snow day 2: the return of snow day

the fat, wet snow on thursday that had been crowding the sky like locusts finally started to stick as i waited for the train.










but our mayor worried about the implications of a second snow day so soon after the first. "children belong in school," he said, and he is certainly right about that, but as i walked home thursday night in the fairytaleness of it, i couldn't help but hope for several more feet of snow and the possibility of being temporarily trapped in my cozy home.






but we are the greatest city in the world and we do not rest, do not stop for a little snow. our streets will stay clear and open. even the sidewalks in our parks will be free of snow and ready for prancing.













and next morning when we all rubbed open our eyes and peered out, certainly the sidewalks were clear. heavy fines and potential lawsuits lurk for those who don't clear their sidewalks.









but the snow was a heavy burden and cars simply could not shake themselves free. trees leaned on fences and buildings just to catch their breaths. and the salters and snowplows were no match for this sort of snow. and our very tired mayor said, "stay home".














so we sat quietly inside gingerbread houses and high rises all morning, nursing hot chocolate and oatmeal.















until the sounds of dogs whimpering at front doors and children struggling under the weight of plastic sleds and wool wrappings brought us all bravely out into the still falling snow.

step right up

the morning started out with fat rain crashing down all over everything and me trying to get my rainbooted self to the train station by the park without getting anything drenched. student papers. my packet of oatmeal. four boxes of mealworms and four boxes of crickets in flavors usually reserved for potato chips. i wasn't so worried about the two cricket lollipops, one blueberry and one raspberry, crammed somewhere in my bag. by the time i came up out of underground the rain had turned to snow, even fatter than the rain, too wet to stick and be real on the ground but extra fancy in the sky because it took up all the space up there. i had promised one of my girls she could do her extra credit garden project this morning and when i hauled my wet-wool covered self up to the fourth floor, she was sprawled out in front of the door with a few other girls, waiting. i was two minutes late.

while she got to work making a pot out of newspaper and trying to decide whether to plant a cactus or some lemon cucumber or maybe some fractal-y romanesco broccoli, i spread out plates and napkins on the table. the other girls swirled around, smelling the potting soil, which they insisted smelled horrible, then smelling it again just for the scariness, i guess. i put a packet of bugs on each plate, mexican spice mealworms, pink cricket lollipop, bacon cheddar crickets, blue cricket lollipop, cheese mealworms. other kids arrived.

when the bell rang we worked on regular business- reading, arguing, threatening, more reading and then some writing. we discussed grades and while i answered questions i reached down to the cricket plate and picked one up the way you do popcorn from a bowl, without really thinking about it. crunch. and so we started.

every year we ease into nonfiction with a few essays on bugs because teenagers think bugs are disgusting and if they're going to read, they want to read about horrible suffering or something disgusting. we read about cockroaches. then we read about edible bugs, about how folks in most other countries cook and eat a variety of insects because they are plentiful, tasty and healthy. and every year, with the help of a very elaborate and carefully worded permission slip, a few brave souls stand up in front of their peers and eat bugs. before we eat, i ask them to get out paper and a pen. i explain that when we're finished, they'll be expected to reflect. to write what they see and how they feel about it. and they did. so i'll let you hear what they had to say in their own unusual words.

from the audience:
this is just the worst experience i will never ever have it.

my insane teacher just ate bugs not 1 bug not 2 bugs alot of bugs.

i thought that maybe the crickets and bugs still had there blood so i thought they were drinking the blood to.

one boy only ate them without saying a word.

to me i think it was grose and bad because i was hering the bugs crack on peoples mouth.

i was thinking i should have stayed home.

i just discovered the most discusting thing ever!

i felt as if i was dreaming or in a other world, where eating bugs is an everyday thing. at first i was kind of grossed out i could not belive my eye but soon after i saw some of my class mates eating them i thought to myself maybe is not that bad and at one point i even thought of trying it. next time if she brings bug i promised myself that i would try it and also try to like it.

i have experinize hell. it was so nasty to see that boy stuffing 5 worms in his mouth... the crunching sound was so nasty i thought i was going to die... i am so grossed out i am going to have dreams about people stuffing those worms right into there mouth. i couldn't stand it when that boy was holding it right above his mouth and it slide right into his teeth.

just the thought of eating bugs freaked me out because it's something out of the ordinary.

i saw my classmates eat bugs that were dead. it was very disturbing... it was crazy that nobody threw up.

today i watched six pieople eat a bunch of crickets and meal worms it was very nasty but interesting. as they were eating it you heard it chrunch in there mouth.

that is horroring of fear.

i seen that the kids were scared to eat the bugs and then after they ate it, they really loved it.

what i did was sit in the audience. we sat there and watched six kids eat bugs. they sounded very crunchy.

when the students was eating it i thought i was dreaming and i thought these students were crazy in the brain. i was about to take my phone out and call 911 to check if these students had something wrong with their brain.

from those who ate:
i ate as many bugs as i can like there's no tomorrow. i didn't fear at all since they're dead.

well, i know not to eat anymore worms or anything with legs, but i had a good time doing it in front of my friend and having good laughs.

i was scared because i never ate a cricks before till today. it was okay. i mean it was not bad... i thought i was going to throw up. but i didn't. so i was happy about that. the legs got stuck on my teeth so i had to drink something.

my mind was so crazy and out of control. when she called my name a whole bunch of questions was going through my head...then she told us to pick up a mealworm i was like oh no. but i pick it up... so shackey (in my head). pop the mealworum in my mouth it taste ok but i was gross out... all i have to say is it was an exprience.

when i was first up there i was so nervous. but when i ate the worm it was like chips. i was not afraid of eating them anymore. they started to taste good. the crikets were the ones that i was afraid to eat because they were very creepy looking and looked like they were alive. but i ate it anyway... everyone else that was eating the bugs was about to go crazy. but after a while every one started to calm down and wasn't creeped out about us eating bugs.

i'm shocked i even ate a bug...i'm never gonna do it again, but at least i had the guts to do it. everyone looked at us like we were nasty but, they couldn't even do it... this was a good experience to have with people you are cool with.

when i went for the critit i was just like ooo-myyy-goood! the looked realy big and yellow. i was realy nerviors. but when i tast the crits they were realy good. the only thing was i felt the feet and there anteners.

i came back from the bathroom and they were all around the table getting ready to eat it. i must say i really didn't think i would eat that stuff. then i hear them start telling me to do it and i'm like shit. so when i get here i say the bugs holy shit i wanted to throw up. i felt sick to my stomach. i wanted other people to do it before me so i can see there reactions and tell me how it taste. at this point of time i didn't care if it taste good i didn't want to be the guy who ate bugs in our class room. then i said i didn't care what people think what won't kill me will make me stronger. so i ate the meal worms and to be really honest they weren't that bad beside the feet. there bugs. if it was up to me i would never do that crap again.

allthough my parnets are discuted from it but they agreed at last and i got my chance to taste them in class it was a really great but disgusting thing to do.

what i seen when i was up there getting ready to eat the bugs i seen people getting nervous and shaking when they were shaking the table was moving and the bugs were shaking. it got me even more nervous and scared, but when i final said to myself just go for it and eat it i did. when i tryed the meal worm it wasent that bad. just like she said it taste like patato chips. then after that i had about five more. i would recomend any one to try it, unless you are alergic. i wanted to try the cricket but i didn't like the legs and wings on it. i am really glad that i tried it, because it was a fun experience and now i can tell all of my friends and family that i tryed a bug. when i get the picture i want to show my family and friends that i did it.

and this, of course, is when i love them most. when they are discombobulated. not because i want them to be afraid, but because that's when they think most elegantly. when they are off balance. and not just thinking about themselves but about each other. because when they are edgy like this, nervous and unsure, they have to reach out. that little group of six children standing up there at the front of the room was able to do something scary because they looked around and saw not brave faces, but five faces just like theirs staring back at them, unsure, fearful. and i guess that's what lets us sometimes be brave, probably, just knowing that whatever terror you face, you walk toward it with someone else's trembling hand clutched in your own.

telescope

it is sunday evening and we are trying to find a place to park. this is part of the ritual. most weekends we go away to the quiet and the mountains full of snow and water and wild animals. then every sunday we drive back into the city as the sun sinks, drive along the west side highway with the sun scooting along with us over the tops of those tall apartment buildings in jersey, losing it as we dip down under the river through the brooklyn battery tunnel and then when we come out the other side the sun is gone, leaving that blue sky that happens at only just this moment, but every single day.

we finally get ourselves parked a few blocks away from our own front door, walk past the laundromat that spilled bleach on our green sheets, past the bodega with the mysterious remodeling sign on the closed front door, to the intersection where the f train spits folks out at all four corners. and we can see him from where we are, from this far side of the street. he is standing behind a fat telescope at possibly the most brightly lit corner in our neighborhood, outside a diner and about three feet from the steps to the train.

what an idiot, i think to myself. the sweetie mutters something about how he's chosen the stupidest place he could find to set that thing up. he couldn't be more in the way. we cross the street toward him, weighed down with our weekend bags and sacks of groceries. the small brown dog is tethered to my wrist. and the man with the telescope beams at us as we step up onto the sidewalk. he is dapper. bright white hair and a face absolutely awash with excitement. "look at the moon!" he says. and the sweetie walks over. he looks through the eyepiece and can't see it at first. he ajdusts and sees it. he motions me over, smiling a little like the moon man. i hand over the dog to the sweetie and bend to the eyepiece. and it really is there. the moon. now, i have seen the moon a million times maybe. i have even seen it a few times through a telescope. but never in a city. never in this city. not up close.

the moon tonight is a first quarter moon. it's halfway to full. and i see all of it crowding into the lens there, cratery and quiet, getting more and more shadowy toward what looks from this far like the edge. the man just stands there, happy i guess to be sharing something he loves so much. i tell him thanks and the sweetie and i walk away. a family is walking up with two or three children just the right age. they know the moon sits there in the background of each night of their lives. but they do not yet know its brightness up close and will not be expecting this.

postal

i am standing in line at the post office. it is a small space and the seventeen people in line in front of me make it smaller. then there's the metal gate pulled down over the front window which makes this small, overwarm rectangle of a room feel unnecessarily like a cave. a cave full of wet wool and wet shoes and wet hair and wet socks. packages with the ink smearing and melting off.

i am standing in line because i could not imagine a better time to mail a package than during a snowstorm on a weekday afternoon at just before 3pm. evidently there are several of us out there thinking the same thing. there are at least three people wearing postal uniforms standing behind the bulletproof glass in the post office. and although there are more than three bulletproof windows for taking in packages, only one of the postal people stands there behind the glass calling, slowly, "next!" this should be unnecessary as the place is small and there is a bell, accompanied by a light, to indicate where the next package-toting, wool-wrapped stink bomb of a person should go. and there's the fact that there's only one person working. this does not seem to matter. "next!"

this is the first time i have ever entered a post office in the five boroughs without my knitting and i can feel the room shrinking, growing darker and so warm i am sure my hat will melt into my already sweating skull. i can feel unbearable heat radiating from the brown wool pants i've knit and shoved into the small box i'm carrying. i can taste wet dog in the air. surely i will die. there is a young man several people ahead of me who appears to be a stray member of a prettyboy band from the eighties. his gaunt body perches high atop the skinniest legs i've ever seen, legs wrapped in beyond-pegged camel colored jeans. his hair, loose, dark curls, falls considerably lower in front, over his eyes, than it does in back. he wipes the same stray strand out of his eyes over and over. he is shipping out fifty or so boxes that look suspiciously like small pizza boxes. perhaps he is mailing out fifty record albums. but it does not matter, really, what he is mailing. it seems somehow necessary for him to deal with each of the fifty packages in some separate and painstaking way. each one has different rules.

one of the other postal folk strolls up to a window and i think, several of us there think, she will save us, rescue us from waiting behind the boy with the record albums and the tiny ankles. but she takes a shipper who has brought up a package without the requisite info. no paperwork. shipped overseas. now, it says right there on the wall that we all ought to have our paperwork ready before we get ourselves up to a window and i do. i do. but not everyone is me and so now we will continue to stand. next to the sign warning about paperwork are others. have your money out before you get to the window. have your i.d. out if you intend to pick up a package. pay in small bills if you have them. while i am still the twelfth person in line, i count out singles. one. two. three. all the way up to ten. i do not think i will need ten, but i am like the post office. anxious about small things. i want to be ready.

the pregnant woman in line behind me has hit me several times with her unborn child. hard. not what you'd call accidental bumps so much as things bordering on punches. her baby is only days from being born and i find it difficult to believe she cannot feel or see herself hurtling toward my back repeatedly. when the woman in front of me turns from time to time in her restlessness and huffs in frustration, i am slapped with a steamy gust that suggests she's been eating the socks of homeless men and this only serves to increase my feelings of suffocation. a baby screams intermittently. the man a few people ahead of me wearing bank man clothes with no jacket has been kicking a huge bin of envelopes slowly forward, the bin scraping and hissing with each shiny leather kick. suddenly the second postal woman sees him and yells. tells him to bring his bin of envelopes over to the window. people ask detailed questions about stamps. people do not know the zip codes of small towns in indiana.

i am near the front now. the skinny legged boy with the coils of eighties hair drooping into his eyes is finishing up his shipping. he gets out a phone and begins to order. spring rolls. some sort of pork. he does not leave the postal window. he gives an intersection as the address for the food delivery and then explains to the person taking his order that he'll be at the intersection there in front of the bank, that he doesn't work at the bank so he doesn't want the food delivered to the bank. he'll be there on the corner in front of the bank when they arrive with the food. he says more than once to the person on the other end of the line that he'll be there. he'll be waiting, he says, outside the bank.

snow day

i have given up formatting in blogger. there are words. there are photos. some of them go with others of them.
some things you should know about the big city.
1. this is my third snow day in ten years.
2. nyc is handing out free hot chocolate and sleds to children today at a handful of city parks.
3. no matter how much you might love teaching, the sound of the words "snow day" humming into your ears from the radio will make your heart sparkle.

this is how my city does a snow day.

the snow likes metal better than i expected. clumps on it, clings to it, decorates like it has nothing better to do. all day. snuggle, snuggle, snuggle.

but the snow will kiss on anyone and so the trees and cars and stoops are all swooning, giddy, beautiful and completely untrustworthy.































and the park, the perfect world a half block from my door, keeps itself all whispery, secret-like so that you worry you are stepping into someone else's dream before they start dreaming it. all full of what-if.