Piratical Nerve and a Vaudevillian Style

"School Boy Heart," Jimmy Buffett

1) We are semi-infatuated with the Travel Channel's "Mark and Olly: Living with the Machigenga," a show that documents two English men trying to assimilate into the isolated Peruvian tribal culture. Tune in to watch grown men ferment alcohol with their own spit, prove their manhood through demonstrating the ability to catch a frog, and eat monkey hands; hair, bones, fingernails, and all.

2) We tried to nurse an injured bird back to life last week. We found the bird on the side of the road, made a defunct habitat out of an animal crackers barrel from Costco, purchased trail mix (for the seeds) and an eyedropper, and were 3 minutes from home when we realized he had died. Tim buried him in the front yard and I cried for thirty minutes.

3) There are mice and rats in my building at school. I came into my classroom last Monday and found five visibly placed mouse traps in various corners of my room. Each morning I am terrified I will walk into my room and find a helplessly stuck or brutally murdered little mouse inside one of the traps, but so far the critters have outsmarted these devices. I did, however, catch one with my bare hands last week in the hallway, and set him free outside. Really.

4) I eat Kellogg's Special K Fruit and Yogurt cereal for breakfast most mornings, and have found that while the production company/FDA/ridiculously-small-people-of-America committee have decided one box should last 11 servings, I am finished after 4 bowls.

5) There was a huge lizard in my classroom last week. It was sitting, dumbstruck, on a pile of papers; panting desperately and eyes silenting screaming. In fear and protest and retaliation, it had dropped its tail somewhere along the way. One of my students informed me it had crawled out of another one of my student's purses. We checked her purse for the bloodied stump, but to no avail.

6) When John Lennon was killed, his murderer had a copy of The Catcher in the Rye on his person. While I realize that's certainly a morbid thought, I do understand the pure power, pull, wonder, and appreciation a book can offer. The first time I read A Prayer for Owen Meany, I was certain John Irving was my long-lost soulmate from another life; by the time I finished Cat's Cradle, I had already decided to name my next pet Jonah. Catch-22 made me laugh out loud and helped me appreciate the lunacy and hilarity of satire, and The Time Traveler's Wife simply made me want to be a writer. In a completely dissimilar vein, we are reading Jane Eyre in my sophomore honors class, and the process is not unlike getting a filling at the dentist.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
-Bob Dylan