Two Orange Starbursts

I knew it was going to be a great day; I ate candy for breakfast. Halloween candy in November is fabulous when you're a child: the lingering elation of the holiday sustaining you just long enough to reach Thanksgiving. But when you're an adult, Halloween candy is dangerous. Those small, "Fun Size" portions call to you like a seductive whisper on a cold night.

Hey. Come eat me. I won't make you fat. Your teeth can survive a tiny coating of corn syrup. What's one tiny bag of Skittles? or an inch of Twix?

Even in the face of that danger, though, I tore into this Halloween left-over Starburst pea-pod, and, even with the permutation odds against me, I found two orange squares coquettishly staring back at me. Orange is the best flavor of candy, isn't it? The exoticism of citrus, and the stimulation of its vibrant hue. Ah, yes. Orange really is a treat for the senses.

I knew it was going to be a great day. Both fate and deliciousness were on my side.

Marry Me

I didn't see it happen. I didn't see the spectacle. I only saw the curtain of rose petals, the half-empty champagne bottle, and the banner reading Marry Me, Pansy—the chocolate-sweet echoes of a marriage proposal.

I stood, with several spectators, gently waiting to feel the aftershocks of their happiness. Over the vermilion pond rubbing the puckering ovals with my shoe tips, I waited in hopes that a voyeur could witness two people's brightest moment.

But they were gone—probably strolled back into the Sunday Farmers' Market in Oakland's Jack London Square. The right knee of his pants, moist from where he knelt in the fresh roses. Her mascara streaked downward like her umber bangs laced behind her ears. In one hand, an organic chocolate cupcake, saved for a celebration, and in the other, he held her syruped hands, sticky from tears and champagne.

But they were gone—off meeting each other for the first time as betrothed and promised. I waited with the children who tossed the fluffy rose petals in the air as if it had suddenly snowed in the East Bay. And the parents modestly joined their children in the rose-carpeted courtyard outside the Waterfront Plaza; they softly rubbed flowers between their fingertips remembering when they too said Yes.

After my dinner, I walked back through the courtyard, still hoping to catch a glimpse of Pansy. But there was only grounds keeper making piles of dead foliage. But as I walked by him, I swear I saw his wind torn lips crack upwards into a smile as he swept the roses into a dustpan.

Guess Who?

I was watching TV today, and I saw an add for (what I assuming is a new version of) Milton Bradley's Guess Who? This new Guess Who? Extra has changeable line-up cards, and electronic timers, and trap doors. This is surely the Cadillac of Guess Who?

I remember the original 1987 version of Guess Who where there were 5 women and 19 men. If you were unlucky enough to pick Jan out of the pile, you were finished.

Is your person a man? No. (The sound of plastic doors and your chance of victory being slammed shut)

And this game is still very relevant for me today. There is logic without the stress of Chess or the annoying pegs of Battleship. A sense of mystery without the inordinate setup of Clue. And there is a quick winner without having to go bankrupt in Monopoly.

Why, just a few months ago, my brother and I were playing, and our questions were updated for adult versions of us.
Does your person look like they are a jerk?
Does your person look like they have an inflated albeit unfounded sense of pride?
If I were a woman, would I want to make out with your person?

Of course the game always devolves into screaming matches about how we have skewed opinions of our cartoon, Guess Who? characters.

But that's what's so great about Guess Who? It is a quick way to have a big laugh. Other games take themselves too seriously. Sure, I love a good game of Backgammon, but my abs never hurt after I finish playing. There is something so wonderfully cynical about playing a game where we are asked to judge the appearances of others.

You might be wondering what kind of show I was watching to have such an advertisement, and I'm not ashamed to say that Spiderman cartoons have really come a long way. And so has Guess Who? Now with Guess Who? Extra, I can add over a hundred faces to my original lineup of 24, and make even more off-color comments with my loved ones.

Ah. Board games. Bringing people closer together through a shared sense of rudeness.

Slow Progress

I have a multi-lingual student in sixth period. He has only been in the States for about four months, and he is struggling to keep up with the language. The private school for which I work is his only education, meaning he is not getting any outside help with learning to speak English.

My private school is pretty fabulous except that it doesn't have multi-lingual program. That means that this student first encounters words like "love" and "desire" in esoteric Romantic poems.

Despite his grades, he quite intelligent. His comments are thoughtful but stunted in vocabulary. I made an impromptu visit to his math teacher, and she agreed with my assessment. The student excelled at the algebra because it is only numbers, but word problems posed a huge challenge.

I've been meeting with him during lunch about three times a week to try to help him. We read from Kindergarten phonics books while we slowly chew our peanut butter sandwiches; it's nice to know that a Russian national and Asian American can find common ground in PB&J.

Then, during sixth period, we jump forward about eight years into high-brow literature like Beowulf and Shakespearean Sonnets. In class though, it's much more difficult to devote so much time. Some students are aching to move faster while my Russian apprentice dissects every word, slowly leafing through his $60 Russian to English tome.

"Mr. Judo, what 'occur'?"

"Like 'happen.' When did it happen? When did it occur? The same." I find myself using an English I've never spoken before. My sentences are terse, and simple in their brevity. It's as if we've come to have a special language between us; a rhetoric somewhere between Russian and English.

He's challenging me in ways I never expected. I often ask him to look up the words, but many times I try to give him real-context examples to help solidify the impersonal text from the dictionaries. Sometimes, words are easily reduced to a simpler form. "What 'frenzy'?" "Like really angry."

The challenge comes when the words have no reduction. Today, "leaflet" really stumped me. I didn't want to concede a Merriam-Webster sterile response, but he didn't know what was "pamphlet" either. After about 30 seconds of rhetorical dancing, and my other native English-speaking students giggling, he finally understood.

Progress is slow, but enjoyable. Today, he read "once" correctly. Just three weeks ago, over lunch, when reading "Once upon a time," he said aloud "Awn-kay ee-pon a tim." Slow progress is still powerful.

Curry Wafting Down the Hall

I don't know my neighbors at all. Because I've never formally been introduced, I've resorted to naming my fellow residents by their defining traits. Guy in 1C is Sweater Vest. Girl in 1D is Orange Cascades. Man above me is Stompy. I'm sure there are some apartment buildings that birth wonderful friendships like Joey and Monica, Jerry and Kramer, but, for the most part, apartments breed anonymity.

This acceptable loneliness is so bad that my next door neighbor, Business Gal, moved out, and I didn't even notice. I finally realized something was amiss when I saw a new girl moving boxes into the secretly vacated room. She was wearing a white sweatshirt billboarding green OREGON. Her jeans were comfortably worn with some white threading hanging like icicles from her knees.

I've since named her Curry.

Now this may sound racist, but I assure you this name relates only to the fact that she frequently makes curry. When I walk into my hallway, the smell often lingers like a single organ note in an empty cathedral. The first time I breathed the aroma, I had to bloodhound my way down to her door just to make sure of the source. And sure enough, the frame of her doorway oozed the viscous spiciness of curry.

I should have been personable and introduced myself the first time I saw her. I should have introduced myself the day I sniffed the lintels of her doorway. Her real name could be like ambergris dissolving the barriers of my isolation.

But maybe I've already met her by inhaling deeply every time I return home. I've grown accustomed to her cooking. I come home, beaten from work, and I imagine her throwing her arms around me and kissing me with a fresh bowl of Curry; smelling the spicy aroma of her flirtation comforts more than reality every could.

Untapped

Literaure? Beouwulf? Spell check?











It would be one thing if this student was at his intellectual limit. If he truly gave his best efforts, I could look upon his works as sweat-soaked proof of his genuine mental exertion. Even if these imperfect works were riddled with errors, I could still bask in the warmth that both he and I were at our outer boundaries.

But this is not the case.

This student is smarter than this assignment depicts. When he does the reading, his comments are trenchant and lucid. When he actually tries on the homework, it often sets the standards for the class. He is smart, but he rarely shows consistent passion.

Learning to be autonomous within the structures of school is part of the educational process. Though very bright, this student is just eking by grade-wise in my class. His homework is late, and assignments, like the one above, are bloated with careless typos and apathetic formatting. Being smart is not enough to be a gifted student. A gifted student uses all their resources: intellect, time management, effort, manners, creativity, accountability.

Getting "F" papers isn't the most disheartening thing; seeing untapped potential sinks me even lower.

Quilt

One thousand dreams woven together
along their seams of reality and faith.

The loops of joy and punctured flesh
sustained the sloping cotton hills
of pastel memories. And streams of stitching
marinated doubts in sweet strawberry jam.

This balanced cloth, honeycombed
of warming past and cooling present,
was sewn in twilight, between secrets
and truths...and for that, I gave my sight
for its intricate beauty.

It's for you: my blindness and my quilt.
My mollified darkness waits for the ridges
of your fingertips plucked by my eyelashes.
And I can love more warmly that wrinkles
of your wind-cracked face are soft like the grooves of your smile.
Red porcelain whispers on my cheek as white porcelain.

Come beneath what I've made for us:
Darkness for both of us, predicted by the matchmaker of thread.