stacyopolis.com

Today the power was out for a few hours due to a fierce ice storm. School was cancelled, so the girls were home all day with me. Armed with nothing better to do, my older daughter Morgan started looking through my closet. There she found a 1930’s Smith –Corona typewriter that my grandmother gave me before she passed away.

Every time I see that typewriter, I think of my grandmother and what she must have been like in the 30’s and 40’s. I knew her as a sassy, sharp-tongued, murder-mystery reading, Golden Girls-watching alcoholic who totally adored me and my brother. I have seen newspaper clippings of her in theatrical productions and as a WAVE in the U.S. Navy. I wonder what she used this typewriter for? Did everyone have one back then, or were they only for aspiring writers and secretaries?

Anyway, we took out the typewriter, dusted it off, and rolled in a piece of paper. The red ribbon still had a good amount of ink in it, so there sat Morgan for most of the day, typing letters to imaginary people. The clicking of the letters hitting the paper gave a nice, vintage sound that reminded me of an old detective movie.

It’s funny to think of the typewriter now, and how cumbersome it is to use. If you make a mistake and you’ve run out of corrective ribbon, you have to start typing the entire page all over again. The force with which you have to hit they keys seems ridiculous compared to the light touch needed for a computer keyboard, and I can’t even imagine a writer completing an entire novel on a contraption like this.

Still, I’m sure my grandmother would be happy to know that her typewriter is in good working order and that her great-granddaughter is completely enjoying its novelty just as much as I did when I used to take it out of her closet, typing away as I ate my pizza and watched The Golden Girls.

Today when Olivia got on the afternoon kindergarten bus, there was a little boy sitting in the front seat looking out the window. He was wearing a beret and ski goggles. Now there’s a kid without inhibitions. A future artistic genius.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about a classroom full of kindergarteners that gives me a headache. This afternoon I went to my daughter Olivia’s kindergarten class to help out. I do this once a month and I do it solely to show her that I care and want to be involved in her activities – in no way would I be doing this for “fun”.

Now let me just say that there are moms who visit the classroom at least once a week. I am not that mom. Once a month is about all I can handle. There are some children whose mom or dad never comes to volunteer in the classroom. Take for instance little Joshua, who informed me today that, “My mom said she never wants to come to my school because she doesn’t want to deal with all those kids.”

Now, if I were to have a face-to-face conversation with Joshua’s mom, she would probably make up some excuse for not volunteering like her work schedule is too crazy, or she has a bad back and can’t sit in the little chairs, etc. But I love how, straight from the mouths of babes, she simply doesn’t want to deal with all the kids. That is exactly how I feel right now after only an hour of instructing children to cut out numbers and glue them in the correct order, then color the puppy on the page. It sounds simple enough until you are there, immersed in children and struggling to keep them focused.

I have noticed that there are many ways these kindergarteners operate in the classroom. Here are some of the main personalities I have discovered:

1. The Buddhist: Stares off into space and needs to be prompted to come back to earth every thirty seconds. Theirs is a very tranquil world.
2. The Family Traitor: Is very interested in telling you all his families’ juiciest secrets – things his parents would probably be mortified to hear uttered in public.
3. The Name-Obsessed: She wants you to guess her middle name, her dog’s name, her sister’s name, and her fish’s name. To me this is completely mind-numbing.
4. Fighting the System: This kid does his work as fast as he can with no regard for aesthetics, usually coloring everything either black or gray. Then he tries to distract everyone else from doing theirs.
5. The Brown-Noser: Points out any and all flaws that they see on their classmate’s papers. Makes it well known that they can draw the number 5 correctly, and that Alicia’s number 5 is backwards.
6. Me, myself, and I: Their sentences usually begin with “Guess what?” and then they proceed to tell you their life story.

Now, all of this would be very cute and entertaining if only I had a glass of wine in my hand and it wasn’t all taking place at the same exact time. The classroom is like a tennis match going back and forth, and there I am in the middle trying desperately to thwart any undesired communication. You have to have some serious patience to be a kindergarten teacher. This hour in the classroom has me completely spent for the rest of the day. I am not exaggerating when I tell you I need a nap.

I’m going to the casino tonight with my cousin. Wish me good fortune!

Update: I did not win at the casino. I lost to the tune of $60. I did, however, find a 1/2 cent slot machine…my last quarter lasted about 45 minutes on that machine. The highlight of our trip was when Carrie won “2000 credits” on the 1/2 cent slot machine - this seems like a lot of money until you realized that it only came out to $10 on this machine. The thing that made us laugh hysterically was that crowds of people were stopping by the machine as it racked up the credits, then they would see that it was only the 1/2 cent machine and walk away.  It still got our endorphines going, and we had a good laugh (which could have been due to the midnight cup of coffee we drank).

So a few days ago I had to take my brother to the emergency room because he had sharp stomach pains and a small pancake shape poking out of the right side of his abdomen. He was going to drive himself to the ER, but I insisted on taking him for fear that his appendix was going to rupture or an alien was going to explode out of his stomach and start tap dancing across the dashboard of his car.

When we got there, three college girls were sitting in the waiting room. All were wearing sweatpants and flip flops on this particular freezing 30-degree day in February. Their toes were bright red and they were complaining, “It’s really cold in here”. (I don’t know, here’s a crazy idea but maybe put some socks and shoes on???)

Well, it turns out the reason they were hanging out in the waiting room today was because one of the three – the tall one with the enormous Coach bag (and sweatpants and flip flops) – had had a migraine headache for three days and it got so bad that her eye felt like it was popping out of its socket and was completely swollen shut. I felt really bad, this girl looked like she was in a lot of pain – she was even crying silently from time to time, sitting there with an ice pack pressed to her left eye.

Her two friends, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to her suffering. They sat there and chatted away at warp speed about being carried home drunk from the bar, what dress they were going to wear to the semiformal, which girls are bitches, which guys are nice, which guys are mean, and how one of them bought the wrong book for a class and didn’t know what to do since she threw out the receipt.

This verbal diarrhea went on for about an hour. Not once did they acknowledge their friend (well, except when they broke out their cell phones to call their other friends to let them know about the emergency room drama). They didn’t offer her a drink of water, or a new ice pack. They could have at least patted her knee and said “There, there, it will be ok.” Something – anything!

“I hope she’s ok,” said the short blond girl after the tall girl finally got called in to see a doctor.

“Yeah,” said the other.

“I wonder what’s wrong with her. Maybe it’s just….I don’t know what it is.” She said. “Want to go to Subway?”

“Yeah,” said the other.

Then they proceeded to send the poor girl a text message saying that they’d be back in an hour. They got up and walked out the door into the bitter February air (flip, flop, flip, flop).

Oh, and if you were wondering, my brother was fine. It turns out he had a parasite (eew) and all he needed was medication. No operations, no aliens – thank goodness.