Day three and I'm already about to slack off on the blog-as it is I have eleven minutes to post this or I have officially let a day slide by.-The horror.
Well, I have apparently used up all my free time on match.com, and they want me to pay for the pleasure of having assorted freaks in my general vicinty send me emails. I know for a fact that match works for some people. I am not one of them. When I first signed I got a huge response, even before my pic was up (I'm sure that I chose to title my profile "bunny girl" had nothing to do with it). To some degree I can understand why. In a profile you see a pic, you get some general info and that is it. What usually happens to me in a bar or a club is that people see me, and they think I'm about 20 years old and this cute girl and then I turn out to be a professor at a reputable university and this glaze of fear comes into their eyes. (I know that was a run-on sentence.) It's gotten to the point where I have developed a sick enjoyment in it. For example about a month ago I was in a local bar, and this guy keeps looking over at me and smiling, but he is clearly with this blonde woman who is standing next to him. This scenario, unfortuantely, is not un-common for me. Sure enough as soon as she goes to the bathroom, he gestures that I should come over. I won't so he comes over to me and he actually says, and for this he is priceless, "So do you come here often?" I manage not to fall off the bar stool in convulsions of laughter. So I ask about his "friend" and he assures me she is just a friend and then continues on to say "Actually she just broke up with me." Oh fabulous. So the very new ex-girlfriend comes back, and she introduces herself. This is not what I am hoping for. I am hoping that when she returned this guy would go away, but, no, the party has followed him. So now I'm chatting with the girl, and she clearly knows that he is interested. She's trying to sell him to me. She tells me, "You know, he's a sweetheart. I don't deserve him. You couldn't ask for a better boyfriend, but you know I'm just going through a lot of stuff right now and it's just not fair to bring some one into all of that." Oh right, you find the one decent guy in ALL of the tri state area, and you are just going to throw him away because it isn't fair?! Forgive the skepticism. I tell her that this is all fine and good, but I really should be getting home, and she buys me a drink. She actually gets me another drink to keep me there. So now the man situates himself between us. He is alternating asking her to keep going out with him (he's not buying her "I have issues" wrap either) and asking me to give him my number. (All the while drinking LI ice teas way too fast.) Finally ex girlfriend storms out of the bar, leaving me with the artist formerly known as the idiot. So he starts in with the more normal small talk. Now I'm silently begging him to ask me what I do for a living, I'm looking for every opportunity. Finally I say that I hadn't intended to stay that long because I have to get up in the morning for work. (Hint, hint.) He asks me "So what do you?" So I casually say I'm a professor. The next question is always where. And I casually give him the name of my oh so reputable school. And then I get the look-the eyes widen, the jaw goes slack, and always there is silence-and then after the requisite moment of stunned silence there is the comment, the comment that always accompanies the look, "I'm afraid to talk to you now." What should I have told you? That I'm a professional lamp shade? That I have a very rewarding career as a door stop? It's not my fault that I have a brain the size of a buick. Honestly, I don't even think I'm that smart, but once I tell people what I do, they act like I've said I recently received the Nobel Prize in Science for my work in neurochemistry (No I'm not a science prof.). I'm just a teacher! I have closet music. I often burn my toast in the morning. I have had some utterly disasterous fashion moments (mainly in the 80's-dig the power bows and the reebocks). It's not like I'm balancing the budget.
Getting back to match. So anyway I joined match thinking that maybe if people knew in advance I could avoid that stunned silence. It kind of worked. I no longer got the stunned silence, mainly because only freaks ever emailed me. I checked my profile a million times, but no where in the profile did it say "Freaks only" or "If you have a hand growing out of your forehead, then you're the man for me" I mean, it's late so I won't get into the details now, but my idea that I would find a better man through the internet is thoroughly shot. (Not in the least by the guy who wanted to have sex with me while he fantasized that I was a fourteen year old girl-no joke.I will however give him points for honesty, which sadly puts him ahead of some respondents.) After the initial rush, I'm now leveling out at about one email every two weeks. And match wants me to pay for the priviledge? I think not. I think the pedophiles and other assorted deviants find me well enough on their own.
I really should go to sleep. Tomorrow is my worst day. I have to get up at seven and be in front of a class at nine. I tell you these kids today. Nothing makes me feel older than teaching eighteen year olds. After a couple of classes I just feel like I should be drinking moonshine on some broken down porch with a ukele. I passed back their tests today. So of course there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. These kids will violently argue with me over half a point. I mean, how is getting an 83.5 going to change your life significantly? Beyond that they got on my case yet again for not having their papers, so I just gave it to the hard and fast. I said, "Alright listen I assigned a 6 to 8 page paper. Which means that I have at the very least 360 pages of student writing to read AND comment on. It takes me about an hour to go throught three papers and write comments, which you don't even read. So you will get your papers next week. You ask me again and I'll wait another week to pass them back just to spite you. You really should be more worried about the mid term which is on Monday." So then they move on to gripe number two which is that I have missed class twice. They feel since the university won't allow them be absent three times I should be held to the same standard. Again, not the day to start with me.I channeled Kevin Spacey in Swimming with Sharks ("That's the trouble with your whole Mtv microwave generation.") So I said, "Ok when I was student the same rule was in place. I was hospitalized once and had to argue with my doctor to let me go so I wouldn't fail out (three absences is a de facto failure). Not only that, but when I did return to school I had all my work ready. I did all my work in the damn hospital.So if I don't come to work one day it's probably because my feet have fallen off or the aliens have landed. I was even prepared to teach on 911 (The university cancelled classes about ten minutes before, but I volunteered to stay and help counsel students.) You still have to prove that you can take responsibility seriously. And considering the grades on the test, you have a long way to go." I suppose this is my version of "When I went school, I had to walk barefoot in the snow uphill...both ways." Oh well, the hospital story is absolutely true. So was 911
On a side note, a student sent me an email recently informing me that the reason why she shows up twenty minutes late consistently is because she has a "self induced sleeping disorder." What the hell is a self induced sleeping disorder? Is she slapping herself in the face at 2 am? And more importantly, what does it have to do with my class since she has me at 2 in the afternoon? Is a little reason so much to ask? So I asked if she could provide documentation of her sleeping disorder, and of course she couldn't. She tried to explain to me that I just can't understand. Again, big mistake. I've had a sleeping disorder since I was eight. (I should at this point relate that at one time a friend of mine said to me "You know, it's just no fun to complain to you because no matter what happens to me something worse has happened to you." And the worst part was she was jealous!) So I told her that I sympathized, but if she really has a sleeping disorder she needs to talk to somebody about it and figure out a way to deal with it and not expect me to allow her to be late to class when everyone else has to be on time.
Oy, these kids today.
Well my wrists are starting to hurt, and you've probably had enough of me by now so I'm signing off.