Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

In the world of females a hairdresser can mean a variety of things. Cultural understandings and conceptions place the hairdresser as the equivalent of a woman's bar tender. The labored male, tired from life's trials and expectations, seats himself lazily at the bar. The apt bar keep absent-mindedly wipes the bar top down while pouring a drink and asking him "What's your trouble?". He's a sponge-like wall, absorbing all the drinker has to say. It stays within the bar, under layers of bourbon, scotch, and beer. The over spill tray, filled with remnants of an evening's work, is cleaned and washed at shift's end...much like the soul seeking a drink. In contrast, the hairdresser laborers over and on the customer. She gently brushes the hair, lifts it off the face, removes unsightly strays, and hides markers of age. She can even turn lackluster noir locks into golden bounces of light and luster. Her fingers massage the head, often making the customer rela...

Funny thing about college teaching . . . the first week is just that . . . and for the most part a wash of syllabi disbursement, the "this is what you will and will not do" lectures, and then the second class is disrupted by students with little sense of social decorum.  These are usually the ones who do not show up the first day of class.  Eh, don't get me wrong, I do what I love and love what I do . . . but, every now and then social disorder annoys me.   Along with the first week madness, there is the beginning of sign-ins.  Some students begin this task the first week.  Some start it the second week.  Most do it the second week, as the add-drop period ends.  Moments of advising the first week are never anything like the second, particularly if these students are in upper level seminars and grades have started coming in from the first week's assignments.  While advising times are established throughout the semester, any professor worth ...

Well, in an odd flux of things, January has started out as a bad month.  I do mean bad.  Oddly, it is usually February that gets puts on notice.  This year January is setting a very bad precedent for what is to come.  In the past three weeks bad news has been spilling out of the water tap.  An abbreviated view is: one friend had a blood clot in her brain and all that that entails, one lost her mother, one's grandfather has brain cancer, one lost her father, and one husband of a college roommate lost his legs to an IED.  I'm certain I forgot something in there . . . but you get the drift.  News of death and dying is easier to respond to because we maneuver it our entire lives.  In contrast, when an old friend says her husband has lost his legs you are left dumb founded and speechless.  You don't know what to say.  You are left feeling helpless.  You don't know what to do.  Do you send flowers? Do you send food?  Do you s...

Thursday . . . a day filled with intense drama television of the Bones, CSI, Grey's Anatomy , and Private Practice kind.  And, of course, The Big Bang Theory .  I'll save you the my ruckus humor of laughing out loud at TBBT.  Instead, how about we revisit my fucked up karma. Way back when the sun was hot and bright (July, I think) I ran into a former something-or-the-other on the LIE.  I was filling out paperwork at Old Westbury and heading back into my beloved 'hood.  Well, he was sitting with his now wife in his shiny car, and as we paused next to one another he clutched his chest while his eyes bugged out at me.  My mouth came open, and I felt my heart stop for a moment . . . maybe more.  He sped away, and I can only imagine what the conversation was as he tried to explain his response to his Mrs.  Me . . . I'm single.  I didn't have to explain it to anyone but me. Well . . . Now that we are deep into the season of snow, about six mo...

Man, sometimes life just keeps on kicking. Today, after battling roads of snow and rain, I made it to my training for a new course...on the way home I stopped for oil and air in a tire. Then...then I find out I need brakes. The hits just keep on coming. So, the mechanic is being kind--as he's seen me get gas here weekly--and not charging labor. Still, 300+ on brakes is a bill I can ill afford these days. Payday isn't for a month so I'll be sweating it far more than I am comfortable with. Crap. It always gets me that just when the wrinkles start to unfold, life calms, something stops you (or in this case me) in your tracks. I teach more than a full time load, yet adjunct pay keeps me at about a third of a full time salary. Paying the rent and other bills is usually doable, but brakes are another expense to test you. In an economy like this mechanics will always have jobs because a car without brakes is like a writer without a pen. Okay, a car is more lethal than a car...but ...

As I sit on a semi-crowded subway car (crowded depends on what kind of New Yorker you are: the die-hard, new transplant, or wannabe vis-a-vie the tourist), the woman on the right scratches bingo lotto tickets in hopes of striking gold. The woman on the left takes an unseemly amount of photos of herself wearing a child's hat. I, stuck very literally in the middle, feel the effects of finals grade deadlines, days of grading, and the post semester exhaustion setting into my weary ladden academic bones. I think back to late August and the jokes of my new superpower being Syllabitch, as I cranked out five different syllabi. The first days of class, getting to know the atmosphere of the two campuses I teach at, memories of New York flooding me at every turn, the thrill of autumn, and the joys of my job. I wore heels every stinkin' day until late October when I did something unkind to my knee. I sported a big, scary assed brace, fought the gimp look, and begged my doctor for a smaller...

It's been two months since I could wear my sweet, sexy heels. They've missed me, and I've missed them. They impatiently stared at me, with forlorn looks of dismay. They thought I had eschewed them for the well worn trainers of 10Ks and 1/2 marathons. Tonight I took my favorite Nine Wests on the town, to American Trash in Manhattan. Being sans brace for two weeks has been wonderful, but a nice night in my favorite heels is even better. Did we dance? No. Did we climb subway stairs and walk the grimy and well worn lighted streets of Manhattan? YES! Did we drink too much at a one of the only dive/working class/biker bars on the Upper West Side? Hells yes. Did we get free shots from the bar keep, drink Jack and Coke to raised eyes, and play wing girl while the gal pal had a drunkard hit on her in epic proportions? Oh yea. Did we do this after the Physical Therapist said I should take it easier? Perhaps. Are we waiting for the N train back to Astoria? Yes, yes indeed. I...