You'd think that one of these days I'd stop being surprised when 9-year-olds make South Park references.
Well, maybe only if "you" happen to be the parent of today's version of the child, y'know, the child who also attends a very C.S. Lewis Catholic School.
But then I gotta ask: if your child is capable of making said reference, then why was there no giggling when I read the part of the teacher-chosen book for this residency which included the phrase "it throbs with strength against our poles?"
I just observed yet another class where an instructor, in lieu of concocting a different way of giving directions to middle schoolers, continued to yell at their inability to follow directions. That's right, blame the person who doesn't get it, especially if that person is a tiny seventh grade boy trying to play a huge-ass marimba and double-especially if the reason they don't get it is your own inability to demonstrate an identifiable downbeat. Who needs counting?
I'm supposed to write up my observations, but I need a little practice so I can do it diplomatically. In preparation, here are my edits to make several ongoing ad campaigns more effective to their target audience:
Please Drive Safely, My Daddy Works Here. Thanks, Sally.
These orange signs with faux child handwriting would be much more eye-catching if an actual five-year-old were holding the sign. Nothing slows folk down like a kid in the road.
Two out of Three Teenagers Who Smoke Will Die Prematurely
There are two versions of this: the print ad, which features two smoking girls tanning on the beach next to what is presumably their third smoking friend inside a coffin and the TV ad, which features a rapidly sinking boat that contains only two lifejackets, both of which are being held out toward two smoking white kids by one smoking black kid. These ads would achieve greater success if the third smoking kid were just chomped by a huge shark.
Anti-Abortion Ads Featuring Ugly Babies
We all know that no one wants to save the unattractive. Why not replace the baby with the photo of the adult the child would become? Like, say, A Kindly and Just World Leader? Or, The Thoughtful Adult Who Will Support You in Your Old Age? Or, A Shark That Ate a Smoking Teenager?
There we go. Now I can be reasonable.
I've just been researching Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and I think it's pretty clear why so many of the stories I make up for classes involve fearful situations in which stones, bread, plants, blood, water, frogs and birds play major roles.
All that Eastern Washington farmland mixed with a collection of the previously mentioned plus a ferocious chicken pox fever made me the woman I am today.
...and tacos.
We were waiting under the patio, checking students in for class. One mother, apropos of something said to me "I'm sure you don't remember this, but in the 80s, denim skirts..."
Self, I says to myself while speaking aloud to the mother, self, do you suppose this mother is being self-deprecating or does she really think you look that young or does she think that the only people who would be teaching her daughter for such a class would have to be young enough to not remember how denim skirts were worn in the 80s because if they were old enough then surely they'd have a better paying job?
I decided she was just trying to make conversation. I mean, people do that sometimes, right?
Yellow Dog and I went camping this past weekend and it was glorious.
Glorious, in this case, also means it was really cold outside and I caught a cold by the time we hit George. But! It also means that having a trifold bed inside the tent makes a lovely little nest and that the tacos are still delicious at Tacos El Rey. (This restaurant did not exist when I lived in the Desert Oasis, but was first a taco truck, then a tiny little walk-up, and now a small restaurant. And so fucking good that you want to eat tacos for every meal.)
We camped in a spot that I'd not been since about 5th grade, right in the middle of all of the coulees and very Time Has Had Its Way With the Wooly Mammoth. We sat and looked at things and stuff and drove around and looked at things and stuff and were generally quite content, particularly if one counts the six toasted marshmallows I consumed on Saturday night.
Not so good is that when I was showing Yellow Dog around the Family Farm we noticed that Uncle Church had torn out my grandmother's entire orchard and garden as well as the peonies and yellow roses in the back yard. True, my grandparents are both dead and my uncle's family now lives in their little house because they had to sell their huge house due to farming difficulties, but those roses were transported by my grandfather all the way from Vernal, Utah in 1980 from an alkalai bed that had been abandoned forty years earlier, a rosebed near their old home where their oldest son had died of lukemia. A rosebed that appeared dead, but in the most The Secret Garden sort of way still managed to flourish when brought to an entirely different desert. And the orchard, though it produced wormy apples and sour plums, was tended every year by my aging grandmother, including the year she died. (Okay, okay, I'm exaggerating: they were only tended by her up until the year before she died.)
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the orchard was gone when I was there two years ago, but the desolation of it didn't really hit me in the same way because I wasn't really looking for history that time. It all amounts to this: there are no visible stories there anymore. At least, not my stories. My father's house was sold to people I've never met and my grandparent's house is occupied by people who are related to me through blood only. When walking through the newly growing fields I still remember all the things I did and said and what I thought about them when I did and said them, but it makes me sad that I can't show anyone the markers of those days. I didn't feel this way about moving out of the space on 4th or when Gilded Lily was torn down, but I wanted those yellow roses to be there to show my children--or at least my boyfriend--and now there's just grass and gravel. Oh, and a few new trailers in the yard of Uncle Narcolepsy. Those may just stick around until the next ice age. Especially now that several of them have tires weighing down the windtorn rooftops.
In conclusion: eat at Tacos el Rey.