I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
I’ve spent the last few days devouring Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. I read about the novel in The New York Times last year, and I must say it’s shaken up my confidence in my own writing in the best of ways. Some of Sittenfeld’s prose about boarding school outsiderdom is just perfect.
I got home after walking around in the rain and cold yesterday to find that the radiator was working. Finally! It makes a fabulous wheezing noise and (I hope) will enable me to get out of bed with more enthusiasm. Each morning, I have to wake up, pull the covers over my head as I curl into a ball, and count at least three minutes one second at a time. I have to physically prepare for the cold startle when my bare feet touch the floor. In apartment buildings, the super controls when the radiator will come on. Some buildings have a system that turns them on once temperatures drop to a certain point. Mine depends on some rude guy named Pedro. I’m making this up. The super’s Dominican, I hear he’s rude, but I don’t know him or his name.
Sam was in Idaho last weekend for his sister’s wedding. Idaho is apparently beautiful and clean, but has few Democrats, independent movie theaters, and video stores. I’ll concede that that’s a huge downfall, but I won’t look down on the fact that unlike NYC, it’s already fall there.
It’s an emo kid’s dream tonight. The chill of the air nips at sluggish Friday feet in the streets. Everyone should be going out tonight if not for any planned occasion, then merely to celebrate that tonight is a night one can go out and stay out late. Sleeping is a more flexible recreational activity, rather than a lacking necessity. But. The sun never came out, so all day has been a coma. One wants to just pull the plug and make the forecast rain start already. Go ahead. Totally hinder my day/night.
I cannot ever complain about my cushy AIS job. Never mind that I don’t have a classroom or that I have to be flexible. I don’t feel sick every morning when I have to go to work! Today was a good day. I did a read aloud in Mr. M’s class and just walked around and helped out in classes. On top of that, the one Special Ed class I teach on my own on Wednesdays had a guest speaker. Now all my classes will at least be on the same track by Friday. My spurned classes didn’t moan as much for me to come back when they saw me in the halls. Instead, most of them were just really sweet. But “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late,” isn’t just a Johnny Mathis song, you know.
I have six thoughts for you.
1. Today I had to do my “push in, pull out” tutoring work in Mr. Butler’s class. Bobby and I call him The Model, because he thinks he’s dead sexy with his long, flowing locks and chiseled jaw. I think his hair is actually kind of limp and he always looks surprised. He has eyes like Joan Rivers. Anyhow, Mr. Butler has a weird habit of enunciating unusual words in his speech. He also misspells words like “suicide.” (Why was he writing the word “suicide” on the board? It’s on the mind of most of the faculty of I.S. 666, but besides that, it’s the topic of a book he’s reading to the class). And…Mr. Butler made a poster in his classroom about common mistakes students make. One point on his poster was to not use double negatives. It’s good to model concepts for students, so he used the example no-no sentence “He don’t know nothing.” That Model instructor then showed two ways to write that sentence correctly - “He knows nothing,” and “He don’t know anything.”
Sing with me now:
So…I’m back. I called in sick to work on Friday, because 1) I was the kind of sick of the pounds o’ phlegm and a voice like a mafiosa variety, 2) I had a tutoring interview that I had already postponed once that week wayyyy in Brooklyn that I had to get to at 3, and 3) my parents were in town. I I had to get up really early and call in sick, but no one at the school would answer the phone. Once I left my message with a polite administrator (that doesn’t have to be an oxymoron), I dozed a few more hours. My parents and I met up, ate breakfast at West Way Cafe, and I changed into my grownup uniform. It was still raining buckets. I told my parents I really didn’t need to be escorted to the interview site, but I’m glad they were around for the ride. It was a long one. We waited FOR the Q, then ON the Q, and then we walked blocks and blocks…in the wrong direction…TOGETHER. Quality time, if you ask me. I’m not all that familiar with Brooklyn, so I don’t know what the charming neighborhood I went to was called, but it was very Jewish. At one point, all the signs were English and Yiddish. I felt like the Aryan outsider schlepping around in my stilettoes. (Yes, in rain! All because I thought this would keep the hem of my pants from getting wet[ter]. I was wrong).
After a delay in Houston and having to fly in circles in Baltimore, my parents arrived in NYC around 4:00. They’re staying at a hotel on my street, so the proximity is nice. All we did today was eat at Deluxe (blah), walk around 145th Street to show my mom my first apartment, and then walk around Times Square a bit. I need to be a better tour guide, but I’m still sick and I was so tired today. I’m looking for a good museum for my parents and I to see - something off the beaten path. I’d love to go to the Tenement Museum, but reservations are required and I don’t know if it’s open on weekends. Plus, my dad would make so many jokes, like “Gee, this place looks like your first apartment, ha, ha.”
Tomorrow afternoon the man responsible for my shapely (okay skinny, but muscular) legs and the woman responsible for my full German face are coming to New York. I’m hoping to meet my parents at La Guardia, so long as torrential rains don’t interfere. If they do, then I still might dog-paddle to Queens.
