To The Dog Outside Barking at 2:37, 2:43, 2:52 and 3:05 in the Morning

This is the last morning of what has been a very stressful week at work. Reports are due and then they have to be read. And then interpreted. And then forwarded to the People Who Will Have Questions. There’s a leak in my office I’m trying to ignore, but dark circle widening on the carpet is getting closer to my desk. My students are beginning to understand college is for real and when I wake up at 5:00, my inbox always has a few frantic emails about the assignment due in class today. They will not wake up in time to read my reply. I consider using Twitter to communicate with them. Twitter is stressful.

 

All these worries go to bed with me and though we all fall asleep, we wake each other up. One kicks and the other pulls the sheet off the bed. One is too hot and the other is too cold. One snores. One is having bad dreams and talking out loud. Usually, I just get up. We all calm down when we start working.

But this morning, we have managed to sleep peacefully. I’m drifting through a dream that has no narrative, but a house from my childhood I recognize. A well-lit kitchen. A glass sugar server with a metal lid hinged in the center. As it is becoming more and more clear, I hear you barking. And that barking becomes louder, though not urgent.

Bark. [Silence.] Barkbark. [Silence.] Bark. [Silence] Barkbarkbark. [Silence.]
 

I wake up. You aren’t part of my dreamscape, but a real dog that has been left outside at this unholy hour and needs desperately to go back in the house, to the blanket in the corner of the room, to the bowl of fresh water, to the crumbs the boy leaves on the stairs as he goes to his room.

Your owner has forgotten about you and you have waited all night by the door. Finally, you have to say something but you are trying not to bother the neighborhood. You are barking as small and infrequently as caninely possible while still trying to get what you need. Yes, you I love.

Your owner, on the other hand, needs to understand what he has robbed from me. This first complete sleep cycle in weeks. The possibility of going to work without circles under my eyes. A clear head, if only for a day. The reassurance that a full night of sleep really is possible. That bowl of sugar.

That was my grandmother’s kitchen. She was in the next room. We would have had a cup of coffee. Maybe she would have held my hand. I haven’t seen her in years. We were so close.

To Mr. K. 6th Grade, Christ The King School

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Source: http://www.fameimages.com/gary-sandy

In 6th grade, Noelle and I had it in for Mr. K.. As an adult, I don’t know why, but as a 6th grader, it was perfectly clear: he walked around like Andy on WKRP and seemed like an adult who wanted to be “cool,” which is the worst way to be cool. Kids can smell that. 

 

We would imitate him, comb our hands through our hair the way he would, flipping his feathered layers with a small tick of his neck. He wore jeans with a jacket and tie. And cowboy boots. He tried to teach us math, but the second he would turn towards the blackboard to write a problem, we’d laugh, so that he would have to turn back around quickly, “WHAT is so funny?!?”

After lunch, the teachers would all be watching the kids on the playground and we would sneak off to the pay phone by the community building. We looked up his address in the phonebook--D. Kerlick. We would call 1-800 numbers and COD order him Ronco’s Mr. Microphone and K-Tel’s “Disco Fire” collection. Ginsu knives and every TimeLife series they had. We got him good, we thought.

We imagined day after day, the packages arriving at his tiny apartment. He would yell at the mail carrier, “But I didn’t order these!!” We thought he would be chest deep in Buttoneers and Record Vacuums, pacing across the sculptured carpet, flipping his hair. “Damn kids!” All the while, we knew he would never trace it back to us. And finally, his apartment would be so stuffed and he would hate us so much, he would not come back to school.

But he kept showing up. He came back the day after we put glue all over his chair. After he caught us mocking him in the gym. He showed up every day.

At the end of the year, he quit. We thought we did the world a public service. In our magical thinking, we made adults weep and quit their jobs. We thought teachers better watch themselves.

Maybe.

Maybe he hated us enough to never come back. Maybe we were so bad that he gave up teaching altogether.

At 12, decisions seemed to rest on one thing at a time, but there was a math he couldn’t teach us, problems too complicated to explain. We thought he was stupid, and what could he do but shake his head? Damn kids.

To The Checkout Clerk at Walgreens Who Decided Not to Be Polite to the Asshole Customer

It’s Saturday and it’s raining. Only it just started and people weren’t ready for it. Customers dash into the store from the parking lot and give a little shake as they take a deep breath. They look up a bit wide-eyed. “Love Hurts” is playing on the store speakers.

 

Typically, all Walgreens stores are equally busy no matter the hour. The line for checkout should never be more than 4 people long. Maybe 5 if someone is buying Bud Light and one of the checkers is 17.

Tonight the line is 3 people long, but the guy in front of me is already angry enough to count as 2. You open up another register and say, “I can help the next person over here.”

The southern in me waits for Angry Guy to move over to the open register. He doesn’t. “Sir?” I say. Nothing. I have to actually walk in front of him and make eye contact, “Do you want to check out here?” I say, pointing to register 2.

“Yes I would!” he says in a way that implies he has been waiting for hours. He has bags from other stores in his hands.

“But I need a pack of Kools,” he says, looking at you suspiciously. Like maybe you won’t sell them. Like maybe his whole life he has asked for something as simple as a small pack of cigarettes and no one, NO ONE, ever gets them for him. 

You walk around the counter and come back with cigarettes.

 

He says to you in a slow, low voice, “Now, honey, I don’t know in what world ‘Camel’ sounds like ‘Kool,’ but I want Kools. Small blue box. BLUE BOX.”

He scowls, shakes his finger.

No amount of shit a person grew up with or crap that person has gone through in life, literally no amount of it, grants the right to be an asshole to strangers. No amount of years lived or times cheated on equal a free ticket on the Rude Bus that crashes through the windows of a stranger’s day when she is just trying to do her goddamn job.

You don’t apologize. Of course, you go back to the cigarette rack and yank a BLUE BOX off the shelf. You ring it up with his Coke and pills and don’t look at him. “$11.74” Normally, I can’t read minds, but clearly you are screaming, “Fuck you!” 

You maintained more composure than most could. Maybe more than you should have. Don’t second guess this. Tonight at dinner, I toast you, Walgreens Woman. Do not, do not ever, take that shit.