Away at the Sheamus - WWE Universesity Volume II, Issue 8 Dearest Townspeople, Hi. Hi to every lovin’ one of ya. It’s nice, and needed, that I am able to lay the burden of my worldliness upon your lesser (but still important!), life, and lay my world-weary head upon the lap of your quilted comfort, oh sweet home town family. For here in the stratosphere of intellectalia, the air can become thin; and the impulse for a breath of her an oft difficult task. The skies have been so pastel of late: not of dramatic, statement-clouds as purple dragons breathing ominous orange fire, but more of a 50-50 ice-cream bar dropped onto the shallow step of a pale blue swimming pool — assuring there’s a kid crying nearby, but somebody’s gonna shove something else in his face to hush him, and the party will go on. Or maybe I’m the melting 50-50 bar. I haven’t seen my Psychology Major friend, (yeah, I’m connected), since he let me star in that ice-cube experiment for his class assignment; but I’m sure he’d know which kind of person I am. In the Professorsuris’ class we were discussing earth’s earliest living creatures, watching slides of a terrible ancient shark thing with menacing teeth. (I believe my higher education teaches me to surmise that this specie preceded the raspy teeth people like British, only sharper, like a Frenchman’s pointy shoes, or any Itallian’s switchblade, or is it the other way around, or was it Arabs, or did all them people start pointy stuff? I’ll ask a Teeth DNA Major.) At one point in class, a student - who was proudly near graduation - accreditation - asked aloud, with an air of sophistication, “so when about’s did the mermaids come in?” Mm hmm. The professor, assuming her question must be of an ethereal nature, went global and began deftly reciting her education by rote, while the class body began to talk and laugh and ponder, and find some interest in some thing at a Monday, 7:30 am class; musing about all the weekend’s past splendor and its vanishing with the click of a power-point button and the droning cracks of a professor’s flaccid recitations. I turned back to my fellow classmate with a sympathetic smile and told her that there’s no such thing as Mermaids, and to my surprise she responded; “no, but I mean the ugly ones, the real ones.” Okay, honey. Some patient discussion bubbled among skirmishes of tittering in the classroom as she dug deeper to find ground, now to the teacher and class at whole: “I mean the really ugly ones, not like the Disney kind... you know, not, like, the fake-kind ones, where they’re all pretty and nice and stuff like on a movie and stuff. I mean the real mermaids.” A hushed undercurrent of melee’ bubbled. Confident in her near-accreditation, she put out as a proud, educated woman, and in some pretense of sophistication, demanding, “So are you saying now, that there was no such thing as Mermaids?” The Professorsauris gracefully pivoted her mammoth thighs toward her as best she was able, and said directly, “No, there has never been anything such as Mermaids”. “But what about ...?” “No.” Professorsauris then continued with her thrilling lecture... “Now, millions, (or billions, like it matters), of years ago, in the Paleofishmonkeypostbigbanghydrogen Period...” College Degrees! How are things in our town? Ward’s and Sears and Penny’s catalogues come out yet? Out here, it wouldn’t be cold enough for Allen to don his winter mink, nor hot enough for Gary to wear the Speedo, (an x-wrestler thing I suppose... Bill The Janitor told me he saw him trying it on in front of the Budweiser Clydesdale mirror when he walked in on him to tell him that the electricity blew out because of all his blenders, juicing machines and granny’s special massaging machine). I hope it helps with his alimentary tract and her bursitis. It was sure cold here the other morning at Anth., (think “anthesthors”), Class, when I chose, as a professional college student, to avail myself of a cigarette break - somewhere between when Ms. Prof was explaining how the universe instantly appeared, and the Missing Link. Even the slight breeze carried a chill that day. It reminds me of the chill I got a few weeks ago swallowing them four ice cubes on that bet I won against my stupid dorm buddies, in front of the girl who somehow wears turtlenecks with bow ties and acts like she’s a Stenography Major. So I miss a few minutes of Anthrophilosigacal Class; hey, I’ve been to the zoo. Not fearing the cold, (x-military), I stepped outside to feel the season’s first blast of winter, and walked across the street to the fence, for shelter against the biting breeze. I leaned against the chain link, and thought to myself how smart they must be making my brain, here at the University of Sacramento City College University. Well, she went and did it! That Missy, the hippie teacher with the smiley-face eyes like Drew Barrymore who never irons her clothes. Wino, I tell ya — who probably once slapped a Young Republican for refusing to tip her tambourine show on the streets of Berkley. Yeah, she went and humiliated another student today. I was ready to step in, but it wouldn’t have been right this time. It all went down like this: In an instant, the teacher took deep offense that this student supported another kid’s 2nd Amendment poster. All was quiet when she proclaimed that he didn’t really understand about guns, because, in fact, her friend Jim, got shot, by a gun; then she canvassed the pupils of her pupils for approval. Anecdotes impress the young. Unfortunately for his prospects, this student responded by saying, “Too bad Jim didn’t have a gun”. Whoops. The winds of wrath began to swirl as this unfortunate student’s artwork came up for critique. Not known as a stutterer, (he must come from a decent neighborhood), he was nevertheless nervous in defending his work, and had a hard time speaking his thoughts without the words and sentences breaking, as he tried to say the right things in front of class; whereupon she mocked him: “Badabada... what?... uh-uh, what?!” No one in class laughed, for they know by now how her heart-shaped smile belies the dissecting teeth that hide beneath those lips which curl in all directions. A bit shaken as he began the quiz in the later part of class, he had some confusion remembering how to import certain pertaining files. The storm, sensing blood in the quiet classroom waters, came to rest over his shoulder. “And what are you doing there?”, she asked loudly, breaking the studious still. He answered in semi-whisper, pointing dejectedly at the screen, “I can’t get these over in that thing”. “What?!” He answered, just loud enough for her to hear, “I... I can’t put them in the, uh, the...” She seemed to enjoy her voice resounding louder in the quiet class; “You can’t put the what in the what, haha,?, speak up, haha!” He tried, “I can’t ... these files, the, the files... I can’t remember how to put these files in this...”, (pointing nervously at the screen), “the program... the in the...”. The other students began to peek clandestinely, as wary worms, from around their Apples. The wino tambourine playin’ neo-hippie/teacher began to bore in like she was smashin’ up reds to snort off of her Berle wood coffee table. “You mean to tell me you don’t know how to even... “it’s “place”, not “open”, not “paste”, it’s “place”!” I know this guy knew this stuff, but the pressure began to overtake him. All the students quietly thought to themselves, “I know that thing, right?...right?”, as their eyes pretended their senses were focused on the assignment on the screen before them, sometimes yielding to glance about the room to find sense to the spectacle; not impolitely, but with an ear so intent on the event that their work was at quarter-speed. Inside, I could sense that the kid was imploding. The wino tambourine playin’, bath fearin’, tie-died neo-Haight teacher — who probably volunteers to be the one who spanks new babies, making pink the tender behinds of innocent white babies over at the maternity ward — pursued, and his weakness was evident. The sadism escalated for a few minuets before Hurricane Missy moved on to threaten other ports of heart. Several in the class lay in wake. But the echoes lingered, and he could not help that his eyes would well up and his nose would begin to run. Now, any sniff echoed off the dead grey concrete walls of that classroom; use of a Kleenex would be resign, all the way over by the lucky kids over by the window - the furthest mathematical distance from where tension preceded her path. It was not a case of thinking “poor fool”, rather, “poor bastard, am I next?”. But debasement came from within him — a hounding, vintage notion that he may indeed be the “poor fool” after all. Swiftly overcome, his leave was such. As a final blow to the retreating student, the professor shouted from across the room as he made his way to the exit, “You’re not even going to turn in your paper, Rick?”. All heads were compelled to turn. “No, Ma’m”, I said plainly as I walked out the door. Though I know you’re all having your holiday back where home is, and this letter won’t happen to be of attention to most during these periods, I wanted to put this in the mailbox and send it on in to Town just the same — to any of us who may be “out there” in some way, now... out beyond the smell of grandma’s turkey and the meaning of her continuum, too far without the set of play we once understood differently, too well beyond the same expectant sun. I know about the table of bounty, but I can’t see it in its halo any more. I wish I could switch to Art Major. You make a clay pot, they give you a degree, you sell them at flea markets. Although I’m grateful for all the blankets from the Ladies Knitting and Acupuncture Auxiliary Club I have piled on my corner dorm room cot, nothing seems to keep me as warm as did my childhood bed, in my little room, in my little town with you all — in that world around my bedroom window, tucked well inside our blessed Town. Sleep well, sons and daughters of our town, our time. Your loving son, Ricky S.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:24:48 +0000