Sunday, September 21, 2014

Never mind, I found it.

Tonight, right before we went out to take Bruiser for a walk, I received two nearly identical pairs of messages from students. The first went a little something like this:
"Dear Professor Megastore, I cannot find my assigned peer reviews! Where did you hide them from me, at the eleventh hour and three quarters? Why are you the kind of teacher that would hide something at the eleventh hour and fifty minutes from her students? Why are you so terrible? Also, can you help me?" 
And the second went like this:
"Uh, never mind, I found it."
It's actually kind of amusing--it's like the kind of teacher-story that the Universal Ministry of Educational Flack (UMEF) hands out every so often, so that teachers can regale one another (not to say one-up one another) over sandwiches or tea:
Professor one: (sipping tea and nibbling a biscuit) I had a student the other day who called me a wanker! In the class! Where everyone could hear! And I was being observed! For tenure!
Professor two: (taking a savage bite of his cookie) LUXURY! I had a student who threw sandwiches at me while insulting my teaching because he couldn't find his peer reviews, and then followed by a sheepish never mind!
--rinse, repeat, etcetera &c &c then there was no more tea and we all cried.

This pedagogical episode puts me in mind of every other different-yet-similar episode, wherein one person puts another person into a panic because the first person (are you with me? there are only two characters in the story, but neither of them has a name, because it's a generic story etc. &c you will simply have to pay closer attention!): one person (my son, say) puts another person (me, myself, moi) into a panic because the first person (son) can't find his, say, immunization records. And he's in China! and he wants to register for school! or something. So I turn up the entire house in its chaos, trying to remember where it was and then it always ends up with a never mind from person one, and that is, somehow, deeply amusing to me.

Here are some things, however, that I have not yet turned up, that I am really not amused about, and thus the universe stands, holding its breath, waiting for the sigh of a never mind to release us all from our panic:

1. this one poem draft that I remember as somehow having something brilliant in it but who really knows, because: poof. It is no more, and this was before the advent of the personal computer and files, etcetera &c the poem she is lost. (this happened a really really really long time ago. I think I better just get over it already.)
2. plenty of books, oh yeah. I just remembered a couple and I'm still kind of mad about them.
3. plenty of DVDs that people borrowed, I think, and then never returned, I'm pretty sure, although who can say, really. Maybe they're here in the "shelving system" that is really nothing but the Screwy Chaosimal System (say it aloud, you'll hear it) with no rhyme nor reason nor Findability Index that will work for a person with a working, data-organizing, normal-functioning brain. (also, I'm suddenly, and with exquisite embarrassment, remembering that I have in my possession certain DVDs that belong to other people that I had better return, pronto!)
4. two beautiful and inky pens that were (a) expensive and (b) given to me as cherished gifts from cherished people. Alas I believe I left them in a motel room in West Yellowstone, Montana, and lo they are no longer to be found.

But! it's 11:32 on a Sunday night and I have graded like a champ, done some subtle yet somehow critical reordering of my new manuscript, and it is almost bedtime, there is a lunch packed already, waiting for me in the refrigerator. Earlier, I helped my son make two casseroles that he intends to eat in limited installments until they are gone, and also I made corn salad! So all is well, order reigns, etcetera &c except for the fact that the DVR stopped recording before the last two minutes of tonight's The Good Wife episode--so we know only part of what happened to Cary Agos and we do not know which of the lawyers duking it out in the bond hearing prevailed in those last two minutes.

As my son says, tomorrow the episode will be on the internet ("I think if it's on the internet, it's legal"), and then we'll say (wait for it)...




3 comments:

  1. In the way of all life, I sometimes find myself chanelling my dad in this one... wherein child is screaming for something in the other room, they'll never find it, its the end of days. I know it is there, probably looking them straight in the face, and I become straight up Steve Bickmore and say, "If I come in there and find it, can I hit ya with it?" By the way, my dad never did hit me with it, nor do I hit my children with lost objects. But you know, tradtion.

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  2. Only you could take this most banal and pedestrian of events and make it amusing, for which I thank you.

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  3. Fabulous post. And I enjoyed Amelia and Dr. Write's comments nearly as much.

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