Monday's Cornucopia

Today felt like spring and smelled of deadlines.

Most weekdays, on the way to work, I pass by a place called “School of the Future,” on the corner of E. 22nd St. and Lexington Ave. The building looks like any other nondescript building in Manhattan. It’s grey and has windows.

If I’m not in a rush to work, I chuckle at the name. I like it. It’s ambitious for its setting. Anyway, last Friday, at a friend’s going away party, I met a guy who teaches special ed at the school.

While we were talking about the school and how students get placed in schools in Manhattan, I felt a bit sorry for him. I wanted to tell him that outside of teaching, he should work on speaking faster and to make less emphatic hand gestures to accompany everything he says. But I had just met him and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Hearing him speak and seeing him gesture, made me think of the first week I got back from teaching English in Northeast China for a year. Even though my students were in college and were more intelligent than me, I bet there could be some parallels drawn between our jobs in terms of patience and communication.

I remember going into the 7-11 with M, K, and T. M had just gotten back from Peru and had smuggled a grocery bag’s worth of Coca de Mate in his sleeping bag into the country. We needed hot water to make some Mate tea and some citrus to activate its properties.

I approached the owner. “Do . . . you . . . have . . . any . . . lemons?” When I said “lemons,” my hands instinctively went in front of my face and they started to outline the shape of a lemon. In my mind, I was being slick and efficient with no room for miscommunication. From the man behind the counter’s vantage point, I was being condescending by asking that question so slowly and then appearing to play with imaginary castanets.

It took me a solid month and into the first few weeks of law school before I finally got my English mojo back. Being in a foreign country that long with absolutely no language skills emboldened me and made me fluent in body language.

That same night, Friday, an EMT told me a good story of how he resuscitated a 78 year-old man’s life that had died on the sidewalk. His ambulance was at a red light when a woman came running and told him that someone had just died. He said that usually in situations like these, they’re wrong and the person has just passed out. But upon checking the man’s vitals, he had indeed just died. After shocking him a few times and giving him cpr, he was able to save him. No neurological damage because he had only died for two minutes, but in the process of giving the man CPR he had broken every one of the man’s ribs. P, the EMT, is a good storyteller. I was surprised to hear that he EMT’d as a volunteer. He’s a tremendous guy. I need to take some lessons from him on follow-through. He’s already on his third book with his first one coming out on June 12.

Last night, saw the season premiere of The Wire. This season will be amazing. The newsroom bit about evacuating buildings rather than people took me back to work momentarily. My copyeditor always catches errors like this. I thank her and she moves on and waits for the next article I chuck at her.

My copyeditor is an interesting person, an interesting petty person. Today, she complimented me on my laugh. Being conscious of the way my laugh sounded at the moment, my laugh came out weird and that was funny in itself.

I looked into the HBO store for The Wire t-shirts. They were lame for how great the show is. I’m going to do some mock-ups and send them to somebody at HBO.