Gun Play on Free Taco Party Day

Tuesday, our History professor was nice enough to pardon us 30 minutes early from class to attend our penal institution-wide free taco party, AND armed robbery, in the cafeteria.
Finally, gun play. Finally, I'm in my element. Finally, I feel at home. You know, for the first time in my reformation, I.just.feel.right. Our institution was sponsoring a Latin American Festival, with free tacos, and salsa lessons with the faculty. Which conceivably, happens in prisons all the time... with a 400 lb. man named Molly, and not Profesor Martinez. I chose not to be anyones dance partner/prison bia***, and darn the luck if I didn't miss out on an armed robbery, as a result of skipping out early. The word on the street is, one thing led to another, and by the end of the enforced fun and shenanigans, two armed gunman equipped with rocketing below average IQ, decided to rob the cafeteria register. Of all the registers to knock over, why a community college cafeteria one? All the students/malefactors use ONEcards or debit cards there, so I'm sure that made off with a stellar $12. Wow, half of a bus ticket out of the pokey. Who knows, maybe we'll have our first murder by mid-terms?
     Today, our Psychology professor just about had a meltdown trying to educate the uneducable. You could hear his voice crack a little more with pain, every time he repeated the same statement to her. Flossie, the opened-mouth gum popping bovine, was just not able to comprehend the words coming out of his mouth. Perhaps, it is due to her four stomachs going full throttle trying to process her pork rinds at 8 in the friggin' morning. Little hard to focus.There are dim bulbs, and sometimes there is just no filament at all, and this lite-brite peg better look forward to her career as a port-a-john cleaner.
    

Off with their bobble-heads!

     I am a horrible excuse for a human being. Today, I maniacally laughed at a car accident. We are talking almost to the point of vomit, too. Admittedly, I tried hard not to laugh, which then only brought on the more unhinged and repressive laughter. Tears were rolling down my face, and I almost self-asphyxiated on my saliva. It was just that frenzied.
     This morning, while driving on Kingshighway to reform school, I ended up behind a sslllooowww moving Buick. The fifty-something-year-old lady was turtling up the overpass, and I was just about to self-detonate trying to pass around her.  I finally got on the right side of her, just in time to watch her get rear-ended by a Jeep as we descended to the stop light at the bottom of the hill. She herself, managed to only bounce forward a little in her seat. However, her fifteen toy bobble-head chihuahuas were violently thrown against the back seat, and the windshield of her car. These are the same little devil dogs that were earlier taunting and jeering at me, when I was getting steaming mad stuck behind her snail of a Buick. Now they were all dead on the floorboards of the car.
     I guess it's one of those things you really have to witness for yourself to understand the rocket like distance these dogs were launched, bobbly heads and all. Compound this with the shock and awe of hearing the cars collide, and the realization that I sort of dodged a bullet, or plastic canine at least, on that one. Once I got to the campus parking lot, the absurdity of it all really set it on me. I sat in my car, and try to explain to my step-mom over the phone, that I was not in any physical or mental suffering, but merely just cracking up at a car accident.
     So the whole point of this, is that I'm really learning from my Psychology course. My sympathetic nervous system was in full swing and shock by the impact of the cars, and my parasympathetic nervous system was quick with a chaser of laughter to calm me down. I do regret now laughing and carrying on, and especially not stopping to help, but I didn't want to miss my 8am Psych test. I know I did not miss any questions pertaining to the Peripheral Nervous System today. Take that Taco Dogs!

Reflective Essay/The Garcon Disconnection

There is something quite wrong with me. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been completely infatuated with Gene Hackman. I gather it is because he starred in several movies that my father found appealing. The movie ratings system meant nothing to the man, as we would often sit side-by-side in theaters for viewings of very hard R-rated films such as “The Road Warrior” and “Sudden Impact.” Keep in mind; I was way under the age of ten, when these movies first premiered. The topic of movies is one of the few acceptable discussion points within my family. Movies are a common ground that all generations can equally participate in. My family has spent many a holiday discussing them, and frankly, avoiding all other poignant issues. This may not be the best way to relate and connect as a family, but it is how we have managed to function as a unit.  As a result, my movie knowledge is a very strong tool that I have always relied on to meld with others.   

    A few Saturdays ago, I was at a couple's house in Belleville, Illinois for dinner. Tammy and Travis have an adorable six-year-old son, named Andon. He is a blond, blue eyed, little boy who is very aware of his cuteness. Andon really chews up the scenery with his combined utilization of his always innocent, yet menacing, rascal-like persona. While praising Tammy by calling her, "my sweet, angewic mommy, who I wuv so beary much"; he will simultaneously antagonize his teenage sister, Cam-Marie, with his ability to sing a song in one note, knowing full well it annoys her. Andon is cute and lovable dressed in Superman jammies with his suave and cunning brainpower of Lex Luthor (overlooked and brilliantly performed by Gene Hackman in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies).

     Our little dinner party of nine had just finished eating, when Andon wanted to show me his new trains. He was very proud of assembling it all by himself, and explained in great detail all the intricate construction that went into his Thundering Rails train set. We sat down on the carpet together and played with the controls for a while, when I noticed he had several little red and blue plastic policemen in his little toy corner of the living room. My eleven year old son, Max, had brought over a plastic frog he had constructed out of plastic pieces. With the train, frog, and policemen, this inspired me to reenact possibly the world's best cinematic car/train chase, out of a spectacular film from the 1970's, "The French Connection". I handed Andon one of his blue policeman and suggested to him to portray the Gene Hackman character, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a short tempered, alcoholic, narcotics cop. I would then portray the Roy Scheider character, his police partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo. Our goal as plastic blue policemen would be to get the Alain Charnier/FROG 1 "bad guy" character; superbly performed by Fernando Rey, or in our case, my son's plastic frog. If all went well, six-year-old Andon and I would be responsible for stopping a $32 million French drug smuggling ring of heroin, or "white horses" as I referred to it for Andon's sake. I won't ruin the film for you by revealing the ending of the movie, or our playtime; but I feel I kept our plastic toy reenactment of this gritty police drama true to the story. Max merely rolled his eyes at us, and went back to playing his Wii game.

     The next morning, Max had asked why I don’t play with him anymore like I was playing with Andon last night. He’s right, I don’t, and honestly haven’t for a while. He’s eleven years old, and has been officially indoctrinated into that full throttle phase of pre-adolescence known as “the awkward age.” This made me realize how quickly he has grown up and grown away. He used to be that clingy little boy of which I almost needed a human sized spatula to remove him from my hip. Now, I have grown quite accustomed to proclaiming, “Rawhide!” every time his eyes start rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ in response to something I tell him. I am officially uncool now in his sinewy oculus, and am sometimes just as awkward around him, as well.

     Within our current digital world, it makes you wonder how do parents even have fun with an eleven year old nowadays. Social networking sites and video games are tools that have added a new dimension to how we experience life. However, these new technology’s can also contribute to several degrees of isolation. It is astounding when we are standing right next to one another and sending each other text messages.

     Also, tweens barely seem to exist in a department store. Sandwiched in between the colossal baby and juniors sections are usually a few racks of clothing devoted to the broad size range of Boys 8-20. There is not much choice for fostering identity when you have only five polo shirts to select from for the next several years. There appears to be a huge oversight in the untapped market of the ‘tweeners. This age range has every right to feel lost and awkward, as there is not much in the stores for them in the first place.

     As for my reply to Max’s question on why we no longer play like we used to, I told him he didn’t want to play with boring old Mom anymore. My offerings of playing UNO or Sorry together, were continually vetoed, in favor of more exciting things, once he discovered technology. It’s really okay to outgrow toys and stages of play; however, I feel it’s harder on the parents, than it is on the children.

      Even though we don’t reenact Star Wars scenes like we used to, we still do have fun together, like go on nature walks, read the same books together, and see concerts and of course, movies. I’m certainly trying to keep at bay as much of the disconnected dysfunction that I’m well acquainted with. Later that night, I popped some corn, and cuddled up with my preteen son in one of our oversized blue chairs, and let him choose between “Young Frankenstein” and “The Poseidon Adventure”. And yes, Gene Hackman has prominent roles in both films.

The gene pool is winning, and the herd is thinning.

     Today, I noticed our psychology class was a couple of quarts low. In fact, all of my classroom were more on the half-full cell side. Maybe overcrowded institutions eventually correct themselves? Or you just switch from one institution to another? I do wonder what the biscuits and gravy would be like in the St. Louis County Jail... hmmm? All the same, it's a little easier to maneuver through the usual suspects in the hallways.
     Our Comp II class had to turn in our reflective essays today. Our professor read several, and halfway through reading mine, managed to flip out on student for screwing around with her cell phone. I mean fa-lipped out all Strother Martin (the Captain character from Cool Hand Luke) style, by marking her absent, calling her rude, and made her spend a night the box. Man, I liked my professor before, but I love her now. No way I want to piss her off though. I've seen what happens when we have failure to communicate.

Marilyn Chambers is NOT my former algebra teacher.

    Today, I pulled the mother of all "Rickyisms." If you are not familiar with "Rickyisms" then your reform school assignment is watch the following clip and fall madly in love with a Canadian television show, called Trailer Park Boys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3QHoqfhX8 There is not much more in the world that I dearly love than this show. However, for those who have hang ups on swear words, it may not be for you.
     Anyhow, while discussing graphing in my Algebra class today, my professor had asked who my instructor was last semester. Now, I don't know if it was because I left all my between class snacks at home, and hadn't eaten anything all day aside from a squeezy tube of cherry yogurt. I don't know if I was just "excited" by all the "hot and lusty" terminology that is associated with algebraic graphing; i.e., x and y intercepts, slopes, rise over run, etc. Rawr! All I do know is that I will be in Reform School for a very long time, as my reply was not Marilyn Hewes, but Marilyn Chambers. Yes, that would be 1970's porn queen Marilyn Chambers of "Behind the Green Door" fame. I said this, out loud, in a classroom, of thirty people, and then immediately turned eighty-five shades of scarlet. My professor and a handful of the older students clearly knew who she was, judging by the reactions. I'm sure the youngin's of the class have at least googled her by now, and I'm sure I will go down in the annals as "that porno lady," or some other sophomoric label... and I'm still just a freshman. 

Weekend furlough affects your school daze

Tuesday was, by far, the hardest day of my reform school process. My "church" buddies and I had a weekend "tent revival" with Iggy Pop in Chicago. He was fantastic preachin' to the choir about us Passengers experiencing Some Weird Sin Until Wrong Feels Right. I think we collectively clocked in about ten hours of sleep over a 72 hour period. Got in around 'round midnight on Monday, and had to be up for stateville at 530, still hearing, and thinking, the White Noise of it all.  Physically being there was the best I could do. I achieved absolutely no higher learning with the audiological and neurological damage from this previous weekend's Airborne Toxic Event. Boyo, where is that Murray Siskind when I need him? That's the kind of lecturer I should seek out for education after a long weekend. I wandered the halls, and I sat at desks, and prayed to Fortuna that she would spin me through The Confederacy of Dunces that are currently discussing the Civil War in my History class. She was gracious, and wheeled me through my Algebra quiz with absolutely no alpha, theta, or or beta brainwaves to speak of.  Perhaps, I should celebrate that Ball's Bluff victory battle on my brain, and make an occasional cheese dip? Ignatius would be ever so proud.
     Due to that matted right eye of my son, school was not attended by either of us, today. My continual reformation awaits me on next Tuesday.