, teeth, braces.

*My favorite speech of the day was from the Mr. Clean Eraser kid. I love this kid. He's hilarious, but it's that subtle hilarious that lets you know he'll be awesome when he grows up. When this kid is in college, he's going to be the one who starts some weird club called "I love eggs" and who wears hoodies and drinks 40s not because it's cool, but because they're pretty delicious and fair-priced. He's cool. This kid is Jer. Someday in the future, he will write mustache, mustache, mustache on a Post-it and leave it on someone's desk.

His hair is in his eyes all the time, he wears Levis and old man sweaters and skater shoes. He has not one, but two, snaggletooths, and he walks like an old man. And I mean it. He has a hunchback when he walks, he's always looking down at the ground, and he shuffles his feet. He's always doodling in his notebook (in fact, during a freshman teachers meeting one of the teachers said you just talk to him and it seems like nothing processes, that nothing is there) and sometimes he just looks up and grins, grins so big, it's just a shit-eating grin like you've ever seen. He grins like a kid who has tied his shoes by himself for the very first time, like a kid who found an owl pellet in his yard and dug it apart and found the mouse's skull.

Anyway, he gives his speech, and he adopts the salesman lingo, but keeps his soft voice and his subtle tone. It's a nice mix between the two.

He works in rhymes every couple of sentences: All you need to do is get it wet for a cleaning jet! And later: If you don't like what you see, it's a money-back guarantee!

Then he tells a story about his product: Let's say you get a brand new pair of shoes. You go outside and get some mud on them. If your mom finds out that you already got your new shoes dirty, you're in deeeeeeep trouble. You can use Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to clean your new shoes! They'll look good as new.

He uses his shoe, a prop, and the eraser, another prop. And he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs at his shoes for about a minute straight. Then he holds up the shoe--and then, shit-eating grin--and he says: see the difference?

The shoe looks exactly the same.

This BEAST of a cleaner cleans everything from shoes, to grills, he says. I nearly fall out of my chair laughing. This is the greatest speech I've ever heard. I am certain this kid is a genius.

We clap, and he sits down. I say, can I have your note cards? And he says, oh, yeah, I didn't ave any so I had to make my own. He hands me two ripped up pieces of notebook paper. Perfect! I say. Then I write on his comment sheet: you have the coolest personality ever.

*When the Lego kid gets up to give his speech, he uses my favorite student (Mr. Clean Kid) as his spokesperson model. Lego kid is pretty funny--he's ironic about his Legos, says have you ever been bored because your friends are all doing stuff? Remember Legos? His prop is this giant Lego pyramid. Mr. Clean student is sitting in a chair and holding the pyramid of Legos.

Lego kid says, how could you not love Legos when they provide HOURS OF FUN? [cough] OW-ERS OF FUN. This is Mr. Clean student's cue. Lego kid turns to Mr. Clean student, who is a little slow on the uptake. The class waits a beat.

Then, when he realizes he's up, Mr. Clean student unclicks a Lego from the tower, slowly. Then he lifts that Lego and reclicks it a few spaces over, slowly. He looks up, shit-eating grin. We wait for him to do something more, but he doesn't. He's not going to. This is it.

SEE how fun these are? Says Lego kid.

I am laughing, loudly. I think this is brilliant.

Lego kid and Mr. Clean kid were good notes to end the day on. But my fingers still stunk of onion all day, and I had to ask the janitor to unclog my sink, and I thought angry thoughts about the juniors. And then there was all that crying.

Maybe things will pick up next week. Or maybe I will finally collapse and never regain composure. There is that kid who is trying to sell his cat next Monday. He's changed his topic from cat, to duct tape, back to cat. If he duct tapes his cat, it will be the greatest day of my life.

Last week.

Last week was a mess. I cried a lot, I worried a lot, I did a lot.

The week ended, Friday, with me kicking two students out of my class. The juniors were creating their own versions of More's Utopia. I said to make the utopias appropriate. I heard one student say that he would hunt gay people on his utopia. And then another, while fist-bumping the other, said, if any gay person stepped foot in my country, I would kill him so fast.

And I maintained my cool pretty well, but I was pissed, and in fact, I was so pissed I didn't even know what to do with them. But I sent them to the principal, and I called their mothers, and hopefully they learned some sort of lesson. But honestly, I doubt it. This is one homophobic school. This, with our day of silence for equality for homosexuals, next Friday. I'd be silent if I didn't have to teach. Instead, a couple of students are making an advocacy shirt for me.

When they came into my room to ask me about it, I said, this school is so homophobic, and they said, tell us about it. And I told them that I'd like to start a gay alliance club at school next year. Two of the girls were seniors, but the sophomore said that there'd be enough people to get on board. I think those girls think I'm gay now. Meh.

Anyway, I finished The Braindead Megaphone Essays (George Saunders) last week, and a passage in one of the final essays (about the Buddha Boy) really made sense:

You know that feeling at the end of the day, when the anxiety of that-which-I-must-do falls away and, for maybe the first time that day, you see, with some clarity, the people you love and the ways you have, during that day, slightly ignored them, turned away from them to get back to what you were doing, blurted out some mildly hurtful thing, projected, instead of the deep love you really feel, a surge of defensiveness of self-protection or suspicion? That moment when you think, Oh God, what have I done with this day? And what am I doing with my life? And how must I change to avoid catastrophic end-of-life regrets?

I feel like that now: tired of the Me I've always been, tired of making the same mistakes, repetitively stumbling after the small ego strokes, being caught in the same loops of anxiety and defensiveness. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me. So what is stopping me from stepping outside my habitual crap?

My mind, my limited mind.

The story of life is the story of the same basic mind readdressing the same problems in the same already discredited ways. First order of business: Feed the trap. Work the hours to feed the trap. Having fed the trap, shit, piss, preparing again to feed the trap. Because it is your trap, defend it at all costs.

Because we feel ourselves first and foremost as physical beings, the physical comes to dominate us: Beloved uncles die, parents are displaced, cousins go to war, children suffer misfortune, love becomes a trap. The deeper in you go, the more it hurts to get out. Disaster (sickness, death, loss) is guaranteed and in fact is already en route, and when it comes, it hurts and may even destroy us.

We fight this by making ourselves less vulnerable, mastering the physical, becoming richer, making bigger safety nets, safer cars, better medicines.

But it's nowhere near enough (242--243).

Yup. If only there was a way to really live without having to feed the trap.

Tessa versus the Smellies.

During our 4th hour block, there is an interruption for "B" lunch. Often, during this break, I go to visit Tessa to see how her frosh class is doing.

And it fucking stinks in her room.

It stinks in here, I say, everyday. It fucking stinks in here. I am literally choking on the smell in this room.

Tessa has two smelly kids in the same class. They sit next to each other. One smells a little like urine. He wears the same clothes everyday, and, in fact, I had him in my class during first trimester, but my room is a little more ventilated, so he wasn't as stinky.

The other smells like an odd combination of body odor and like he's carrying a wet, sweaty gym sock around in one pocket and a dead rodent in the other pocket. It's a hot smell. So bad it has its own heat. This kid is like a goddamned warm front made of garbage.

I am going to say something, said Tessa. I have to say something. I mean, every day when they go to lunch, I spray half a can of air freshener. It's effecting the environment of my classroom.

I couldn't do it. But good for her. Thank goodness for her.

One day, during lunch, the principal walked by. Hey, come in here, Tessa said to him. He did. She said, so, I have a situation. I have a smelly kid, and I don't know what to say to him. And the principal said, it's okay to say it, you just pull him aside, and you say it. Nobody wants to be the stinker at school, he said.

Ain't it the truth.

Tessa talked to one of the smelly kids today--the urine kid, not the dead-rodent kid. It went something like this:

Tessa: [after class] Hey, can I talk to you real quick?

Smelly kid: Oh, sure.

T: So, this is not easy to say, but I notice that you wear that sweatshirt every day. Is that something that you choose to do?

SK: Oh, yeah, well, I just really like this sweatshirt.

T: Oh, okay, that's good. I just guess my concern is--and I don't want to hurt your feelings with this--is that it seems that there is a bad odor coming from you [interrupts self] --and I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't care about you, it's just that I wanted you to know, just in case you didn't know.

SK: Oh. Nobody has ever told me that before. I had no idea about any of this.

T: It's just like I tell my kids--nobody wants to be known as the smelly kid at school. I just have to remind them sometimes. You just need to make sure that you're washing your shirt and your body every day.

SK: Oh, well, the shirt I'm wearing under this is clean.

T: Oh, well that's good to hear. ...Well, do you get what I'm saying? [smelly kid nods] Okay--well, I'll see you tomorrow.

*

The way she told me the story was heartbreaking. He didn't know he was smelly. He just likes his sweatshirt so he wears it every single day. Poor kid.

One stinker down, one to go. The worse to go. I'm so jealous that she's the kind of person to have that conversation. If it were me, I'd spend so much time trying to sugarcoat it, that we'd never get through our talk. Then I'd just break down and say: ya damn stink, okay?

Oh, freshmen. Don't they know that once the sun comes out they get oh, so ripe.

PLAGIARIZE THAT SHIT.

Today I caught two different plagiarizers, in two different classes, for two different papers. One about health care, the other about chameleons. Who the fuck plagiarizes about chameleons.

There is not enough fucking beer in this house; I have been working for 15 hours straight; I would like to pass out and never wake up.

Happy Monday.