Without getting myself into too much trouble with my current job I must relate a story that made me angry, then do a happy dance in my car (completely independent of this new kick ass song that Libby sent me in a KickAss Teacher Mix CD called “Mi Tumbao” by Tres Coronas) then made me do a victory lap around the teacher’s lounge because I feel a small triumph was won that I so rarely win with this group of people.

If I had theme music following me around, it would be that song. No joke. Either that or Manamana from Sesame Street. I’m not joking about that, either.

In this group of people I am the youngest Literacy Coach and the youngest department chair. This doesn’t always come with much respect, though it doesn’t deter me from speaking my mind. It just doesn’t ever let me get my way. With Kennimus I argue probably more often than I should publicly admit, but that’s just minute detail stuff like whose turn it is to clean out the bong water so really, who cares?

At this meeting we were coming up with the next interim measure (we’re big this year on calling all periodic tests interim measures or assessments, but we don’t, under any circumstances, call it a test) which is a piece of text (we don’t say reading passage either. Gosh. We’re awfully snotty, aren’t we?) followed by some questions and a writing prompt that asks the students to respond in such a way as to prove that they comprehended the passage.

It’s a tedious process that leaves me frustrated nearly every time.

This morning as we met we read several things and decided which to use for second quarter and the very first one I read was by Lucille Clifton, an African American poet. (In case you were wondering, I’m friends with my parenthetical statements again. All day it’s been like this. Every e-mail I sent included some parentheses. Anyway, you should click on that link of Clifton because I SWEAR ON ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY THAT SHE WROTE A POEM ENTITLED “Homage To My Hips” and “Poem To My Uterus”. And you thought I toed the line.) The short piece was written in African American vernacular and as soon as I read it I could smell a fight coming.

Patiently, I read it and waited to hear.

I’m a fast reader so I scanned the other two women there (we were expecting a third to arrive) and watched their faces to gauge their reactions, but they didn’t respond. Finally, I spoke up:

“Here’s what I think: I like it. It’s really good and the kids will enjoy it. But I know that some teachers will have trouble with it because it’s not written in Standard (I did the whole use-two-fingers-and-make-bunny-ears thing and put parentheses around that word even though I truly hate it when people do that, but I was overemphasizing my distaste for that word) English, but I have an argument for that. Mark Twain did it and do we not believe him to be a Literary Giant? Why would it be okay for him to do it and not this author? Also, by the time students get to high school they are asked to read Elizabethan poetry and come on, but that’s like learning a new language, you know? Who, in their right mind, goes into a Shakespeare course and doesn’t need help in learning to read that new language? But honestly, we all think that’s fine and dandy. So, here’s what I think: If anyone has trouble in using this piece then just send them to me.”

The soliloquy wasn’t meant to go on and on like that, but it just poured out of me. There was no hiding my passion about this and I wanted to get in all my good ones before anyone interrupted me or before I ran out of breath.

When the third woman got there after my verbose rendition of Angry Mulatto Woman she read for just under a minute before stopping to say, “Well, I can tell you from a grammar teacher perspective that I have a problem with this. I mean, I had a hard time reading this!”

Soliloquy, Act II. This time, the other two women there just sort of sat back as if to say, “Oh, sweet Lord, here she goes again.” even though one of them had a smirk on her face like she was amused to see me get fired up all over again.

Act III. I exit stage left having trounced the room since we decided not only to use that passage but also use the prompt I wanted to use with it.

Act IV. I shake my booty all the way back to my school fully realizing this may be the last time they ever invite me to a meeting again.

There was a new blend of Starbucks on the kitchen table from the shopper in the family (Kennimus) and I’d not had it before. It’s the Gold Coast blend that is very strong. It’s a higher acidity level, but still quite mellow. I’m thinking they should rename it “Mellow Gold” and give out gold jewelry along with their coffee. Size 8 ring, please, Starbucks?

*Challenge taken, Belinda*

The game. Oh, the game. In fact, it should be expressed this way: The Game. That’s due to it being something I will never forget. Much as I want to learn to put my pictures in my actual entry and be able to expand them to a size where they can be seen, I just can’t. I’m far too challenged (oops – did I forget to mention that there would be self-depracatory sentences on this post again? Damn. There will be more I’m sure. Wait for it.) and just can’t seem to get it right. Honestly, I don’t have the patience. Someone needs to sit next to me and SHOW ME HOW TO DO IT before I can actually get it.

So here. Go here for the pictures from the World Series that I took.

Saturday was Kennimus’ birthday and I got him a win from the Cardinals.

The fun around here never stops, either. Just to challenge myself further (read: make myself more crazy than normal by posting every single day during the month of November) I have signed up for Mrs. Kennedy’s brainchild NaBloPoMo. It sounds like a Native American name or a communicable disease, but really it’s less stressful than the NaNoWriMo that I could never do without a lot of coffee.

No. Really. A lot would be required for me to do that one. So I signed myself up for the National Blog Posting Month and must write daily from November 1 through the 30th. Just to make it more fun for myself and make the neuroses I harbor linger closer to the surface of my psyche, I have decided to take Belinda’s suggestion to keep the “You Should…” titles going and maybe, just maybe, I’ll do it for the whole month.

Maybe.

You should talk me out of it.

Please?

There are some interesting things that blogging has brought about for me and, for the most part, I’m pretty happy with them. I’ve met some bloggers and gotten a chance to get some honest, thought-worthy feedback on issues I struggle with and sometimes there are comments that are so hilarious they make my post look like a low-fat saltine cracker with all the salt licked off: generally unappealing.

When that last one happens, I’m still fairly amused and end up giggling my way through comments and I am grateful for all the witty, intelligent people with a sense of humor who come to visit this site.

Other times? Mmm. Not so much.

Normally, I probably wouldn’t give much credence to a nasty commentor, but I’m not of the camp of If You Respond, Then They Win. I’m of the camp of I’m Fairly Certain This Is MY Blog And I’ll Do What I Damn Well Please. The fact that I’m going to devote today’s entry to it is IN NO WAY an invitation for anyone to feel that they need to come to my defense.

I’m perfectly capable of that on my own.

To wit: my aunt tells a story of when she visited our home when I was about 9 or 10 years old and we were in the backyard together. Some kid walked near our property and hurled racial slurs toward me and I took him on. My aunt gasped at the thought of what would come of it but watched me verbally rip him to shreds. When she relayed the story to my mother later on she said, “And do you know what your daughter did? She gutted him.”

Let it be said that sometimes I practice Wu Wei and sometimes I don’t. This brings me to the comment in question (but really, is it a question? mmm. not so much.)

Yup, hate just about sums it up. You are pompous, self-centered, self-important, and have some crazy belief that we give a rat’s ass about your greedy, capitalistic, in-your-face, show-offy nature. Are we supposed feel bad that you get to attend the game and we don’t? Do expect us to care that your blog was being reposted by bitacle.org? Please, spare us your theatrics.

This person has obviously read me long enough to know I’m capitalistic, so that makes me feel like my writing has really improved and that the themes are being captured in my expressive style. So that’s good! Maybe my writing professor from college would be interested in my url so I’m making a note to send her an e-mail right now!

The theoretical perspective needed to make a critique about writing is a lost art. Apparently, it’s also still lost on her because she didn’t address some of those critical issues since she just attacked me personally.

In spite of that, it warms my heart to know that she captures my essence in her precis (I feel the need to define that word for HER because she didn’t proofread her comment when she wrote that “Do expect us to care…” bit and I couldn’t tell if it was from being obtuse or just too quick on her typing skills, so here goes: a summary or abstract of a piece of text or speech. Was that helpful? Good. I like to be helpful as well as self-important.) In her precis she says that I’m “theatrical”. Honestly, she couldn’t be more right about that. It’s my love of the theatre that has allowed me to be such a self-centered person all these years! To put myself through college as a single parent and do things like faint in the welfare office and use my best seductive voice with “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my food stamps.” Now, THAT’S theatre!

Perhaps I could point out some times when I am a little more self-deprecating. For example:

• When I made fun of my zits and the black hairs that mysteriously grow out of my chin. I mean, how unattractive! Eeewww.
• When I made fun of myself for having a broken laptop, once again dealing with the fact that my daughter’s biological father (henceforth known as Richard Cranium) HASN’T PAID ME A DIME and reneged on his responsibility to pay for college, and how I’m now wearing a retainer even after spending six years in braces.
• When I showed mercy on a kid who threw a bottle at my moving car and vowed to do more than punish him. (Follow up to that: he transferred schools and I haven’t had a chance to make a connection with him.)
• When I spent an entire week devoting my site to shedding light on some books that have been banned because I believe that no one has the right to think for me.

The way that WordPress works is they catch spam for me so if a person is commenting for the first time, doesn’t leave a blog address, or adds too many links then it goes to my Spam filter and I don’t bother to look through them because I just delete them all. It just so happens that I caught this commentor because there were fewer than 20 spam comments.

So, was it coincidence my comment disappeared? Or do you practice censorship?

Oh, wait! There IS a question! Two of them! Well, now I feel like I should answer those.

No, it wasn’t coincidence. It was simply good taste on the part of WordPress and thus, I had the option to APPROVE the comment. While I de-spammed the comments she left I, in no way, approve of the comment. Nor do I approve of censorship. If I did, then I probably wouldn’t have bought that Banned Books bracelet. (I’m trying not to be too show-offy here, but it was $20 of my high-end teacher salary.)

What I do approve of is speaking my piece and deleting the comment soon. Another thing I will be doing is striking through the very words I’ve box-highlighted right after I eradicate my comment section of those unimaginative, imbecilic and hateful words.

As luck would have it, I was conversing with the inimitable LeahPeah last night when she offered this riotous pearl of wisdom about comment trolls:

nasty commentors have a special place in hell. where they have to sit in eternity reading the blog that they hate and yet feel compelled to troll and haunt (because they are jealous!!). and the submit button is broken so they can never be heard from again.

Nevertheless, until I delete that annoying comment I will be encouraging regular readers to respond in such a way as not to engage themselves too much in this absurdity, but rather in the humorous, uplifting ways they normally do. Unless, of course, the Wu Wei strikes you in an entirely different manner.

With that said, I trust that my readers are intelligent enough to decide for themselves because THEY HAVE THEIR OWN BRAINS and I love that about them.

Wu Wei at will, people.

I’m having some coffee at my sister-in-law’s house and I don’t know what it is. It’s rainy here in St. Louis. The coffee is warm and woke me up. I love my sis-in-law, Chris. She’s like a real sister to me and we get along great. So the coffee? Yeah, it’s making my day just like her.