tenth grade, yet again

a few days ago i broke up with tenth grade. not all of tenth grade, of course. just the part that arrives in my classroom slack-jawed and hollow eyed, whining, "do we really have to reeeeeeeeeeeeead?" and it felt pretty good. it wasn't a premeditated breakup, but it had been brewing a long time. since last year, really, when this particular part of tenth grade was in ninth grade and failing even then. they are uninterested in everything. no spark.

so the other day i looked up from the essay i was reading aloud (yes, i read aloud to them every day because they can't read it themselves) and i saw eleven people in the room. one was texting. three were sleeping. one appeared to be having a fight with himself. and the rest were staring off into different parts of space. this is not at all how the rest of my day goes, so i closed my book and said, "i quit." they looked at me a little. the texting girl raised an eyebrow. they registered that i was creating drama but also suggested by their slow glances that they weren't yet sure they would bother paying attention to it. i explained that a regular babysitter could do what i'm doing and then i could work with students who actually want my help. i told them they could go to regular tenth grade classes. "we'll fail!" one of them wailed. "so?" i said. "you're failing this class now. i don't care." i went on to explain it just wasn't working. that i didn't think i cared about them anymore because they didn't care about themselves. i told them i didn't want to be sad anymore. and i sat down. now, generally, if you're the sort of teacher who pulls this out rarely, you'll get a room full of scared, silent children who want more than anything for you to tell them you have faith in them. but not this part of tenth grade. these little angels got up and milled around, laughing, shouting, being jerks.

so i readied myself for an actual breakup. i began to look into the other tenth grade classes to see who i could put where. my heart felt light. my head felt clearer than it had in weeks. i had done more than my share to help this group and now it could be someone else's turn. they didn't believe we were really breaking up but i knew it was finally over for good. and i felt like i was free.

but when i walked in the next day, they asked why i was there. they saw the handwriting on the wall and knew things were really, truly over. i explained that things take time and i'd be in the room with them a while longer but that i certainly wasn't planning on teaching them anything. they would just read silently. i gave them the packet we'd been reading. stuff put together just for this particular curriculum, and told them to read the essay i'd tried reading the day before. i gave them an assignment related to persuasive arguments and began very aggressively to ignore them, hunched over words they didn't know. i wanted them to feel bad. i think i might have wanted them to feel a little stupid, too, because right now they won't believe they read at the same level as most fifth graders. they think they are doing everything right. and they worked the better part of the hour. i sat with one little boy who needed me to prompt him every paragraph to summarize and then move on to the next paragraph. everything else was silence. so i said, quietly, toward the end, "wow. you guys are working so hard right now i almost don't want to break up with you." and one of them said, "then don't." but i'm too smart for that and i told them it takes more than one good deed to win back someone like me and honestly i didn't think they could do it. "we're still broken up," i said. "i just want to let you know when you're smart."

today they came in with homework. to be fair, it was work they did mostly in class the day before and finished at home, but that sort of thing rarely happens. there were eleven again, out of seventeen, but eleven of them gave me work. and i asked them about the story. they admitted there were tons of words they couldn't pronounce or didn't know. "that happens to everyone sometimes," i explained, "but this story is written for high school students. a high school student should know all of these." one of the kids actually said wow. another asked if i was sure. i nodded. they finally knew who they were. kids who can't read. and we talked about how to go about fixing it because now maybe we might be able to start doing that. and then we spent most of an hour going through the two and a half pages of text, finding everything they didn't know. we learned to say the words and learned what they meant. some of them were very good words.

against my better judgment i let down my guard. i was having fun. and it sort of looked like they might be, too. they fought to share the most words and helped people sitting nearby who couldn't find a word we were exploring. they liked getting these words. i'd been telling them over and over how each new word is a gift, is power, is something nobody can ever take out of their heads, but maybe a little bit today they figured that out on their own. one boy, the one i'd been working with earlier, didn't have his reading packet, but he was awake (very rare) and facing me (unheard of) and he kept raising his hand and saying things. and the things made sense (unfathomable). after maybe the third or fourth time, i commented on his extreme awesomeness and reminded him i'd been telling him i knew his brain worked over and over for a year and a half because it was true,when the rest of the class burst into applause for him. and his face looked different from any other time i have ever seen it. it didn't quite know what to do with all that good for something he didn't think he had. it was the first time in months he spoke in class and it didn't result in me telling him to stop.

and you know i'm weak. so toward the end of it i asked them if they intended to be this wonderful and honest and smart ever again. "well," said a child i've been struggling to have removed from our school, "it depends. are you still going to break up with us?" and i wanted to say no, of course not. i will always be here for you because i like all you strange broken children. but i am learning. i want to give in but they are not yet where i want them to be just to start off. if they refuse to get there, we really will have to stay broken up. they are so far from the goal, any goal. and what i say instead is, "i don't know. i had a nice time today. let's see how things go tomorrow."

bus driver

i made my way off the train into the sunrisy coldness. my walk from there isn't far. i go down the rusted stairs, through the turnstile and to the street just outside the doors. there i cross the street at a clearly marked pedestrian crosswalk that appears to be a mystery to those who are not pedestrians. i wait on the other side for the bus. mmmmm. bus. i like the idea of public transportation and i even like the trains some days. but i despise the bus. it is a slow and claustrophobic trip and where the train always seems to be bustling with the mood of the city, the bus is humming with the rage of folks who look like they want to hurt you because you aren't as tired and miserable as they are. not all busses, i'm sure. but my bus, at 6:30 in the morning.

by far the most attractive part of my own personal bus experience is that i wait at a stop directly under the train i just left. outside on the pavement. under a trestle. this is the sort of place my parents warned me about. the only thing open at this hour is a laundry that seems to cater entirely to ranting homeless men. so i stand in the what has been mostly the dark and is now the semi-dark, under the rumbling trains, under a million crapping pigeons, next to people who have had the same cold for years. people who will knock me to the ground to get on the train in front of me. folks who do not understand how to get in a line. somewhere, elementary school teachers have been doing some shoddy work with that. so every single day i despise the bus and on days when the wind isn't biting and my bags aren't heavy, i walk this three mile leg of my commute.

but not today. today i got on the bus just behind a woman my age who was standing behind a man who was behind me until she shoved both of us out of the way with her bag. i got myself up the little stairs, dropped my metrocard into the reader and sank into one of the rare single seats. these seats are delicious because they stretch maybe five seats back, each seat facing forward and completely alone, like little ducks lined up behind the seat of the driver. if you snag one of these you don't have to smell the coffee and cigarette breath of the person piled up next to you. nobody touches your skin or sits on your coat. nobody coughs or sneezes on you. so the day was going well. i got out my knitting and began. the bus sat there under the train trestle and the pigeons for a long while. generally, by the time i get on the bus after kindly allowing the rest of the planet to make their way onto the bus in front of me, the bus is pulling away from the curb. i stumble with the lurching of the bus and my bag almost always smacks into some miserable victim of the bus.

but not today. i am sitting there knitting all over the place in my precious single seat and i notice folks around me rustling about. we certainly have been sitting there too long. our bus driver stands up. he is looking out the window and i follow his eyes to a huge semi with one of those crazy tall cabs that i think might be an attempt at aerodynamic something. but the truck is almost as tall as the trestle. and in the middle of the trestle is some sort of metal box that hangs down just a bit lower than the big i-bar looking things where he is very likely to hit it. people on the bus are watching. people behind the truck are honking. it seems pretty clear to me from where i sit the truck driver is afraid he'll get stuck or break something and i'm not sure why the people behind him can't also see that. but it is pretty early and that might be why. because otherwise they would just have to be idiots.

but then the bus driver does what none of the idiots in such a hurry and none of the folks just milling around had the sense to do. he got out of the bus, waved to the truck driver, said something, then walked out into the road in front of the truck. he looked way up at the bottom of the trestle. he looked way up at the top of the truck. he smiled and waved the driver forward slowly. the truck slid up a bit. the bus driver continued walking backward in the street, guiding the truck driver a few feet at a time under the trestle not quite an inch above the top of the truck. all this time the folks behind the truck, possible idiots, were honking like mad and cars in the other lane were speeding past between us in the bus and the opposite lane full of the truck.

when the truck cleared the trestle the bus driver walked back across the street and swung himself up the steps and into his seat. the bus was quiet, but i looked around and noticed people were smiling. big smiles like they had really seen something.

max v. the vet

this is long. think of it as a novella. or don't.

today max and i visited the vet. this is always a challenge because i have to take him on the train, which he hates, and try to smuggle him into the station because dogs aren't allowed on the train except in bags, which max won't allow. so i put him in his soft blue sweater, something he wears primarily because his lack of fur makes him perpetually cold but also because his lack of fur is pretty unsightly and he simply looks less creepy in a sweater. i put his harness on and, just before going into the station, picked him up and carried him like a small, furry baby through the turnstile and down onto the platform. i stand on the 40 degree platform with max curled in my arms, shivering, even in his sweater. for the first time ever on a trip, he does not make his awful whale song.

the sixteen or seventeen year old version of max is white faced, bony, mainly hairless and full of awful bumps. his eyes are milky and he doesn't have anything close to a full set of teeth. i love him because he is my dog and he is, in his own strange way, affectionate. but i am baffled, over and over, by the way strangers are drawn to his ghost-skeleton self. they do not hesitate to reach out and touch him. we sit on the train between an older man with a magazine and a young woman filling out some sort of application. the woman looks up halfway through the trip, gasps and immediately reaches out to pet max's bumpy back. the man takes this as a cue and smiles at max, reaching out a hand. he does not seem to notice the bullet sized hole in max's cheek or the fact that his eyes focus just beyond the face of anyone near him. they think he is adorable. he smells like a vacuum cleaner bag, dusty and stale, but this does not seem to matter. he is a wild animal on the train and they want to touch him.

we get off the train and start the ten or so block walk down 7th avenue. max is slower than he used to be, but honestly, mostly this is because his nose latches onto the stink of every dog who ever thought of peeing on this street. hydrant. lamp post. mail box. but when we get to an intersection, he is something else. his whole body lengthens under his blue sweater and as he approaches the curb from the street he flings himself up in the air, front paws reaching miles ahead, ears flapping out in the wind. for a few seconds each intersection he really, truly flies. and people who see him smile or laugh. their eyes get wide. you do not expect to see a flying dachshund at noon. they say hello to him but he does not stop.

because there are so many blocks i carry him the last few, ghost face glowing by my ear. we are here for an ultrasound. max's liver has been acting up. he refuses to be weighed, feigning confusion. he knows where we are. he recognizes the smell. the place where his teeth left him. the place that pumped his stomach. the place with needles. i get as far as the hallway and he freezes. "look, man," i tell him, "i'm not the one dragging around the liver of a drunk. come on." i think this will lighten the mood but max immediately plants his shovel head flat against the corner of a door. i wince. there is a conversation over max about what will happen and then i leave him there. i promise to come back but max has not yet mastered english so he shoves his head under my arm and pretends he doesn't notice me going.

when i come back the vet suspects cushing's disease. there are things i could tell you about this but what it means to max is that he will get bumpier and more furless. he will drink gallons of water and his accidents will increase (increase noted). his short legs will weaken until he won't be able to fly over curbs. in other words, he will be an old dog. treatment, explains the vet, in a dog as old as max, would cause more pain than it would stop. our goal, she says, is to make him comfortable. there are words that go along with this phrase but she doesn't say them and i am too busy wanting to get my dog back to think about them.

i wait an hour before they bring him to me. i think a million bad thoughts about these people who should know my dog is scared without me, who should bring him back to me so i can talk to the top of his head, which he likes. a man sits next to me with a yellow lab. the dog is thick and older. she sits, but not like a dog. like a bear or a small child. a woman pushing a stroller comes in with some sort of collie mix, black and white. the dog wears a t-shirt, a normal human one. the midsection of his bushy tail is shaved and i can see the thick fur on his shoulder and chest are shaved, too. he is missing a front leg but does not seem to notice this. at one point, the dog leaps toward the bench next to the woman. he scrunches and falls but does not seem worried. the woman does. she is nearly destroyed. she lunges for him but he is already checking out another dog. she sinks back. the man next to me is ready to leave. he stands and the front of the yellow lab stands. her back end stays still. the front of her is baffled. the man reaches down and puts his hands on the dogs hips, lifting her gently. he has been doing this a long time.

the tech finally comes out with max on a blue plastic leash. i lean toward him and he flinches. he cannot tell who i am with his milk-eyes but when i put out my hand he smells me and puts his head under my hand. i carry him to the car service, whispering against his skull about how he looks nice in his sweater, how he is being very good. a guy in a camo jacket yells, "dachshund!" i nod. he reaches out a hand with long claw fingernails and max licks him. "he probably smells my brunch," the guy smiles.

we get home and i fill the kitchen sink with warm water and epsom salts. max smells like a shoe, like bad breath. the stress of the trip has coated the front of my jacket with flakes of him. his tail has a hole in it. i put him in the water and he doesn't cry. he doesn't try to get out. i pour salty water over him and we listen to npr.

knowing

i should probably start this off by saying i don't encourage my students to make fun of people who are different although we talk about humor as a way to manage things that make them feel uncomfortable. and i encourage them to be honest. it's a fine line. sometimes we fall off.

it's friday the 13th, which, inherently, also means friday. the day before valentine's day. the day before a week long vacation. so i was pretty much expecting almost anything. and yet, what i got managed to be even more unlikely than that.

the second 9th grade class, my last on fridays, arrived in full wild fashion. loud. grabby. unable to locate their books. the other two teachers in the room were already beginning to consider which child to strangle and i had a few i wanted to add to the list. they finally got settled in their desks, all arranged in a big u shape, with one lone desk sitting in the middle toward the front. the precious baby sits here. by choice. precious baby of the rap sheet and the gang membership. precious baby of the knife. that one. this child manages to bring out mothering instincts in almost anyone. even me. and today he was in rare form.

precious baby flung himself into his chair, howling. he was in pain. incredible pain. pain like no human had ever experienced before. he was clutching his shoulder. gun shot? stabbing? cramp? he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off his left shoulder to reveal and angry red pimple. he was clearly dying. some kind soul had given him an alcohol prep pad and he was tearing it open while moaning and wailing. "miss!" he screamed. "it hurts too much! what am i gonna do if my bone pops out?" really? seriously? how likely is it his bone will just randomly pop out of his skin? maybe he thinks the dreadful pain will frighten his bone out of his shoulder. now, this is not a child who has never had a pimple. perhaps it is the non-face location that has so unsettled his little self. his wailing sets off other children who howl about their own brands of suffering. "i don't waaaaaaaaant to read!" "somebody took my boooooooook!" "i have to peeeeeeeee!" yes, this is what high school children sound like on fridays. the thirteenths, especially.

the precious baby is now pressing the alcohol pad to his pimple/wound and is whimpering in agony. i stare at him a long time. i offer him lemon oil if he'll shut up long enough for me to get him something to put on is shoulder. he nods and reaches for the tiny bottle. i keep this stuff on hand. lemon oil. grapefruit oil. peppermint oil. rosewater. it's good for when someone smells. it's good for when someone is upset. he unscrews the cap and breathes deeply. i can smell the lemon from where i'm standing. while i am digging through my bag for neosporin + pain relief and a bandage, another child does something annoying i can't even remember. but i remember stomping up to the front of the room to deal with it. first i squished out neosporin on precious baby's finger and told him to put it on his wound/pimple. fifteen or so seconds later i had to tell him to stop smearing it around and let it dry. i offered him two bandage colors. pink or purple. he chose purple and i explained he should wait for the ointment to dry and should read his book, then put the purple bandage on his terrifying wound.

i dragged the other child out into the hall where he admitted having cocoa puffs for breakfast along with possibly a half bag of candy. we talked about opportunities for leadership or at least something other than total losership while he rocked back and forth on his feet, sometimes accidentally flinging himself against the wall. and then i heard the chicken noises. rooster noises, actually. so i opened the door and beckoned to the child i suspected would be most likely to tell me who was crowing in my classroom. he did. precious baby. of course. i sent the first child back in, sent the second child back in and called for precious baby. he was struggling with the bandage. a girl sitting near him said, "you never listen. you put it on too early, idiot." he glared at her. there he sat, jeans belted just above his knees, plaid boy panties hanging out all over the chair, long sleeved shirt unbuttoned to the chest with one side pulled off and wrapped, sling style, around him, white undershirt emphasizing his small childness, holding a bright purple bandage onto his shoulder, smiling sheepishly. he looked ridiculous. but he came outside and when i asked him about the rooster noises he giggled because the one thing he doesn't do is say no when i've caught him. he was roostering and he would stop. he sat back down and let the bandage rest on his shoulder. he held his book in one hand and the open bottle of lemon oil in the other, ignoring sporadic whispers to pass it over coming from behind other books at other tables. "it doesn't do anything," one girl muttered, "it just keeps you occupied is all." "that's not true!" he growled back at her and then returned to his book, breathing in lemon.

after class one of the new teachers came up to me and told me the kids were getting ready for a talent show. this is how you know she's new. things like school talent shows make my eyes bleed. if someone gave me one of those choices between seeing a high school talent show and, say, removing all my skin with a belt sander, i'd ask some questions about the sander. it's just not my thing. this is because i'm an adult. but the kids love this stuff so i feigned interest until i realized she was actually asking me a question. she looked uncomfortable, like she'd had some sort of accident and was hoping i wouldn't notice. "the kids," she was saying, "are doing impressions of some of the teachers...." she was actually squirming. "they want to do you and..." i smiled at her.

i should probably tell you now in case i haven't mentioned it before that i have a facial tic. blinking. mostly a mild annoyance but something that occasionally borders on violent twitching when i am very tired or sick. so at the beginning of every year, in every class, when i introduce myself i mention it. i tell the kids that students at my last school called me blinky. they are always horrified at the cruelty of students from other schools and a little uncomfortable with the fact that they want to laugh. because it is funny. so i laugh. i want them to know there's nothing wrong except an overactive brain to muscle connection. "i'm not flirting with you," i tell them, "and i'm not contacting aliens with coded blinks." they giggle. they ask questions. usually, does it hurt? sometimes. mostly it doesn't. we go back to more important things.

we return you to your regularly scheduled stammering new teacher- they want to do an impression of me. "and they want to do blinking?" i said to the very uncomfortable new teacher, smiling, because that's what i hoped they'd go for and not my tendency to hitch up my ever sagging pants when i pace the room or the fact that i can't get the attendance forms in on time or how i make faces and pretend to die after the forty seventh announcement interrupts our class or even how they think i think i'm cool. which i don't. or how i have crushes on way too many authors and they don't think adult married women should have crushes and especially not on geeky authors and certainly even if those crushes exist they should never, never have to hear about them. blinking is one of my mildest and most endearing oddnesses, i think. when i ask the new teacher about the blinking her eyes get big and she nods her head. "yes," she says, "are you okay with that? they said you would be but i..." she is confused. my blinking makes her a little uncomfortable. talking about it isn't helping. i try to explain a little but she is so relieved i'm not upset i don't think she really hears me. i offer to get a pack of crickets if they need those for props.

so now i have to go to this ridiculous talent show. because i owe them. i told them something and i said it was true. this thing makes me different and that's okay. it's okay to notice it, too. pretending not to notice it would be silly. it's okay to ask questions, even. for me, it's okay to joke about it if that gets us to talk and helps them understand. and they believed what i said enough to act on it. now i'm sure someone in the audience will be horrified when a student standing on stage starts to blink dramatically while waving around poems or something. but that's just fine. i will be laughing if the impression is good, and probably even if it isn't. because i will recognize the me they see every single day- a slightly unhinged blinking woman who throws words at them. unless the child pretending to be me starts hitching up her pants and raving about the dreaminess of john scieszka. then we'll have a problem.

bug

today started out as one of those sixty degrees in mid-february type days where the breezes actually smell warm and full of green. i walked most of the way to school in the semi-dark of six thirty and picked up a few things on the way to class- 2 liters of ginger ale, 2 liters of coke, a gallon of water, napkins. i already had plates and cups in my bag and i arrived a little more loaded down than i planned but it didn't feel too bad because of that warm and green and then there was the sunrise that followed me right up to the door of the building all orange and pink and pez colored. an anything could happen sort of day.

i dragged myself all the way up to the fourth floor and pulled one of the tables up in front of the board. the kids arrived, mostly on time (mostly because i've been giving these fantastic "on time" quizzes during the first ten minutes of class) and we began to read. edible bugs. we read about how folks are eating insects more these days partly for fashion and partly for the health benefits. we read about cultures in most other parts of the world where dining on bugs isn't considered freakish. we read a few little recipe suggestions. we talked a lot about culture and custom and how what a person likes has a lot more to do with how a person is raised than with what the liked thing might actually be. the bell rang for break and while the kids were milling around in the hall, i began to set up.

six boys brought in permission slips. i set out six plates, six cups. then came lollipops. apple with cricket. grape with cricket. cinnamon with cricket. whole crickets, of course. after that, four small black plates i began to pile up with food. mealworms flavored with something called "mexican spice". sour cream and onion crickets. salt and vinegar crickets. and then my favorite, bacon cheddar crickets. yes, bacon cheddar crickets. the six boys with permission slips came to the front of the room. the rest of the class crowded up close to the table. i handed out plates and cups of soda. one boy asked to go first. of course. he chose mealworms and i shook a few onto his plate. the other boys stepped forward tentatively and held out shaking black plates. i doled out worms or crickets as requested. there was much nervous giggling. there were demands from the crowd on the other side of the table. one boy held up his mealworm and was horrified to find that mealworms have tiny legs. deals were struck- "i'll do it if you will" type deals. the spectators squirmed and insisted loudly.

the first child put a mealworm in his mouth. his face shifted when he realized what i'd been telling them all along. bugs taste like potato chips. they weren't just not nasty. they were good. better than most of what they cram in their mouths daily. his courage spread and all six boys managed to down a few worms. when they all had the secret- that food is what tastes good- they grabbed for more. they dangled cricket legs from their lips. they sampled all the flavors. they opened their mouths to show chewed up mealworms to the stunned children who chose not to partake. they all talked at once. they couldn't look away. we cleaned up and the bell rang and class emptied. one of the six, a boy who ate quite a few of both mealworms and crickets, stood by himself in the middle of the room for a minute and looked over to where i was stacking plates. "did i really eat bugs, miss?" he asked, his voice far away. i assured him he had, and not just a few, either. his smile stretched so far across his face i worried his skin would shatter. he left the room with all his teeth glaring out the front of his mouth and his eyes glowing.

the second class came in and quite a few of them had visited with those who just left. there was nervous chatter from the start. no point getting to things right away. i made them sit down and read the first twenty minutes. there has never been such fidgety reading ever in the history of the world. those with permission slips found reasons to come up while i was resetting the table. "i can't find my book, miss." "i need a drink of water." "i think this room is very warm." i don't know what that earlier class told them, but it was good. they were scared to death. you know you have good kids when they will, as a group and by their own choice, lie to the next group coming in to help you create a mood.

one of the boys, the one you met earlier when he brought a knife into the school, lost is permission slip. he explained the situation to his mother in spanish, wrote his own permission slip in english and then got her to sign it. it read, in part, "my child can participate in the insect luncheon." i believe i might have mentioned that in spite of his obvious pain in the butt qualities, i adore this child. this class invited guests. a former classmate. one of our assistant principals. the kids expect me to eat bugs but what they really want is to see a "normal" adult do it. they beg the other teachers in class. they wheedle, bribe and threaten. it does no good. but when our assistant principal stopped by, they didn't even consider he might eat bugs. he certainly didn't want to, but i'd weaseled a promise from him in front of the kids the day before so he showed up. we gave him soda. we offered him a bug. and he ate it. right there in front of the kids. and then they knew they'd be able to do it. they couldn't be outdone by a normal adult.

so those with permission slips, again a group of six boys, held out black plates that rattled with fear. i am still not sure they know how hard they worked today. they went for the mealworms first. this group asked if they could keep the boxes the bugs arrived in. they wanted evidence of what they were doing. i handed out boxes to them and to a few of the more animated audience members. one little boy wanted to eat crickets but remembered from our reading that many people remove the heads, wings and legs. he wasn't sure what to do. he brought me a pile of crickets from the bacon cheddar plate and i took off heads, wings and legs (which i ate my own self) and then gave him bacon cheddar bodies which he devoured like popcorn. the children watching did their part with the goading and ooooooohing and cringing, but the bug eaters in this group seemed less aware of their audience. they were so fascinated with what they were doing and with how much they actually liked the taste of crickets and worms, they mostly just ate and talked to one another. they were astronauts who experienced things nobody else could understand so they turned away from the world and stood quietly, smiling, some with jagged legs hanging out of mouths, other with lollipop sticks resting on lips like thin cigarettes. they knew who they were and what they'd done.

meteorish

today i walked home the way i usually do, down 21st street heading toward smaller numbers from somewhere in the 80s. i was pretty close to the train, probably crossing 63rd street or so when i baseball-sized chunk of cement-type stuff arced just in front of my face and smashed to the ground a few feet away. seemed odd. i saw it move from the intersection toward the sidewalk. i stopped and looked around a bit. diagonally across the intersection two guys in their fifties were engaged in an animated conversation. they didn't even know i existed. half a block down on that far side of the street a group of four boys walked toward the intersection. too far away to throw anything at all, really. and yet there it was, smashed at the edges, a clump of cement. i took another three or four steps and another chunk of cement sailed through the air just in front of me and landed, spewing shards all over the sidewalk. i stopped again and turned full around to see where it came from. nobody. nothing. i walked on down toward the train.

an hour or so later, on 7th avenue, i stepped out of a store just as a pint of raspberries came falling out of the sky and smashed inches from my feet. the plastic container broke open and raspberries rolled down the sidewalk. a mother and child walked past, hand in hand. "where on earth do you think those things came from?" she asked.

sunday welder

we drove up to the house the way we do most weekends, late on friday. the temperature dropped just like it does every time we leave the hudson valley, just like it did a few weeks ago when we had a little trouble with a wayward hot water pipe. but the temperature didn't get that low. just down to seven. seven ought to be fine. still, the first thing i did when i got into the house was turn on that hot water tap in that edge-of-the-house bathroom. water. good. so we settled in and spent all day saturday doing a whole lot of nothing. the weather was warm and everything began to melt. no more mad icicles hanging from the front porch ready to stab into the top of my skull. of course, all this water has to go somewhere. our little house is on a bit of a rise, with higher land just behind it. mostly, water runs out toward the street with only a small amount sticking around to menace our basement, and then only if there's been a monstrous amount of rain or snow. but our driveway is pretty much a dry riverbed in good weather. it channels most of the uphill water and, as a result, is a long, streetward-leaning ramp of ice right now. even in this warm weather.

this morning just as the sky was starting to show over the mountain, i heard what sounded like a very large amount of water being poured from a dizzying height onto a hard surface. i mentioned this to the sweetie who could sleep through a tornado filled with screaming banshees and motorcycles without mufflers. he made it as clear as he could that he hadn't heard any sort of menacing sound and that it wasn't menacing at any rate and i should go back to sleep. the small dogs disagreed and the three of us clomped downstairs. i took them out and nearly slid off the front yard which had managed to form itself, wonder twins-style, into a giant sheet of ice sloping cruelly toward the street. the dogs and i slid our way around the house, just checking things out. we managed to drag ourselves up to the porch and got ourselves back into the house. i built up the fire and went to that edge-of-the-house bathroom to wash my hands. nothing. nothing from either tap. nothing in the kitchen. the toilet didn't refill. this is not one of those in the house frozen pipe issues. this is bigger.

i attempted to wake the sweetie. this is a difficult task on a good day but i simply called up the stairs, "there's no water in the house!" and his innate frozen pipe fear, a fear lodged so deep the very words are enough to jolt him to action, screamed through the fog of sleep and woke him up. he clattered into jeans and shoes and a jacket and grabbed his trusty basement flashlight. there were bangs and clangs and all the sounds you'd expect if you fancied you had a haunted basement. he came up triumphant. it's not in our house! great. so the pipe is even less accessible than the ones buried in our walls. and it's sunday morning. church time for at least another hour or so.

we did what anyone in our position would do. we got dressed without showering and went out for breakfast. because when there's nothing to do but wait, why not pass the time with pancakes? when we returned, the sweetie called the woman across the street who runs the local b&b. she is incredibly sweet and offered us use of her bathrooms and showers. yes, she said, she had water. evidently she sang the praises of the local water and water pressure because that made the sweetie wonder later if maybe we had inadequate pipe out there under our yard. our water pressure doesn't allow a person to fill a bathtub. i mean, if you had about an hour and you didn't mind that the water would be cold by the time you got in, fine, but for all intents and purposes, we live in a shower-only house. so she had water and plenty of it but offered to call another neighbor, a woman who works with the strange kids the way i do, and then she called back to report that this other neighbor was also enjoying the luxury of water. the neighbor, however, knew, for reasons that shall remain a mystery, that yet another neighbor, gary, shared a water line with us.

the sweetie called gary and sure enough, gary, who lives just the other side of the factory, had water coming out of all his taps like any normal person would. a series of further calls elicited the name of the "water guy". the name was not the same as the name of the man who pulled up to the house last fall to introduce himself as the water guy. i liked him because he lived a few houses over from us (as does the rest of town, really) and had spent time in our house in the late seventies and early eighties, before whatever awfulness that happened got here. it seems that water guy passed on some time in the last year and there's a new one. with one of those names like jones or smith. common. so the sweetie looked up his name in the local phone book. sure enough there were plenty of folks with his last name. let's just use smith for now. most of those smiths lived on smith road. and quite a few of them had names beginning with the same letter. the sweetie called the smith we were looking for and nobody answered. so he called the next smith who told him that the smith he was asking for was in florida but that smith wasn't really the smith we wanted in the first place. he gave the name of another smith and the sweetie called.

relatively quickly the smith showed up at the foot of our driveway and began poking around for access to some sort of pipe. the sweetie joined him and i could hear their laughter through our not-yet-insulated walls. now, if you're not from a small town, the next part may confuse you so here's the rule. if two or more men are standing around outside and at least one of them is parked in a way that indicates he doesn't really care that part of his truck (it will always be a truck) may or may not be a little bit in the actual road, and if the men are staring at some sort of thing (engine, pipe, downed electrical wire, dead deer), then other men are actually obligated to stop and offer suggestions, support, help or an audience. if a passing man actually knows any of the other men standing around and he doesn't stop, i suspect he is somehow kicked out of a variety of secret societies involving men standing around. so when our local arborist stopped his truck across the street and walked over to join the sweetie and the smith, my biggest concerns were, in this order: how many more would stop by? would any of this standing around lead to action that might get water into my house? how could i offer these guys coffee or tea when i had no water?

fortunately, the group stayed at three and then the sweetie and the smith came on into the house and prowled around the basement. the sweetie ran up after a few minutes and i heard him rummaging around in the kitchen. i went in to find him standing in the middle of his completely disassembled tool box with the nozzle for a propane torch in one hand. he looked wild, feverish. he ran out to the garage and when i smelled propane wafting up through the floor a bit later, i figured he found the propane canister somewhere. i should say here that the sweetie spends his days in an academic setting. a college. a film school. i think there are few things he loves as much as an opportunity to root around in the basement with a propane torch and some wrenches. having an audience to confer with makes it even better. these small disasters we have are godsends for him. he and the smith determined that the problem is ours. our stupid pipe. the one that runs from the street to the house.

and here's why it froze on the warmest (45 degree) day of winter. all the snow and ice started to melt and seep into the ground. the ground is frozen. it stays that way until some time in may, usually and because everything on top also usually stays that way, it's no big deal. but all this melting water seeped down to where the pipe is and found itself feeling very cold. cold enough to freeze. so it froze and the pipe, not wanting to be left out of things, froze itself right up, too. why, you're asking, didn't all the other pipes freeze? good question. everyone esle in the entire town of 400 people on town water has some sort of monster connecting pipe. too big to freeze solid. so we have choices. shut the house down until spring thaw (that's mid-may for those of you who already forgot) or have somebody come out and fix it. now, reasonableness would tell a person to just shut the house down and spend the next few months of weekends in brooklyn pining for the snow and the mountains. but the sweetie found out how the process happens and it was all over. there's a guy on the way now, driving from more than an hour away, bringing his arc welder and some very long leads.

that's right. arc welder. i should probably tell you here that the sweetie priced the particular sort of welder needed for this sort of project and the $1,500.00 price tag is the only thing that kept him from doing it himself. here's how it works. i think. don't try this based on my assessment. look it up yourself. but what you do is hook the welder up somehow with one lead out there at the street and the far end of the pipe. the other lead is hooked up in the basement at the other end of the offending pipe. current passes through the pipe and, eventually, melts the ice. i'm not kidding. if you are reading this, dad, you are absolutely not ever allowed to attempt this.

so the sweetie is waiting for the welder. the sky outside looks like a missouri sky in may, all low, dark clouds threatening a million different things slamming into the mountains and doubling back. the weather hangs at 40. my kitchen floor is full or tools and small bags of nails, screws and other fasteners. a propane torch sits on the table next to a bottle of wine.