Summer School Hell – Layer VII – Realm Of The Medicated Mother

No wind, no rain, no thunder, no lightening, no massive waves and most importantly no flying cows. In short, no typhoon. What a let down. I haven’t been this disappointed since I discovered the Never Ending Story actually had an ending. I was all ready with my rope and my bucket in hopes of fulfilling my lifelong dream of milking a flying cow but nooooooo this typhoon decided to be a Brando at the Oscars and no show and the typhoon didn’t even send a pissed off Indian in it’s place. I really feel as though the typhoon in Japan has become that girl you once dated who waited months and months to finally let you bed her and when it is all over and done with you realize the wait and anticipation was worth about as much as a box of stale Ritz Crackers. Oh, and you also find out she’s a man. Hasn’t that happened to everyone? Are you with me? Guys….guys…? The lack of typhoon does ensure that my weekend plans, assuming the typhoon doesn’t decide to drop in a day late, can proceed. I’m still not 100% certain on what those plans may actually be, have a pretty good idea, but there will be plans and the only way I am turning 30 inside this hot apartment is if the weather is so extremely terrible that I’d transform myself into a kite should I step outside. Now that I’ve said that I suppose I can expect the worst. That’s why I have a back up plan. I’m not 100% certain on what that back up plan may actually be, have a pretty good idea, but there will be a back up plan.

Today was the second last day of summer school. It is almost over. I’ve had a chance to rejuvenate and I am feeling about as good as Keith Richards after a weekly transfusion. Tip-top, mates. Today would be a three lesson day, not as light as the last two, but upon reading the attendance book I’d discover it wouldn’t be as heavy either. Once again I have only one student in my younger class and once again it is a kid who was utterly terrified of me on our first meeting. This one held onto her mother like a Pittbull to an ass cheek and when finally pried off she tore off to the bathroom in a blur, closed the door and didn’t come out for over a half hour despite the urgings of both myself and fellow students. She was fine the next time I saw her and every week there after. Really, this youngster has the reaction to me that most women have. They run away in horror at first but once they get to know me they become smitten, intrigued and engrossed…and then they run away in horror again. Damn. With this kid, though, so far…so good. My next class would have eight kids, the most since Monday, and the class after this would have only two. So the work load was more stacked then yesterday but not enough to stop the cart.

I arrived to my lesson early…very early…way to early. I was three hours early, something that was needed on my six lesson day a week ago but today with only three lessons and minimal students I was prepared and ready to go within an hour. I even had time to plan one of my regular lessons for next month. With some time on my hands I stepped out to grab some lunch in the form of a lunch box. I’m sure the word lunchbox fills you with the image of a rectangular plastic box which opens in the middle and contains a thermos. I know the lunchbox fills me with nostalgia. I remember every August, just after my birthday, my mother would take us shopping for new school supplies. Back when we were kids, before the Walmart moved into town and pushed a lot of places out, we shopped at Woolco. Woolco had the best selection of school supplies and my mother only dolled out her cash on the best for her kids. Okay, we actually whined and cried until we got our way but we whined and cried for the best. School supply shopping was really like a second birthday for me as I was showered with new and wonderful things only this time I wouldn’t have to peel off any wrapping paper to get them, they wouldn’t be a surprise and I’d be able to choose them myself. My sister would always race to the pencil case area first eyeballing a matching pencil case, pencil, eraser and pencil sharpener set complete with a ruler…sometimes a holographic ruler. Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Measuring things has become fun again! She would salivate over the Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony offerings and I’m sure if she could she’d have taken them all alternate days. My brother and I didn’t mess around with the small bean hills when school supply shopping. We went right to the mountain, the holiest of holies, the one item that could make or break your status on the schoolyard. We went for the lunchboxes. He-man, GI-Joe and the best lunchbox of them all, The Transformers were all ours at one point or another. They would contain granola Dip Bars and Fruit Roll-ups and peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches. Thermoses would be filled with Kool-aid and they’d leave little grape mustaches on our face. We didn’t care. We were drinking from something that bore the iconic image of Optimus Prime. Lunchboxes were perfect devices in which to smuggle toys into class and many a tip was had by my GI-Joe figures, thumb wrestlers and one or two Madballs. When I look back upon my days of youth, something I have been doing a lot lately, I have to pause to think of my lunchboxes, my school yard friends in the days before I was deemed too old and had to switch to a brown, paper sack…gone now to the scrap heap and probably recycled into the durable plastic of a sexual enhancement device. Optimus I’m so very, very sorry. Japanese luncboxes are nowhere nearly as exciting but the contents are just as tasty….well, maybe not as tasty as the raspberry Fruit Roll-up, one of the best taste bud teasers on Earth. The Japanese lunchboxes are usually black (although I have seen some that were red and others with a plastic faux wood finish) plastic squares with various compartments for food over which there is a see-through plastic covering. Think of them as Swanson TV diners without the chicken nuggets, the apple crumb desert, the corn and the potatoes that never cooked right so you were always left with scalding hot potato on top and Antarctic ice-cold potato in the middle. This strange phenomenon has puzzled potato scientists for centuries. These lunchboxes are very cheap and filling. Most can be purchased for under four bucks and they contain a wide and ever changing array of Japanese treats. Rice is always present, a staple of the Japanese meal, but you can also find fish, chicken, pork, noodles, potato salad, macaroni salad, Japanese pickles, some pink stuff that tastes like laundry detergent (oh like you’ve never been curios!) and lots of other goodies always in rotation, different things in different compartments allowing you various options for your meal. This has become my on the go meal of choice. I can heat it up in the microwaves found in the grocery stores and cart it along to class to munch on while I prepare for my lesson. I brought my lunchbox, a selection of chicken, fish and rice, back to the class and looked at the time. I had two and a half hours to go. The air conditioner was either on the fritz or I had no idea how to work it properly so it was either crack every window in the place or die of heat stroke. With nothing else to do I grabbed myself the red, padded dice and used it as a pillow as I slept away the final hour and half before the first kid and her seemingly stoned mother arrived for their lesson.

This mother had to be on something, some drug or strange Japanese medical concoction. She walked as though she were in slow motion, under water, weighted and her eyes were glazed and lifeless. This was Mom of the Living Dead. She floated to the floor while her kids, yes she carted along my student’s siblings, and just stared at the wall. I had to stand in front of her to get her to recite her part of the lesson. Yesterday the student’s focus was hindered by a less then cooperative mother who had to chase her other kids around the room. Today the student’s focus was hindered by not only her siblings calling out answers, dumping blocks on the floor, crying or jumping on top of her but also by a mother who looked like she’s smoked all the weed found at Tommy Chong’s house. I bet the inside of her head resembled a Dali painting or, better, a Clampet cartoon. Of course with the mother in this state she was not really responsive to her parts of the lesson, integral parts if you wanted to tie the whole thing together. I had to make up a few new games on the spot to fill in the extra time. It really is a pity that this kid and yesterday’s kid didn’t have any other students to play off of and had to rely on parents that were not able to be as involved in the lesson as they should have. I’m afraid these two girls didn’t get the most out of their summer school experience because of it. As I said yesterday, I can understand having to bring along siblings and young kids, especially infants, are not going to sit still for an hour while their sister and mother talk about a family of bears. Understandable and excusable. But today’s drugged up, medicated, sedated zombie mother was just something else. She was just zonked. If this wasn’t bad enough she had to excuse herself from the lesson right at the end, where she is needed the most I might add in the game that wraps everything up, because she had to go and pick up another kid for the next lesson. She left me with her daughter and son, her son being another one of my students, and I tried to do the final game with both of them but seeing as how the son was not paying attention for a lesson that was not his nothing worked and it all fell apart. I improvised something for the girl, acted all goofy so she smiled and laughed and when our lesson was over she left happy. Best I could do.

At the end of the day I sat on the steps outside with one of the older students waiting for his mother to come and get him. Late parents have now become a frustrating fact of life. It was an awkward moment. Outside of our lessons we had nothing to say to each other. He didn’t know much English outside of what was in his textbook and I knew only three lessons of Japanese taught to me by underwater robots. What would I have said if I had spoken his language? What would I have asked him? Maybe I would have asked if he was enjoying summer school, what he did when he wasn’t there, who his favorite Japanese cartoon character was. For the first time I felt sad that I didn’t know the language, that I didn’t take the proper time to study it before coming out here. It would be nice to relate to my students beyond the classroom, passed the borders of student and teacher. I could tell him of my country, how different it is. I could tell him how beautiful I think his country is, how lucky he is to live here. There could have been several avenues of conversation to explore in those fifteen minutes before his apologetic mother rushed out of the supermarket across the street and we said our goodbyes. Instead we sat in silence watching the sun set over the city. It created a beautiful red pastel over the mountains. It was a gorgeous sight, a sight you’d want to paint. I wish I could have told the kid that but a staircase away from the classroom I was still trapped inside and so, standing there on the seventh layer looking up, I would have to remain Andre Sensei.