Time Flies

I’ve left my mark on
the windshield of this place –

The mph of time passing
has spread me open and out.

Pounds

I never gained the “freshman fifteen” when I went to college. Actually, I think I lost weight cause I was vegan the whole year and the dinning hall didn’t offer me much. Lots of pasta, shitty wraps, and cheerios with soy milk. My older sister liked to joke about how skinny I’d gotten.

When I had my boxing match last summer I weighed in at 137 lbs. I ended my vegan diet four years ago, and eventually started to eat meat again over three years ago. That first cheeseburger tasted so good. But, weighing 137 after three years of omnivoring, it didn’t really add much weight to me. For that, I had to live in France for seven months.

The cafeteria food here is great. For about $2.50 I get a mini-baguette, appetizer, fruit, yogurt, dessert, salad, and a main dish with some assortment of vegetables, meat, and a starch. I eat all of it. And with that, I’ve gained fifteen pounds since last summer, before I left for France. Thanks to big lunches, slower metabolism, less boxing, and snacks like this:

Photograph 2

He has his head turned away, but a slight smirk suggests he knows he’s getting his photo taken. And that he’s comfortable with the photographer. The smirk looks content, not mischievous, and his eyes are shut. Probably to block out the sun.

He holds his arms tight along the side of his body. His pale, bare torso, belly up to the sky. The inflatable tube holding him above water has a watermelon pattern. Red and black, with scattered seeds.

He wears black shorts and short brown hair. Both contrast with his skin. Though the photo doesn’t show much of it, the water looks calm. Like his simple smile.

No Saint

Behind me, in these woods, is a moat and the mass it surrounds that once stood as a castle. There's a legend that the princess who lived there had a father who constantly tried to marry her off, but she refused. Eventually, in his rage, he killed her with an axe. Further up the trail is a fountain with a statue that memorializes her, Saint Anastase.



None of that is in this picture, though. These woods look ordinary, like many others I've seen. But this picture interests me more than a disappeared castle or beheaded princess turned saint. It recalls a part of me that I once cultivated, but haven't tended to in a while.

I don't feel much connection with traditional religion. I don't know if I believe in God (though I suppose knowing isn't a prerequisite to believing), and if I do believe in something I haven't defined it. But I do feel spiritual. For the past few years, however, I think I've had a spiritual regression. Maybe it's that my soul has gotten more attention, and maybe it's been a conscious decision. Nonetheless, looking into these woods felt like looking at an old picture of myself.

Covers

Next Thursday will be my last day teaching in Landivisiau. I’m a bit sad, though not necessarily because of specific things I’ll miss, but more the general feeling that something is ending. There’s a concert that night at the high school, and I might play drums for a couple of cover songs with some of my students. All students playing in the concert are in the school’s music option, a class in which students pick songs they want to cover, and learn how to play them, eventually performing at periodical concerst. It’s sweet.

Because I have a lot of music option students in one class, I made a mix cd for them. It goes:

Jezebel – Iron and Wine
Film Noir – The Gaslight Anthem
Above the Clouds (feat. Inspectah Deck) – Gang Starr
Big Dipper – Built to Spill
A Fond Farewell – Elliot Smith
Gigantic – The Pixies
Crush – The Smashing Pumpkins
Hybrid Moments – The Misfits
Protect Ya Neck – Wu Tang Clan
He War – Cat Power
Stork and Owl – TV on the Radio
Paper Thin Walls – Modest Mouse
Sprout and the Bean – Joanna Newsom
Oh – Fugazi
The 4th Branch – Immortal Technique
Those Anarcho Punx Are Mysterious – Against Me!
Things I Don’t Remember – Ugly Casanova
Lopsided – At the Drive In
BBF3 – Godspeed You! Black Emperor

The Prince (Pt. 3)

His mom gave us as many popsicles as we want.
His big brother had Nintendo in his room;
he played Contra and talked with girls on the phone.

We had orange mustaches from the popsicles.
We got mad at each other.
We stopped pushing and went to his porch.

I climbed onto the other side of the railing.
I leaned back and felt it come loose in my hands.
I woke up in his driveway.

Sexy Curses (Pt. 4)

Much of the modern audience feels as separated from God as the vampire is. In this, we both idolize and sympathize with the vampire. When there is belief in God, in heaven, as there was in the culture of the old vampire, the cursed "Upir", separation from God is a curse. But when God no longer permeates everyday life, when there is no more belief, the separation is only an absence. A void that doesn't threaten, but pangs.

Reason and science have replaced superstition and God in our understanding of the world. We send rockets into the heavens, revive hearts that stop beating, and cure diseases that threaten populations. This isn’t to overlook the billions of people who still believe in an almighty power, even in Its scriptural depiction. Yet while they may argue with science’s theories, they cannot dispute its achievements and importance in our lives. Moreover, the majority of artists and audiences shaping the symbol of the vampire do not believe in God as a dominating being who damns sinners. Their culture is founded on scientific progress and individual development...

Smooth

This is my friend Smooth. His real name isn’t Smooth, and because of the French accent it's more like “S’Moose” when we say it. But that’s how he was introduced to me: Smooth. In fact, it sounded so unlike my American pronunciation that I had no idea it was “Smooth” at first. That same day, though, I watched him skate a mini ramp in Rennes and I saw why they gave him the name.



One time, back in October, we’d come back from a pretty late night out and I fell asleep on the couch while Smooth and another friend stayed up a bit longer to talk. When they finally decided to call it a night, they had to move the couch a bit to get an extra mattress from behind it. Apparently I woke up. Smooth told me the next morning that I looked like a freaked out, wild animal, with crazy red eyes. I sat up and started talking in American super fast, none of which they understood, until they convinced me that everything was cool and I could go back to sleep.

We’ve been good friends ever since.

Monuments

The trickle slinking
deep within you
once roared and cut
your current cliffs.

Your spire slipping
into the sky
once hid as metal
deep underground.

I feel shifting:
currents within me
once churned and now
run tranquilly

My simple singing
into the sky,
now buried in memory
deep under time.

Cultural Exchange

“Have you ever been in an orgy?”

I tried to think of what the real question was, how I could have misheard it, but no. When I walked into the middle school teacher’s lounge that was the first thing said to me. A group of teachers stood in a circle and waited for my response.

“Uhhh. No? Why?”

Apparently, thanks to MTV, they thought it was a common experience for American teenagers. And here I was thinking that the French had the reputation for promiscuity and decadence.

“Isn’t that more of an ancient Rome type of thing?”

Confused looks.

“Huh? I think you lost some of your French while on vacation, Shawn.”

Damn. My comment got lost in translation. I tried to think of some other joke, a way to suggest that it was them, the French, who are known for sexual indulgence.

Nothing.

“Yeah. An orgy every weekend.”

Conseil de Classe (Pt. 2)

Last week I talked with a friend, now in a master’s program at the University of Rennes, about the conseil de classe. While at his small high school, he served as a student representative, a delegate, for a year. Ideally, I’ll talk with students, graduates, teachers, administrators, and parents as I try to learn about this aspect of the French education system. It interests me both as an education tool, as well as a representation of French culture.

The way he spoke of delegate selection reminded me a bit of student council elections at my high school (minus the flyers and speeches). Students volunteer, and if there are multiple volunteers, which isn’t always the case, there’s an election. He pointed out that a delegate should be someone who has a good rapport with all students. It doesn’t work if your delegate is the class geek or brown-noser. When I suggested some sort of academic incentive to get more students involved, he responded that he didn’t believe it’s in accordance with the principle of being a delegate.

He also said that when there aren’t any major issues, the meeting doesn’t serve as much more than a check-in, but that the conseil de classe is a great means for discussing solutions if there are problems. The specific example he gave concerned an extremely introverted student with awful hygiene, and, from what I understand, the focus in these meetings can often go beyond students’ grades. I also noted, though he didn’t make a point of it, his comment that serving as a delegate dispelled, for him, the idea of students vs. teachers.

Skate or Die

I sat in the back of the parked minivan and watched him ollie over the sewer grate. Big kids. So cool, so smooth as they popped their skateboards up on the loading docks. Rolled along with the front wheels held up and hovering over the concrete of the school parking lot. I wanted to be them.

I dragged the tail of my board on the pavement as I took a couple of quick steps forward before hopping on it. Chicken legs swimming in fat padded skate shoes. The loading dock with the coping was barely four inches off the ground, perfect for learning new tricks. It would call to me when I’d walk by the parking lot on my way to gym class. We’d have to wait for the administrators to leave the building after school though, otherwise they’d kick us out.

I spent a lot of time skating alone, practicing in my street, but I always preferred to skate with friends. We parked the car and pulled our boards out of the back. It’d been nearly eight years since we left the middle school, but the loading docks were the same as ever. The yellow lights in the parking lot let us see well enough to get our skate legs back. We rode late into the night.

Normandy Beach

I sent this email back in November, to a man I shared drinks with in Somerville before leaving for France. When I first told him I was leaving the country, he bought me a drink. Then he gave me a hard time, in good humor, when I told him I was going to teach in English in France, cause he thought I was going as a soldier.
















Hello Sir –

My father gave me your email address so I could send you these pictures, as requested. I didn’t forget. Though you can’t see it in the photos, as you walk among the graves you read the names of the soldiers and state that they were from. The statue at the front of the cemetery represents the youthful energy, hope, and sacrifice of our soldiers. Hopefully these images provide a slight glimpse of the impression one gets when there; I certainly can’t presume to capture it in words.

I drove to the monument and cemetery with two French friends, who both have grandparents who were teenagers during the German occupation. I had Sunday brunch in Brest with one friend’s grandparents and they were happy, even proud, to eat with an American. They still see us as the great liberators. Though I didn’t meet the other friend’s grandparents, we ate dinner at her parents’ house in Normandy and the mother happily told me her father’s story of getting a chocolate bar from a GI.

Thank you for asking me to take these pictures.

I hope you and your family are doing well.

Take care,

- Shawn Kelly

Architect (Second Draft)

You left it there, you simple words. Alone showing the form of tiny worlds.
Slower worlds.

The single room’s shape shapes me: the shape of a fixed world.
A limited world.

To separate architect and design; to find the architect of this world.
Cut in time.

Design shapes how I see the shapes, but perspective won’t change design.
Fixed in my design.

I fill up my world with the world; in the way of the world.
My world in the world.

A subjective architect creates, shapes: objects in spaces in objects.
Objective spaces.

Perennial subjects.
Filling space.
The object of subjective architecture.

Ideas in time.
An objective idea.
Shaping subjective perspective.

Words found ideas, the perspective to see ideas, the design. I build my world from words in the world.

My words: design my world, or the materials of my design, built on the foundation of ideas

My ideas in my words, shaped by the other words before, by the design of the room in the open world.

The shape of the worlds in these words.

Universal

This article from Wired puts into language the lightness I feel when I read stories of others’ trials and struggles, the openness I get when I look into the sky and remember the scale of my life.

It also raises questions I’ve asked myself when considering how much to examine things: Too much analysis, dwelling, can paralyze. Yet never doing so would prevent me from learning and growing. With varying degrees of sway, I’ve mostly stayed in the middle.

Funny, just reading the article made me feel good – to see my way of dealing with life experiences as merely a measurable aspect of my personality. The other issue I have, though, is the aspect of inhumanness that comes with a sense of detachment and perspective. Like I’d be missing some essential part of being.

Students vs. Teachers

Over a hundred students gathered in the gym near the high school. I, along with five other teachers, ate lunch quickly to be ready for the match. Five on five indoor soccer, one substitute per side, teachers vs. students. Our team consisted of two humanities teachers, a PE teacher, a guidance counselor, the other English assistant (from Manchester, England), and me.

The audience of students loved to cheer for us. When one of the other players, the only boy on their team, pushed me as we both went for the ball, the students all yelled at him. When one of the teachers had been out for a while as a sub, they started to chant his name so he’d come back in. At the end of the game I heard one student describe the overall experience as “euphoric.”

We gave up a goal early in the match, and didn’t score our own until about halfway through the game. Then it was close calls and missed opportunities until the end of regulation. We played two overtime periods, but neither team scored. So it went to a shootout. Their first shooter made it, and so did ours. Then they missed, but we did too. Their third shooter scored. My teammates told me to shoot: I kept my eyes down, kicked hard, and looked up to see the ball bounce off the side post. Damn French. We should have played real football.

The Prince (Pt. 2)

“What did your mom say?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not in trouble?”

“Nah. My dad took me to get this.”

Pulls out bag of candy.

“He said, ‘Good job,’ and that every time I hit the white lady I get candy.”

“What about the principal?”

“He can make me go home. I don’t care.”

Scales of Oedipus

Oedipus killed his father and slept with his mother, thus Freud titled his theory of the corresponding subconscious urge the “Oedipus Complex.” But Oedipus was only one man. What if this urge applied to cultures and humanity as a whole, not just to individuals?

God is the father and Earth is the mother. Though I lack the research to cite specifics, this symbolic notion appears in multiple cultures. I propose that western culture has, through humanity’s greatest tool, reason, and its extension, science, fulfilled its Oedipus complex.

Freud theorized a lot about repressing urges. Struggles. Some haven’t killed God, just taken away much of his power. Others are raping Earth. Societies vary in realizing their desire, but it’s there.

Passing Animals

It takes about half an hour to walk from my apartment to Landivisiau’s train station. Along the way last week, I saw these guys:



After a two hour train ride, the stroll form Rennes’ station to Aymeric’s apartment takes another half hour. There’s a shorter route to his place, but I like to walk through the center of town. I welcome the contrast between rural Landivisiau and urban Rennes; from grazing goats to begging anarchists:

Seeing Red

1 cup of corn, 1 carrot, 1 medium-sized onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 tomatoes, tomato paste, olive oil, red wine, pepper, salt

Heat olive oil in pan, then add chopped carrot, onion, garlic, and cup of corn. Add a bit more olive oil. Cook until carrots are almost soft, then add diced tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Cook for about 3-5 minutes. Add tomato paste and red wine, stirring it all together. Bring to a boil before letting it simmer for a bit.

I made this sauce to have with pasta while watching “A History of Violence” the other night. Second time for both: making a tomato sauce and watching Viggo Mortensen confront his character’s past.

My small TV picks up five channels, helped by an antenna. They’re all publicly owned French stations. Each channel has a specialty, like documentaries or popular series (usually American: Desperate Housewives, Prison Break, CSI, Dexter, The Simpsons, Sex and the City, and more), though they all show their own news programs in the morning, afternoon, and night. “A History of Violence” started at 8:55 PM.

All the films I’ve seen on TV here have been unedited. Sex, violence, nudity, drugs, swears – nothing cut out. One of my eleven-year-old students told me “Scarface” is her favorite movie, though I don’t know if she saw it on TV. So what’s more ironic, that Americans make these films but edit them for TV, or that the French criticize the violence and spectacle of the films, yet show them unedited on public TV during primetime?

Quakes

My desk is to the left, neatly organized items on cheap white plastic. A spiral-bound notebook sits on a schoolbook of local history, topped by a black planner, with a dying laptop on the desk’s other corner. I lay in bed thinking of all the things I haven’t done. Things I didn’t do yesterday, could have done today, hope to do tomorrow. Not work things, though, but things for me. And by me for others. Letters, songs, poems, stories…

The TV sits on a bookshelf against the opposite wall. It watches me in bed, as I drift through its worlds. A husband yells at a meek cop while the wife looks bewildered. Hikers document the old, stone-corralled roads that wind through Patagonia’s misty hills. People cry as rescuers strain through the rubble of their homes, searching for survivors, finding bodies of those who died in their beds.

I fall asleep trying to remember all the dreams I’ve forgotten. To feel the clarity of where I was. Those untold epics and depths and discoveries that bloom and roil as I slip through the night. Where is it all? How many times have I breathed lucidly, gasped from vividness, grasped at some sort of eternity? And what do I have to show for it? What do I have to show?

With A Little Help From My Friends

I still show off sometimes. Less often than I used to, though, whereas these days I’m more likely to show my friends off.

At this point it’s hard to say if I would have heard Kev’s music if he weren’t my friend, but I am sure that I would have listened to and shared it with others as much as I do now. Maybe more, cause I’d enjoy the mystique of discovering a new artist. Being the first to introduce him to friends. I believe many artists get support from their friends because that’s what friends do, but in this case I simply like the music, too.

www.kevinlaba.tinymenagerie.com

Other than requiring me to open a new page to listen to an mp3, I think the site is game tight. It also makes me think that I should have written a novel by now if a man as busy as Kev can do all this. For two weeks now I’ve posted something each day on this blog, and it’s satisfying, but I want to push myself a bit further. I guess I got to figure out in which direction I’m gonna shove.

Being a musician is so much cooler than being a writer.

Photograph 1

He’s old enough to walk, but likely still falls sometimes when running. To his right is a decently pruned bush. Something tended on occasional weekends. The paint job and windows of the house behind him suggest he’s in a family of suburban middle class. That and the distance between him on the walkway and the photographer on the lawn. Too much space to be urban. Not enough exterior flourish or cultivation to be rich.

He looks well fed. That’s not a euphemism for fat, but that he drinks his milk and eats his vegetables every day. Someone puts care into what he wears, as the blue of his pants and shirt stripes match his eyes. He also looks like he gets enough attention, though not too much. Probably the boy of the family. And, like most boys his age, he’s got a mix of mischief and imagination about him. He’s cupping some type of ball in his hands.

A long, yellow, plastic stick-type thing leans on the front door landing behind him. He’s alone in the photo. And the way he’s looking, or not looking, at the camera suggests that the photographer is a family member. Or someone else familiar. I don’t think he’s in school yet. There’s an ease, an impression that he’s got the whole day, limitless days, sprawled ahead of him, that the schedule of a school day hasn’t touched.

Palates

While I sliced off a piece to have with my bread, I looked up and saw him eating an enormous chunk. Straight up cheese. It had an orange rind, and he described it as “explosive.” His 11-year-old daughter cringed from it. I thought it wasn’t bad, though I had it with bread and chased it with red wine.

I said, “Wow, you’re really just going straight at it.”

He looked up, leaned back a bit with a slight smirk, “Well, you know.”

He looked classy doing it, making me feel almost barbaric in having mine with bread and wine. Must be cause he grew up in Paris. A couple of months back I was cooking dinner with the other English assistant, a Red Coat, me prepping hot dogs and burgers while she fried fish and chips. It was an England vs. America party and we invited a bunch of high school teachers to come eat and play Taboo on either the US or UK team (we killed them).

He came into the kitchen and asked, “Need any help? Or maybe another beer? You know, I brought beer made in Morlaix (a nearby town).”

We smiled, “No thanks. It’ll probably be ready soon.”

“Alright. Well, everything’s looking good.”

“Thanks – it’s nice to have the French approval in the kitchen.”

“Yes, but you see I’m Breton. So I’ll have to give you the Breton approval.”

From our arrival at his house until our departure, he spoke only Breton with his daughter. Her mother’s a Spanish teacher with Caribbean ancestry, and her father’s an English teacher with Breton ancestry. We watched some sections of a Breton dubbed version of “The Untouchables,” in which he does a couple of voice-overs. Notably the guy who gets it between the eyes at the end of the baby carriage stair case scene.

He says he uses only Breton with her so he can help preserve the language. I think he may have mentioned that her mother speaks Creole with her sometimes too. While he took us on a tour of the town, he told me that he and his wife used Spanish as the “secret” language when they didn’t want her to understand what they were saying, but now she’s starting to figure that out as well. During dinner she told me, in English, that she wanted to write a letter to Obama. It was an excellent, jealous evening.

On the Way Back

“Is it an animal? Is it small? Scary? Is it soft? A lion? A bear? I knew it.”

- Little girl playing a guessing game with her parents on the train from Rennes to Landivisau, which includes a great view of Morlaix

Also, I posted a hella-long response to Bob D.’s question on my “Tyranny of the Minority” entry. You know, in case French work contracts really do it for you.

The Stranger

The middle and high schools in Landivisiau both offer “European Section” options for history/social studies class, in which the teacher speaks almost entirely in English. At the beginning of the year I told a high school ES teachers that I’d be happy to come into his class and talk with the students about America. Students wrote down questions for me back in October, though due to a schedule conflict I didn’t get to go in until last Friday afternoon, after the class went to see “Gran Torino” in the morning. Here are some of the questions (there were also a bunch on the election):

Have you ever been to New York?
In which other states of USA have you ever been? Is it different from yours?
What is your favorite state?
Are there big differences in education between regions?

What subjects do you study at school in USA?
Do you have an exam at the end of high school?
In school, what was your typical day?
What are the differences between French school and American school?

How much does the college cost?
Is it really possible for poor students to go to the university?
Is everyday life less expensive, more expensive as France?

What do you think about the financial crack in the USA?
Is your city touched by the economic crisis?
Do you feel scared with your money in a bank?
Is a candidate able to resolve it in your opinion?

What do you think of the American foreign policy?
Do you agree with the war in Iraq? Why?
Have you got friends in Iraq?
What do you think about the 8 years under Bush’s presidence?
Are you more Republican or more Democrat? For which party do you belong?

What do you think about the gun lobby?
Do you have [a gun] yourself?
In your law, when can you drink? At what ages?
Have you an age to be able to carry a weapon?

What do you think about the French culture? What do you think of Brittany/France?
Are there French influences in everyday life?
Have you ever been in other country except France?

What sort of music do you prefer?
Do you like English rock bands? Like Oasis or Led Zeppelin? Or do you prefer American bands like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or Guns N’ Roses?
What’s your favorite sport? Do you play one?
What in general young American doing in free time?

Tyranny of the Minority

Three years ago, when I studied at the University of Rennes 2 in France for a semester, the students went on strike and blocked all the buildings. At first it seemed like the majority of students supported the strike and blockage, which was in response to a proposed work contract that most graduates would have when entering the work force. However, after six weeks of strike most students wanted to return to class. A minority continued to block all the campus buildings.

Rennes 2 started a new strike about seven weeks ago. Again, the situation has developed to where a minority of students blocks the majority from going to class. The president of the university – whom I once heard speak during the strike three years ago, right before a striker violently took the microphone from him – officially closed the university for safety reasons. Students squat in the buildings. The estimated cost to repair the damage from graffiti and other vandalism is around 10,000 euros. I remember the strikers asking for money at one of the weekly meetings, an assembly general, so they can eat and continue their strike.

I questioned the logic and justice of the blockage when I was a student at Rennes. Yet I thought it was an interesting culture experience, and I tried to keep an open mind. Now I’m two hours away from the university, having nearly no interaction with the strike other than seeing news reports about it, and it makes me mad. I want to attack the strikers. I want to smash their stupid barricades and squatting spots. I want to drag them by their dumb dreadlocks and ridiculous clown pants and ask them when was the last time they worked. I want to gather them all up and ship them to an uninhabited island. Go on strike there. Block others from getting an education on your own stupid island. Live on sunshine and good vibes.

The Prince (Pt. 1)

The lights went out and, like usual, everyone cheered or gasped. A frazzled lunch monitor had been dragging a gray, industrial sized trash barrel between the ends of the long, rectangular, brown-topped lunch tables, whose two to three person bench seats alternated between dim red and steady green tops. She stopped recuffing the black trash bag over the barrel’s rim. She stopped the pleading command to throw away our trash.

He calmly stood up. We all turned our heads, some lowered at an angle to see in front of the taller ones that popped up, watching. He put both hands on the edge of the table, where his elbows had been, on either side of his lunch try that he’d riddled with various degrees of puncture inflicted by one of the white, plastic butter knives, and sauced with a disgusting blend of milk, ketchup, mustard, and wrappers. He stepped his left foot onto the seat.

When he lunged his right foot up and between his hands, helped with a push from his back foot, he looked like a sprinter on the starting blocks. Just for a millisecond. Then the toe of his right raggedy, black air Jordan with the red thread stitched logo and punctured pump tongue popped the vanilla-colored, four section styrofoam tray – all soiled with various forms of the sauce that covered traces of each section’s original occupant – in a sliding, not quite vertical drive across the table.

Now it looked like a layup as he shoved off from his left foot and triumphantly stood at the end of the lunch table. A slam dunk. The crack at the middle of the table, where the janitors and lunch helpers stand on either side to fold up the tables after lunch and roll them to the walls, bulged up just a bit from his weight at the other end. Two kids across from where he’d been sitting drew back, in vain, from the gross blend the tray spewed at them. He didn’t even look down.

The subtle reflectors stitched along the lacing rise of his Jordans flashed in the near darkness as he kicked the first foot up. In a swooping, foot dragging march, he cleared trays in the path of his right foot. They lifted awkwardly into the air, mooshed on by his foot. This time he was a field goal kicker 45 yards out from the uprights. The stiff leg extension reached out to a 90 degree angle with the other leg. Scraps of food sprayed up, sprawled out. Some kids’ hands flew up to deflect the blast, while others began to clap and cheer.

Prudes

Host: So, what percentage of surveyed kids said they tried kissing like mom and dad, with the tongue, and were grossed out?

A French game show with parent-child teams. The host banters with the contestants between questions. He follows up on the last one, asking the kids if they understand the basics of sex.

Boy: The man and the woman lay together for a while, with the male parts in the female parts, until the sperm gets to the egg.

Host: Exactly. And how long do you think they have to lay together?

Boy: Thirty seconds.

Host: Thirty seconds? Interesting.

To another boy.

And how long do you think it takes?

Boy 2: Two hours.

Host: Two hours! So is it thirty seconds or two hours?

Girl: It depends on the person. Some people take thirty seconds and some people take two hours.

Host: Oh ok. So it’s not always the same for everybody.

Girl: Right. And if it only takes thirty seconds you’ll have a tiny baby.

Host: Really?

Girl: Yeah. The longer it takes the bigger the baby will be.

Host: So if it takes two hours, then you’ll have a giraffe?

A Fighting Fool

The others stretch, chat, and warm up on the dojo floor before class. I sit alone, and think about how cool it is that I’m learning Kung Fu. Wind Staff. The deep clapping sound the staff makes when you slam it flat on the carpeted floor during the form.

It still bothers me, though, that she won’t go out with me. Or that she’s sort of going out with me. That she won’t decide whether we’re going out or not. I look at my knuckles, the word I traced over all day in school, first with pen, then a black sharpie, then outlined with a red pen. I wonder what the instructor thinks of me. Wait for him to tell me that I’ve got serious potential.

I look out the screen door next to the water cooler, through the rear parking lot and into the trees. One guy’s out back training. He’s not usually in our class, either cause he’s in the next level up or because he decided to just train on his own. I think he comes to the dojo mostly to teach the kids’ classes. They love him. He’s great at Kung Fu too. The times I’ve watched him do a form, it’s like he’s fully in his body while the rest of us are only halfway in.

There’s a loud bang in the parking lot. We all turn our heads towards the screen door, as he tears it open and dive rolls into the dojo, still holding his staff. He looks up at us - focus, panic, and laughter all on his face at once. “These guys got guns!”