1 Corinthians 13:11 reads:
Up until last week (and Note: this is going to get petty), I thought the above scripture was true, but that was before I embarked on 4-hour "storytime." The tales of the bureaucratic bumblers left me reeling after Night #1, had me asking who was kidding me after Night #2, found me doodling uncontrollably on Night #3, munching like a bloody Gremlin on Night #4 and seriously wishing looks could kill by Night #5.
(1) Bewitched. There are a lot of us. I can't count, could care less really, but I know there are at least 50 of us, and we're all seated in front of our own personal computers. The glowing blue log-in screen is hard to miss, but it's even harder when on the first night, every five minutes, someone raises their hand to ask, "When are we gonna log on to the computers and get in the system and learn all these things?" When they're not asking the team of instructors, they're asking the people around them - loudly. Every other third person knows somebody who either went through this or that person knows somebody else and, "They all said we'd log on tonight, the first night, and we have a test on next Tuesday and we're gonna have to get such-and-such many right and it all has to be accurate ..."
Finally the head instructor, whose attitude reminds me a lot of Florence from The Jeffersons with her snappy comebacks, neck jerks and all, calls out loudly, causing my headphones to shriek with static. I curse her. Bloody headset, cheap as shit, screeching at me in the equivalent of what has to be nails on a chalkboard. She says, "For the last time, I'm telling you this for the last time. Are you listenin'? Some of y'all aren't listenin' and you best be listenin'. Don't make me have to come to you. You will log on only when I tell you you're going to log on. That's right. When I tell you. Do y'all get that?"
I fumble in my brain for that Bible verse from above, wondering why I'm being spoken to like I should be seen and not heard. And then "storytime" begins and we're told to open up our textbooks to such-and-such page and follow along. The reader reads everything - the title, the subtitle, the headings and sub-headings, even where it says "See Figure 1-3." She tells us - they all tell us - when to turn the pages. One time, me and a couple of kids on my row got a little bold and turned the page before we'd reached that final period, and do you know, our unit leader called all out some kinda loud, "DO NOT READ AHEAD! Stay with the rest of the class. DO NOT READ AHEAD. You will only confuse yourselves."
I started snapping pages as I turned them - ahead of time. I am bad, like the two-year-old who sticks his tongue out at you from his stroller as he passes by. I even sucked my teeth some. Night #1 and I've already reverted to my 16-year-old self, eyes rollin' every 2 seconds, gum smackin', pillaging my backpack (yes, backpack - the reading materials they sent us made me think I'd applied for law school) for chewing gum and snack food (y'all know I always had me some snack food), thumping my pencil on the desk all loud, sighing every second and daring myself not to look at the friggin' clock because I know that ticker is a traitor. And I keep hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE wondering what the password is, so I can log on. I tamper with the keyboard, feeling like the rebel at the back of the class who hacks spitballs on the ceiling. I even look up at the ceiling, but decide against any spitting since that'd only illicit more interest from the chatter, friendly, shadowboxin' shiester next to me. He bothers me.
(2) Bothered. Him. He who goes by "Raymond," and no, errybody does not love Raymond. I don't know what Ray's real name is because it's foreign and the first time he bothered me was by assuming that I probably wouldn't be able to pronounce his name properly so he felt he needn't even bother. Why don't you just call me "stupid American" to my face - in whatever language it is that you know I won't even know anyhow.
Night #1 he remembers me. "We were in earlier training together earlier. I know your face. So, what do you think we are going to be doing here?"
I am Roz. You remember Roz. From Night Court? Bull asks a really stupid question, so Roz looks at him like, well, like he's stupid, and just eyes him as if to say, "You really shouldn't talk to me right now." But Bull is a talker, a chattering pontificator, if you will; capable of initiating small talk in dumbing doses, lulling me into a stream of "mmm hmmms." You know what my "mmm hmmms" sound like, too. Unfortunately, he, being foreign and all, is oblivious to my tones and to my sarcasm. Several comments hang in the air long enough for some drool to dry up.
It's also unfortunate that he says things that are not funny and does the extremely annoying thing of repeating it. He repeats it and sometimes he touches my arm to make sure I'm listening to catch the funny. These all-too-frequent moments are prefaced, of course, with, "Did you hear what I said? I said ..." This is followed almost always by a very suspicious laugh. I say suspicious because for two nights it haunts me as intensely annoying. I can't place it, but on Wednesday night he is not there and it comes to me, almost. He laughs like Ernie, or is it Bert? I think it's Bert. It's that noise that sounds like maracas being shaken moderately, in the hee-hee family of laughs.
I want to do the friggin' flamenco on those maracas and crush them with the heel of my well-worn dancing shoe. I want to snap his head off with the same clipped clarity of some castanets. I even cross cultures a bit and imagine that maybe his head could be a pinata.
I am irritable all week, because everyday I try to go in with a good attitude, but I also have to endure stop-and-go traffic with what has to be some of the worst drivers on earth - the Philadelphians. Great sideswipers. Almost every car you see has some kinda dent in it, and I'm not sure if they can even see in their brains or their mirrors; I don't think they can even fathom what a "blind spot" is. I become even more irritable having to endure hot stuffy air for 4 hours, and the bewitching desire to rebel in the small, idiotic ways that I can manage, combined with being read to, told to "shush" and having people's whose diets consist of cigarettes and diet coke hover over my shoulder to tell me, "Wow. You're really smart," because I can read the directions for logging onto the system AND do them on the computer simultaneously heighten my state of frustration. I am ...
(3) Bewildered. Night #1 one of the instructors who knows somebody in the class tells her so we can all hear, "Well you gotta pass training and then you'll go home and someone from here will call you in either a couple of days or the next -"
"Wait a minute," says an eavesdropper. "What do you mean in a couple of days? Do you mean we finish training, we pass training and then we go home and wait? Again?"
"Oh yeah," she says, swatting her hand in casual deflection. "They call you to let you know when you start. It could be a couple days or a few weeks. Hard to say."
More like hard to swallow. We are some murmuring fools for the next five minutes. The murmurs spread, too, and pretty soon hands are flying up all over the classroom as people preface their impending questions with "I know you're not serious" shakes of their heads. Some other instructor, she who has a real knack for insulting you encouragingly screams, "Put your headsets on! I don't answer questions to students who don't have their headsets on. Hands down. Listen to me everyone. Y'all are doing really well, you're gonna get the hang of it all and we're going to use you."
I already feel used. In fact, I remember cueing up Nina Simone's "The Other Woman" because I was starting to feel like the chic who woke up every other week and found money on the nightstand, with a note that says, "I'mma call you."
You mean to tell me that it's seriously taking me two months basically before I can actually start working? Great. I hope I get to fill out more paperwork for that, too. Mishegas.
Raymond has taken a keen liking to me, folks. He's my shadowboxer baby. I turn the page, he turns the page. I take out a pen, he gets one, too. I stretch and he remembers and comments that he, too, feels a bit stiff. "Issa long time we sit here. This is long and boaring. I feel like - hee hee - I feel like their reading to me. It pussa me to sleep. You look sleepy too."
"Mmm. Hmm."
He's also Mr. On-top-of-things, so he reminds me to turn the page when I've become too immersed in my doodlings, he watches to make sure I log on okay, he rushes to finish his online exercises so he can see what scores I've got - craning his oh-so-snappable neck over into my space bubble, breathing not too terribly fresh breath into my space bubble to comment in "mm hmmms" and "I sees" like I'm about to be diagnosed with something incurable and I've got it real bad. He's already calculated what our pay will be before taxes, considering we get paid more for working at night, and these computer systems are old, but not too terribly old; they are new enough to where upon his "approximation" they have to be worth about $400 apiece, "and look. Look at all the com.put.ers. Thissa lot of systems. Expensive."
He points to the Pentium sticker and proceeds to explain to me what a processor does in his best laymen's English. I wonder if he'd get it if I suddenly unearthed a banana and sat smiling at him with my widest smile, stroking my chin.
The first week ends and I jump in my car to let it heat up - it's cold as fuqua outside. This black dude gives me a crazy look as I roll my windows down and Coldplay bursts into the cool night air. He rolls his window down. He is laughing. "Whatchu listenin' to, girl? That shit is loud."
I hesitate recalling that new McDonald's commercial where a black guy sizes up a black woman in line as she orders a spicy chicken sandwich. "Look who's tryin' to add some flavor into her life," he says as if she can't possibly be down with eating some spicey chicken. But I realize this isn't exactly the same situation. I am not thumpin' whoever it is that I should be thumpin' because I don't have a clue who is who nowadays, but I know me some Coldplay.
"Coldplay." I don't wanna be sheepish because music is music. I want to say it with the same conviction as "I'm black and I'm proud," but I feel that'd be a disservice to the beautifulness that is Coldplay's subtlety.
"Oh yeah? That's the shit right there. They fly. That they new joint?"
"They sang it at the Grammy's."
"Oh yeah, thas righ'. They kinda cool. He look like he havin' some seizures and shit while he singing, but they got a cool sound."
We both burned the hell out of some rubber on our ways out, and I floated home at speeds far faster than posted - relieved, restless and remembering ...
... how much I hate work itself.
I'll be back for ruminations on a Tuesday ...
* Um, this is completely random, but is there any reason at all for DMC and Sarah McLachlan to have joined together on a song titled, "Just like me," which features a rock-tinged guitar playing while Sarah "remixes" that song about cats and the cradle and silver spoons and gettin' together then? This was poor and painful in the same way that saying IceCube has great flow is poor and painful.
"But I just want you to know/yo yo" That is old school. So old school, that that shit is busted.