Beloved Farewell

It shoulda been an RIP, or perhaps even something slightly more vulgar, but this is a family program, not like the new Jack in the Box commercial that proudly says "no nookie".  So what I'm being charged with, aside from being an idiot, and a jerk, and apparently Ryan Reynolds black twin from the eyes up (huh?), is wishing the year's most premier vacation for educators a final farewell.  As you're well aware, I am not all that sad to see the summer end, but dang, I shole could do without picking these kids up on Monday morning.

Since a lot of teachers read my blog, I know yall can empathize.  Since there are multiple soon-to-be first year educators, congratulations, and this will quickly be something with which you can look at and say "omg, that's exactly it!", if you haven't already done so.

We started meetings today, and there's nothing more exciting than sitting in meetings all day with a whole bunch of people that are either yawning, sleeping, or comatose.  One of those comatose folks was sitting next to me, my new team teacher, Gobment.  If you recall, she is the one with more names than a bathroom stall on Dangerous Minds.  I can't ever remember which one to call her.  It be like this,

, except her name isn't Li.  So yesterday I was off for my farewell lurnch with some of my favorite people from the last halfway school, and I explained to Gobment that I was "going to see a man about a horse".  This is a phrase that I like, for no particular reason.  Do you know this Bumpkin didn't even get it?  Which I find amazing because she is, much like Cece, from the most country of country places, that being Arkansas.  Arkansas is so country, *gives y'all time to say "how country is it?"*, that if they gave President Obama a choice of places to stay between Arkansas and Oklahoma, he would gladly opt for an outhouse in some heavily poverty-strickened area, like this'n. 

But enough about them, this is Beloved's blog.  Cece, unfortunately, was unable to attend lurnch with us folks, so it was just Rock, Jack, and Luby.  Speaking of people who often make me scratch my head...

Jack: Luby, hurry up, so we can go to breakfast!

Luby: I'm coming, we'll make it before they stop serving it.

Jack: Scoff.

Beloved: Play nice, siblings of mine.

Jack: Hurry up, before we miss the lunch special!!

Luby: I'm around the corner.

Jack: Your classroom is only 12.7 meters away in the first place.  You should have been here.  We're leaving.  We'll be back.

Luby: Ok give me one more hour.

I, of course, with the assistance of Rock, convinced Jack that we could wait, since we were just going to Sonic.  So we ride down to Sonic and place 4 separate orders.  I think we all managed to get what we ordered.  Then we headed back to the school, where Luby says, "Ok, I'll see yall later."  She made us wait on her so she could ride down the street.  It's pretty hilarious, when you think about it.  Gotta love them.  They're gonna miss my calming nature, in the midst of their proverbial storms.  I told them I would still be able to help them, but I also have to be the voice of reason for Gobment, so they have to share.  Everybody's so territorial these days.  I got my own problems to deal with.  Like this.

Tonight I said farewell to my nearly blemishless hitting record in softball, which is by far the most anti-climactic thing I've done in quite some time.  I went up there with the bases loaded, and first hit a foul ball.  Then I swung and missed (shamefully).  If you're wondering what I did next, I went to get my glove lol.  In this league, you get 2 strikes, not 3, so what had happened was, I struck out.  I had some hits, but I'll never forget that moment.  

Well these two dudes on the team, we'll call them Sorry and Sorrier, decided they would light me up for making an out for maybe the 4th time all season.  They went too far, especially for such easy targets.  They both play infield, and a general prerequisite to playing the infield is the ability to field a ground ball.  Neither is very adept at that.  But this isn't about Sorry, it's about Sorrier, who I'm pretty sure rode to the game in the back of a truck full of landscaping equipment.  This little garden gnome talks just like Wilmer Valderrama, that dude that hosted "Yo Mama".  I mean he's so short, he'll one day stand on top of his own wedding cake.  He's so short, he has to jump for ground balls.  He's so short, his bat looks like a pole vault.  HE'S SO short...well I guess we can leave it there.  He is averaging about 5 errors a game, and has single-handedly lost a game for us with his shoddy defense.  I think he's unaware that there is more than one facet to being a baseball and/or softball player.  On top of that, every time he says "we have one out", he says "we have Juan out".  I don't know if he just can't say it or he's telling us that his cousin just got here from Mexico.  Well, I'm pretty sure he got enough.  Moral of the story, I SUCKED TONIGHT lol.  Farewell to amazing batting statistics.

Well, that's all for now.  I have to be at training at 8 in the morning.  I really shouldn't have been blogging, as I have school business to handle, but I figure I'll be busier in the coming days, so no time like the present.  Good luck to all the teachers already servicing idiots, and better luck to those beginning on Monday.  Christmas is just around the corner.

Post Script - I just wanted to say Juan more thing.  Ok, that's it.

Beloved's Summer Epistle

Dear summer,

I am disgusted by your very presence.  You are not worthy of me writing this but I'm gonna do it anyway.  Kiss my arse, with your tongue out.  Ok, so here's how it works.  I will try my best to convey my disdain with this summer.  I must have been having a predictive moment towards the end of spring because I had been expressing my unrelenting desire to skip directly from spring to fall.  Let's examine these seasons, briefly.

Spring: The season of rebirth, all things are made new, the great renaissance, when the dead things in nature begin to have life again.  The weather begins to warm, but it is at a bearable rate.  I think here, we are more susceptible to tornadoes during this period (remind me to tell you about the great tornaduh--pronounced tore-nay-duh--of the halfway school).  However I find that to be a reasonable sacrifice to spring's dreadful replacement.

Fall: Football, the Fall Classic (aka the World Series), the beginning of the NBA season, Halloween (ok scratch that one).  All of these are prominent during the fall months, and I could not be more ecstatic.  There is also a mystique associated with Fall that I just love.  That mystique is likely due to it swiftly coming to uproot its predecessor.  I think that is the most gracious thing that good old autumn could do for us.  Do we say thank you?  No, we do not.  Ungrateful Americans.

Winter: In the words of the great, ever-philosophical Gucci Mane, "Burr".  Winter is interesting because it offers something that we often reject as fact, even though we should all know better.  It is the quintessential season of perpetual romantic hope, aka "cuffing season".  Noah would be proud because I'm almost certain everyone in the world gets paired off, in anticipation of the cool temperatures.  Who doesn't like to cuddle in the cold, confuse what they like about a given situation, and then regret talking to their short-lived better half, all by the time Spring rolls back around?  Cuff away.

Either you're really dumb, or you may notice that I skipped a season.  I wish I could say that I was saving the best for last, but the fact is, I don't wish that at all.  Ah summer...you, my foe, are HOT AS BALLS!  You are hot as vaginal penetration betwixt victims with assorted STD's.  You are hot as sodomy, which when passed around and coupled with the theory of the plagued monkeys, create what I like to call "Magic Johnson Disease".  For the first time in my entire life, I know what it feels like to have one bad memory of a particular thing, and eventually have that coupled with traumatic emotional events, to harbor a unique vacuum of feelings causing psychological disparagement.  Sodomy, by the way...well just look it up.

Bad memory: I never would have believed that it was possible, being that my brain is 79% comprised of baseball adages and thoughts.  I really cannot stand, nor can I function in, the heat for an extended period of time.  20 years in the sun, never getting sunburn, never being dehydrated, never seeing a single mirage, and this summer I sustained a freakin' HEAT RASH.  If you know anything about heat rash, it is essentially a condition comprised of bodily fungus (urgh), prominently activated in extreme heat and dampness.  Well when I get hot, I sweat.  I guess that's a double-whammy.  When I tell you that ish itched, when I tell you that ish was ugly, when I tell you that ish would not go away, you better believe it.  Now my body is all different skin tones.  I look like Michael going through "The (other) Change". Stay out of the Texas heat.  You have been warned.

Traumatic Emotional Event I: So by now, most people that know me in some capacity know about poor little Kayla Brown, the soon to be 1st grader, who was hit by a car while riding her bike.  She was 6.  How do you rationalize that your 6-year-old will never smile again?  All it makes me think about is my soon to be 6-year-old sister, who ironically, I just kicked out of the room for not knowing how to follow instructions.  Dang, I'm gonna invite her back.  Slight digression, we have and raise these kids, and blame them for stuff that ultimately is not all that much of their faults.  Their brains are still developing.  Ours are finished with the developmental process, yet we're still foolish.  Stupid know-it-alls.  So my sister was sitting at my grandparents' house this evening and decided to go find our mom, who was outside.  "Oh my goodness, I have to go see my mom!"So I told her to get her shoes and she could go out.  She searched long and hard, long enough for a redneck to wash his hands in the woods.  Then she comes back.  "I can't find my shoes, I have to find my shoes, where are they?", to which a family friend replies, "Go ask your mom where they are."  Umm ma'am, her mom is the reason she wants the dang shoes.  See the contradiction we put in these kids' heads?  Unfortunate.  Little Kayla was in my sister, Luby's, class, so mostly my heart just went out to her, but knowing a little about Kayla was really all it took to put me in a funk.

Traumatic Emotional Event II, Mid-Summer Nightmare: An ugly sequel.  Again, if you know me, you know that I somehow got trapped into every facet of my life being seamlessly woven into a quilt revolving around kids.  I won't say they are the best birth control because that's technically abstinence, but they're a close second.  Wait...that's condoms.  Ok they're third for sure.  So even though I didn't know a thing about soccer this time last year, I started coaching 4-year-olds because my sister's team needed a coach and, well let's just say I was a last resort.  Two seasons later, I am becoming less ignorant of a sport that is quite a bit more interesting than its 2-1 scores would indicate.  I had this kid in my second season, who has since moved on to Rowlett, or Rockwall, or some place really far that begins with "R".  I'm going to miss him and his spirited personality.  Well today, I was informed that I should be in prayer for him because on yesterday he witnessed his dad drown in a lake in Oklahoma.  I have this hierarchy of most awful deaths to cope with, which I always begin with burning. It just seems so torturous.  Somewhere, not far behind would be drowning.  It's such the freak accident that I just can't imagine.  As devastated as I know the family is, I am feeling similarly.  I knew his dad, as he was an avid attendant of our games.  He wasn't that guy that you would say was not, at the very least, trying hard to be there for his son.  The poor kid is too young to understand drowning, so as of this morning he still had no idea that his dad was dead.  Now, anybody care to tell me how do you tell a 5-year-old his dad died, and you actually witnessed it happening?  Murdered, figuratively, by Poseidon, while his young child is left to watch, unable to offer any assistance.  I'm not gonna harp on this because I've already exceeded my crying limit for the day and Summer (curse), but we just take so many things for granted that it's crazy.  Now, I'm gonna need strength because I feel it my duty to actively step in and take some of the stress away from those most affected.  Wish me luck.

I think I'm actually ready to get back to school, get back to the impressionable minds, the crazy kids, the NORMALCY.  I think things may loosen up once that happens.  Naturally, since all of these things have happened this summer, I am now adamant about being unable to wait until this calendar changes to the first day of fall, which is far too distant from this very day.  Though my heat rash (bad memory) has subsided, there are still visual reminders.  Even if there weren't, I'd still be miserable.  I was telling a friend earlier that I absolutely cannot take anymore heartache, for an indefinite period.  If it happens, I honestly don't know what I will do.  Yall just pray for me.  Now I'll have to come up with some sort of tribute and plan of action.  RIP Calvin Straughter.  Love you, Evan.  I'm always here fore you.

Beloved

Beloved Stubbornness

I was gonna name this one "The Apology of Beloved", as a parallel to the Apology of Socrates, but as some of you may be familiar with that text, it was meant quite satirically.  I will apologize later, but I will actually be sincere, so I want to not make light of the situation.  In the mean time, a little housekeeping.

First off, Happy Birthday to a dear friend of mine, Anna Smith Beloved.  As I look at my Gucci watch, it's not actually her birthday, but it will be once I post this, unless I can finish in the next ten minutes, which I doubt because all of my blogs consist of stories and digressions and tomfoolery and sarcasm and references to things that only a geek like myself would care about and people with names that I don't use in real life and rude remarks made about remarkable students and really really long sentences that are completely unnecessary, yet enjoyable for me.  Where the heck was I?  Oh yes, Happy Birthday, Anna.  You deserve to have a tremendous one because you, yourself, are tremendous.  You've had significant impact on my life, whether you believe it or not.  You should believe it though because I said it on the internet, and you can't put anything on the internet that isn't true.  Ok that's it.

Anyways, no quirky stories or ridiculous student bashing on this night.  Fret not, school starts at the end of this month.  Until then, I'm gonna try to play nice.  Let me tell you guys a quick story.  But before doing so, if you could be so kind as to ponder the following question...What do you consider to be a "date"?  Ok, the story can now commence.  Yesterday, or I guess officially the day before yesterday, was an interesting day for me.  I spent some quality time with my siblings, Luby and Jack.  Jack plays volleyball in coed leagues, so Luby and I decided to travel our arses out to Allen so that we could offer our support.  The game, itself, is of little importance because they stomped the dookie out of the opposing team.  A lot of that is due to my brother's prowess on the volleyball court.  Cat-like reflexes, hand/eye coordination, and an intimidating vertical will make you a star in most sports.  Volleyball is no exception.

So we head out to the game after dropping off Luby's siamese twins, and it is decided that I will drive her car out to Allen.  It is decided.  She was sleepy and hoped to get a power nap so that she could be alert during our brother's olympic level performance.  She also indicated that if I were to drive, she would be able to drive us home.  I'm cool with that.  Fast forward through that beat down of a game, which happened to be the championship.  The team is going to celebrate their newly acquired plaque at Pluckers, so of course we tag along.  "You know I'm not driving." That's not my quote, either.  So, again it is decided that I will drive to the next destination.  By this time, I am getting disturbed, only because I do not like to drive vehicles that I am not insured on.  I prefer not assuming the responsibility for anything going awry.  That's just my logic, and I am comfortable sticking with it.  But I drove because it was decided.

>> (That's me, hitting the fast forward button again).  Pluckers was pretty cool.  My waitress was attentive and they had a really good strawberry lemonade.  They should pay me for this plug because I'm broke and just got them way more business than they've ever had.  Oh, so this is where my question was discussed by the people sitting at our table.  I'm gonna reserve my opinion for after you tell me yours.  Y'all know how to reach me.

Anyways, again >> to the apparent breaking point of the situation.  I'm sure that I made a much greater deal out of this situation than what it was worth, but that's what stubborn people do.  Ladies, we all know that yall are smarter and far superior.  Dang, there I go with that satire.  It was again decided that I would drive back from Allen, in a car in which I am not insured, thus not comfortable assuming responsibility.  Let me tell you why this was so difficult for me.  Each time I mentioned a decision, I said that it was decided.  I never once talked about what we decided.  Why?  Because I didn't even have a say lol.  I don't think people will ever quite understand my aversion to being made to do something or being told what to do.  It is, quite possibly my greatest peeve, and it causes what I know is an overreaction.  I know this.  I am accepting of it.  I am apologetic about it.  All I'm asking for is a shift in sentence form.  Instead of imperative, use interrogative.  By that, I just mean that I would love to be consulted on things that pertain to me.  Just ask!  Can I at least get that?

The reason I decided, against my better judgment, to blog about the event that caused temporary discord betwixt Luby and I?  Simple.  Communication is key. I'm not sure my point was ever heard, so maybe it will be read.  In no way, am I suggesting that I am without blame.  There are apparently some other things I do that could be offensive.  I extend my sincerest apologies for my role in this incident.

This was a bit more somber than I care to be in my writing, but I felt it important because, well, when you care about somebody, you express it the best way you know how.  I'm not a talker.  Not that I'm a writer either, but I like to write.

Oh, by the way, I've decided to create a blog for my students this year, so when we get that set up I will most certainly share the link.  It, in itself, should be filled with the spirit of genuine hilarity.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.  I've got training in the morning, and these things are filled with moments to be captured.  It's quite possible that I'll be back sooner, rather than later.

P.S.-should I have just used P.S. on the part that starts "Oh, by the way..."?

Beloved Appreciation

So it finally hit me, like Angela did Laurence in the limo, or like Joe did all them Jacksons, or, more notably like the Rangers did the Angels...finally.  What finally hit me?  There are some situations you should just appreciate for what they are because a lot of times they prove to be as good as it gets.  More on the good to follow.  By the way, Angela would probably hit me too because she's super swole and she was reprising the role of the battered black woman.  Because we've never heard that story before.  Oh, so why should we appreciate things for what they are?

Because niggras be trippin'...hard.  I say niggra because I don't wanna call anybody's child a nigga.  See how big of a difference it makes?  Remember Griffin?  Of course you do because the blog is right below this one.  Well I may have mentioned that I am not a big fan of his, but I failed to mention in my last installment that I told him where he could go: H......ome.  If you thought anything else, you are awful.  I told him to come back on Monday, but to make sure he skipped Tuesday and Thursday because those were the days that I would be there.  Guess what, he was not present on Tuesday lol.  When my esteemed colleague, Gobment saw him on Wednesday, she asked him where he was on Tuesday.  His response: something about his stomach hurting.  My response: Point for me.  He did come on Thursday though (can't win them all).  But I suppose he got the message because he actually created the allusion that he has some sense.  Since a lot of teachers are probably reading this, we all know better, don't we?

So if young Griffin has "woman's orgasmed" having sense, he can't be the niggra that I'm referring to, can he?  Nope, but I do know this...Bebe's kids always work in tandem.  I'm convinced that kids can only function in dysfunction.  How's that for an oxymoron, emphasis on the jackass...I mean moron.  By the way, if you "woman's orgasm" something, it means you are faking.  Or pretending, whichever you prefer.

Slight digression.  This moment reminds me of the taboo game we played at the soccer party.  I was the clue giver, and it was, much like the natural order of things, a battle of the sexes.  The word was flick, and naturally I couldn't use words like "movie" or "theater" or "watch".  I'm saying things like "another word for the things that are on dvd."  These fools are stumped, but of course the ladies know. In a haste, I say "Another word for porno."  I'm talkin' bout, these horny negroes SIMULTANEOUSLY shouted "FLICK!"  I was the only male playing whose wife was not on the opposite team.  You should have seen the looks of disapproval on these wives' faces, as they went into a chorus of "How do you know what they call pornos?"  I, of course, found it hysterical, but I guess I may have been alone...oops.

This is as good a place as any to resume my story.  One of the students in Griffin's class, we'll call him Professor Charles, comes up to that dang program sleepy, every day.  Well, this particular day was just like any other day.  He couldn't answer know questions because he don't no *insert explicit term for fecal deposit*.  A sentence with double negatives and misplaced homophones, how befitting for Charles.  We were creating a video, in order to show our remarkable mastery of such terms as subject and predicate.  When I say mastery, I mean a term slightly less than that, like catastrophe.  This dude didn't stop clowning the entire time, so much so, that he's probably clowning at this very moment, a day and a half later.  "I thought you were sleepy, go back to sleep."  Naturally I dismissed him from participation in our video, but he can be seen in the background, looking sleepy.  Perhaps I will post the video one day, but then that would suggest that these stories are, in fact, real.

I was prepared to give Charles one more opportunity to participate, and simply asked him if he was done being silly.  This nappy headed, four-eyed, inch-high, water jug head having, kool aid man shaped, stank breath, chapped lip, narcoleptic, soft voiced, intellect lacking, darling of a child gave me that all too famous shrug of the shoulders, so to indicate that he didn't know.  I said okay, we will continue without you, and when your mom gets here we'll see if she knows.  As a side hustle of mine, I thoroughly enjoy training kids and doing lessons for baseball.  As an alternative to that side hustle, I love getting insolent kids in trouble.  I wasn't doing lessons at the time because I was in my good shoes, so what must I have been doing?  You guessed it.  Getting him in trouble.  It brings about a different issue in the educative community because we are never really sure if the parents "handle it" the same way our parents did.  Judging by the suddenly somber disposition on Little Charles' face, his mama was gonna "handle it".  Sorry kid.  And I actually mean it.  That kid is sorry.

So what is it that I am appreciative of?  I'm glad you asked.  I will tell you.

I'm appreciative of the effort, authentic or otherwise, that Griffin put forth.  I'm betting we will have our moments because he reminds me of a kid I had last year, named Pencil Boy.  Pencil Boy's nickname is Walen Jilliams.  But for now, he has gained a reprieve.  Interestingly enough, reprieve means to cancel or postpone punishment.  Trust me, it hasn't been cancelled.

I am appreciative of Charles' mama.  We had a good conversation.  Hopefully I have gained her support, unlike some of those calculative 304s at the last halfway school.

I am appreciative of a handful of students, all of whom I will miss dearly, from my last school.  I think I can use their real names because I actually like them.  Maybe I'll save it.  This is getting a little long, and I wanted to actually talk about the wonderful kids, most of which are girls.  By most, I think I mean all.

My cousin goes back to Pennsylvania tomorrow, so I'm gonna go spend some time with her.  Beloved appreciates you all.

Post Script-Now I know what P.S. means.  Why can't we just say "Post Script"?  Lazy Americans.