What Happened to Mr. K-Mart?

Today my mom asked, "What happened to my high school son? When I threatened to hide all your clothes and buy you designer jeans and izod shirts you said you'd go to school in your underwear, Mr. K-mart." Mom is right, my general attitude toward clothing was a shrug of the shoulders if not an outright hostility to looking presentable. My senior superlative was, "Biggest Bum Dresser." Is it any wonder that I only had two girlfriends in high school?

College wasn't much better as far as fashion went. I at least decided to wear shirts that fit, but most of the time you'd see me in relaxed fit jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. After my junior year, it was rare for me to be seen without a baseball cap. That was my fashion statement, a backward hat. Luckily, most college kids dress like they fell off the back of a Good Will truck, so I wasn't too terribly out of place. My hostility to fashion had turned to indifference.

The party ended. I grew up and got an adult job teaching. I resigned myself to having to wear button ups for work. I dutifully put on dockers and large billowy shirts that could double as sail on a windy day. My shoes came in brown and black, mostly plastic and compressed cow scraps. Sometimes I polished them and my roommate Mark was nice enough not to ask me why I bothered with that farce. He was fairly non-judgmental for a guy with a good sense of personal style, and he endured my sartorial jabs when I maligned boating shoes without socks.

Like most of my hobbies, my interest in fashion started with an idle thought. I told myself I was going to improve my wardrobe with a nice pair of shoes, a new suit, and a watch. It was a New Year's Goal. It started with a new pair of shoes, a pair of 300 dollar Magnanni cap toe Oxfords. As it turned out, I had some good instincts about shoes, but I also had a lot of advice from Mark and my other friend Ben. I still pester the two of them for feedback on clothes and shoes.

From there it snowballed. I bought a pair of Sperrys which my students obsessed over. I am a believer in boating shoes without socks now.

Good will was kind enough to provide these Cole Haans for 12 bucks. I stuck them in the freezer, got them resoled, and they're a nice pair of cap toes for the price.

Eventually, it got to this level. This isn't including the three other pairs of shoes I've bought since this picture was taken.

At the moment, I have a pretty fierce interest in clothing and shoes. I taught myself how to dress and learned what looks good and what doesn't. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than how how I used to dress? Yes, by leaps and bounds. 

During this process, I've started to develop my own personal sense of style, something beyond hooded sweatshirts and baseball caps. Is it vain to take this much interest in how you look? Of course it is, but I make no apologies for it. I've discovered a lot of advantages to taking an interest in how you dress and I'll focus my next blog post on why it's worth it. 

Where are you from?

For as long as I can remember, I've had strangers ask me about my ethnic background. Some do this in a rather pointed fashion. Others ask in a round about way. The other night I was at a Cardinals game and the man sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder. The following conversation ensued. 

Man: Do you speak Mandarin?

Me: No (I turn away)

A few minutes go by. 

Man: Are you sure you don't speak Mandarin?

Me: Pretty sure.

Man: Oh... So where are you from?

Me: Kansas City. 

Man: Where are your parents from?

Me: Chicago. 

I understood what he was asking, but I'll be damned if I was going to satisfy his curiosity. It's been a while since I've been asked these sorts of questions. It happened more in small town Kirksville than it does in St. Louis. From strangers, I find the inquiry rude and invasive. I suppose, what I find offensive about it is that the guy just wants to find a label for me, and with that label, whatever other assumptions he has. 

Most of the time, I don't think of myself as Asian or Korean. It's not part of my identity and it holds little value to me. It's something I stick on a census form. Perhaps one of the reasons I find the ethnic background question from strangers so off-putting is because it's asking me to assume an identity that I don't identify with. I don't mind answering the ethnicity question when asked by friends, because they already know me. They aren't seeking another label. It's just something that naturally comes up. 

I grew up in overwhelmingly white communities raised by white parents and I am happy with my upbringing. The values of hard work, integrity, and curiosity were instilled in me by my parents. My love of writing was nurtured by many great English teachers. My love of reading comes from my mom. My politic beliefs grew first from my Dad and eventually changed in college much to his chagrin. Those characteristics and traits define me. I own them. 

This is not to say that ethnicity is the only sort of label people can place on you. Gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, language spoken, and religion are all used to define others wrongfully. However, ethnicity is the label I've had the most experience dealing with, so it's what I decided to write about tonight. 

Where I almost Die While Driving to See My Parents

When I think road rage, I think about angry drivers shooting people with crossbows because they got cut off. It sounds absurd, but it's happened. I'm not to the point where I'm crossbowing people in the face quite yet, but I do have a fairly serious case of road annoyance. Road annoyance is caused by bad driving. For example, always driving in the left hand lane draws my ire, as well as cars constantly changing speeds. Leap frog is best left for the playground, not the hwy. People who don't signal when changing lanes or keep their brights on all the time deserve a special circle in hell. It's even worse when you are driving with someone who doesn't know the rules of the road and you feel like you need to mouth apologies to every car you pass. 

Until such a time that America invests in some heavy duty public transit, I'm just going to have to deal with bad driving and being annoyed from time to time. I suppose I should be happy that I'm capable of being annoyed right now. Had my day gone slightly differently, I might be lying in a hospital bed or dead in some morgue. 

I'm not ready to be dead quite yet. There are a lot of things I want to do like change the world for the better or finish one of those roadside burger challenges and get my picture on the wall. God help me if I go to my grave without one of those two things happening. 

Currently I'm visiting my parents who live about 400 miles away. The trip from St. Louis to Little Rock is a long and tedious one. It's one I've made a number of times and most of these drives are uneventful. The roads are straight and eventually it's all very flat. I listen to my mp3 player for the most part. Actually, most of the time I'm singing along with my mp3 player and anyone who tells you they don't sing in the car is a liar and a scoundrel. 

I was a few hours into my trip and for the 100th time that day, I started to pass another car. I wasn't thinking much of it. Unlike my transmission, passing cars is mostly automatic. For whatever reason, the car in the right hand lane neglected to check his blind spot and started to merge into my car just as I was right next to him. 

Remembering that two objects cannot occupy the same time and space, I decided to avoid being a high school physics equation. I hit the brakes, but too hard and inadvertently became a different physics equation because objects in motion tend to stay in motion.  The back of my car started fishtailing all over the hwy. I corrected (overcorrected) and corrected again. It couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but I managed to subdue my car and avoid injury. I neither hit the shoulder or hit another car. 

When it was all said and done, I was more shaken up than anything, not so much road rage, or even road annoyance, but more road oh-my-god-did-I-really-almost-die-there. The rest of my drive was uneventful, but I can definitely see why someone would keep a crossbow in the front seat with them. 

The Kiln and Kin are Cold

Language is not a perfect puzzle piece to fit neatly into the jigsaw of someone else's head, but a cracked pottery fragment held in place by glue and spit, the seal by no means seamless. But it's that very imprecision where air and water leak through that allow for language to be playful, to be fun, to be misunderstood. Through these many imperfect fits, I can create humor, juxtapose the sacred and profane, and create evocative imagery in the minds and hearts of others.

Perhaps I think too much of myself, but I also happen to think the world of words.

Yet for as much as I admire language, it fails me. For me, words evaporate when I try to express feelings or emotions. I feel perhaps more than some and perhaps less than others, but my ability to shape these feelings into words is not always successful.

I suppose this is a long and meandering way to introduce the fact that I've been thinking about my brother a lot. People keep asking me how I'm doing in the wake of his death. They don't say that of course. They just ask how I am and give a meaningful look. More often than not I shrug my shoulders. It's not that I don't want to have the conversation, nor do I want people to stop asking, but I don't have an answer beyond body language most of the time.

There are a lot of things I could say about my brother. I could talk about the person he was. I could talk about the memories I have. I could talk about the way he's frozen in time to me. I could talk about his death. I could talk about the fact that I don't have the faith or belief in an afterlife. I could talk about the finality of things and how cold that is.

I think I've gotten caught up in a contradiction. I know that language is imperfect, that expressing emotions and feelings will never be a precise science, metered out in grams and liters. I know that language is a cracked vessel, but I want my words to be a flawless vase. And rather than fire up the kiln and produce any words, the hearth lies cold.

This is who I am for the most part, words left unsaid, with feelings rarely given form. I know the lesson. I can see the moral, but I open the mouth to speak and find only the coldness of clay.

Well, that was Awkward

For the most part, I function well in social settings, but there’s still a large part of my brain dedicated to making things more awkward than they need to be. Anytime I’m caught off guard, the awkward portion of my frontal lobe signals to release awkward hormones into my bloodstream and they cause me to do stupid things like speak or not speak, whichever would be more socially crippling. Or, better yet, I’ll just say, “Awkward,” without any further explanation.

Brain, we’ve been doing this for 27 years. If you’ll excuse the pun, let’s be a team and keep our best interests in mind. You don’t force me to do anything stupid, and I promise to listen to some classical music and drink some pomegranate juice. By God, I can and will stab you with a q-tip if you cross me. Don’t tell me that I’ll just perforate an eardrum because I ALREADY KNOW THAT!

I guess the only real way I can threaten my brain with any lasting violence would involve alcohol or a traumatic brain injury. My goal is to reduce the amount of awkward moments in my life and neither of those conditions seem conducive for helping my cause in the long run.

I only bring this subject up because tonight at Easter dinner  I managed to say something incredibly awkward and nothing needed to be said at the moment. I could have simply let the comment go and pretended that nothing happened. NOPE. Mouth opens, and before I knew it, I had scrolled through the rolodex of awkward reactions and loaded the best one into the system. I wonder if my life is a sitcom where I simply have perfect comedic timing for an unseen studio audience. An unseen studio audience who also happens to hate me or enjoys seeing the protagonist bumble his way through life. If this is true, I am owed so many royalties.

I think the problem is that not a lot of things do catch me offguard, but when something does, it can really stagger me. I am not going to explain how I was awkward tonight, at least not on the internets. If you’re curious, I will tell you in person and you can laugh at me or if you’re nice, commiserate. Either are acceptable at this point.

About The Previous Posts

I probably should have explained the previous posts. Basically, it's a continuation from Twitter. If someone favorited my 3000th tweet, I took a few minutes to write a few musings about them... even if that person was someone's dog.

In other news, I've decided to try and get some of my writing published on online blogs and websites. What doesn't get accepted (probably a lot) will eventually make it's way here. I'll also keep writing things here of course, but anything that looks more polished was probably a rejected piece. That'll happen too.

Anne

Cont. from Twitter:

It's taken me a while to write this because there isn't a whole lot I can write that you don't already know, and the last thing I want to do is rehash old news. So perhaps this is new, perhaps it isn't. I don't know about you, but one of the things that I assume is that we're going to be friends for a while. I'm not saying we should make matching friendship bracelets at summer camp and swear to stay in touch once school starts. I don't think our friendship needs that type of reinforcement. We've remained friends despite changes in proximity, relationship status, and employment. Sure there are lulls from time to time, but the lulls (not lols) have never been an indicator of a new normal.

So, I guess I more or less assume that you're going to be around in my life for the foreseeable future, making corny jokes, calling me on my bullshit, and in general just being a good friend. I can't say that about every person who enters my life. (Even my parole office Barry had to leave after five years.) While I value the friendships I have and I do my best to maintain them, circumstance doesn't always make it possible to stay in touch. Like tectonic plates or the third Fast and Furious movie, people drift.

I've always felt as if I've known you for a long time, and I guess what I haven't consciously realized is that feeling stretches both into the past and into the future.

Caroline

Cont. from Twitter:

A former student, kind of. Copeland was in charge of your English education, and while I stepped in to teach on occasion, I seem to know you better from your tweets and identity as a nerdfighter. First and foremost, I should apologize for the lack of letter. My bad. My goal is to write and send it before you leave England. I think I can do it. Never underestimate the power of procrastination. I always was and still am a champion procrastinator. Though in reality, I like to think that I'm just extremely good at time estimation. I understand that some people take adderall to focus their mind. I prefer the incentive that only a looming deadline can provide.

Overall, you seem to have your head on your shoulders, figuratively of course. The literal compliment of having your head on your shoulders fell out of the common vernacular after the French Revolution.

I think the best compliment I can give you is that I don't have any particular advice for you. As a teacher, a large chunk of my job consists of doling out needed (but sometimes not wanted) advice. You on the other hand, I think you'll continue to do just fine without any direct intercession on my part. If you are in need of feedback, be mindful that I don't hear direct prayers (yet), but I will respond to a tweet. Please limit any crisis  to something that can be solved in 140 characters or less.

Sadye

Again, cont. from Twitter:

So far, you're the only Sadye I've ever known. My first associations with you are of course with the Index. I don’t think we had any classes together at Truman, and if I am wrong in this assumption, then feel free to chastise my tardy memory.

You seem to manage your online identity well, with neither Twitter nor Facebook providing any blackmail worthy material. This is good in case you have aspirations of running for congress at any point in your life.

I’m going to make an inference about you based entirely on your career choice and hobby of running. Call it practice for my budding career as a cold-reading psychic. I imagine that you enjoy the world of observable action, measurable distance and tangible results. You have an eye for detail; I could move one object on your desk and the universe wouldn’t feel right until it was back in its place.

What’s fun about this is that I have no idea if any of my conceptions of you are correct, but it’s not always common that we get a chance to see ourselves through the eyes of an acquaintance. My own personal narcissism is always open to perceptions on my person. One, because I’ve been told I’m hard to read and if I’m hard to read, then what do people see? Two, because of the aforementioned narcissism.

Penelope

Cont. From Twitter. 

You are a dog. And on top of all that, a dog I follow and talk to on twitter. I’m not sure our association could be any more ridiculous. While I am well aware that you are actually unable to tweet, lacking opposable thumbs or paw/nose dexterity to accomplish such a task, I like to imagine you capable of such a feat. Most of the time, I find people creating facebook or twitter accounts for their pets profoundly annoying, but there’s a nice chord of irreverent, and neurotic here. It’s mostly neurotic because multiple people have access to the twitter: Nate, Catherine, possibly Anne. Still, were you able to articulate your innermost thoughts, twitter would be the perfect medium given a dog’s minimal attention span. 

Matt

Cont. from Twitter

The first time I met you, you were dressed up as Raoul Duke (Hunter S Thompson). This is not because you have some strange obsession with the man-- or perhaps you do and I am unaware-- but because it was Halloween and that's what people do, dress up as other people who in this case was dressing up as another person so to speak. As the years of our association have gone by, my baseline image of you always tends to return to that character. I am not strictly speaking a primacy-only person, but for you and a several other people, primacy is what I'm stuck with. In this case, my mental concept of you doesn't age, but at times it's probably a little ridiculous. Then again, who's to say that life isn't ridiculous?

Tense

I've been trying to reflect and write a little bit about my brother and his passing, but the experience has been difficult. The issue that has come up the most has been what tense do I use to describe him? I think that's what has bothered me the most about the entire event is that my brother is stuck at 21. He will always be 21. He'll never get to be more than 21. And as I write about him, the tendency is to use past tense to describe him, and I don't want to write in the past tense. I want to write in the present and the future. I'm not saying he deserves to be preserved in the present tense for now and until the end of time, but it absolutely kills me to write, "My brother was..." and "My brother had been..."

There's no future in either of those statements.

On Nights Like This

One of the things that Winter rarely affords is the ability to sit outside with a beer and forget about the state of one's life. I'm here in the moment. The temperature is perfect and with the exception of a steady hum of distant traffic or the rustling of tree branches in the breeze, it's quiet. 

I could use this time to ponder the state of my life, to reflect on these last few months, but instead I simply choose to be. Why ruin any of this with worry?

I don't remember most conversations I've had with my father, but I remember the general tone of them, thoughtful and appreciative. One of the things he would always remark about while sitting outside was how beautiful the trees would look silhouetted in the darkness-- inky outlines behind an intensely blue-black sky. A form without any texture. 

Ten Years Isn't Long Enough

Like most general life events, high school becomes a memory with vague boundaries. You remember the activities you participated in, some of your favorite teachers, and a funny story or two. But for the most part, the day to day affairs have drifted out of your memory and settled onto the pages of the yearbook where people you only now know through Facebook recount unfamiliar stories involving themselves and someone who shares your name. 

Time has passed. You went to college, got an education, and entered the workforce. Or maybe you didn't. Maybe you've spent the last five to ten years just working. Marriage, kids, possibly divorce? It doesn't much matter how you came to the future, all that matters is that you're here. 

At one point or other, you'll find yourself invited to a high school reunion. Nobody's forcing you to go, but 10 years isn't enough time to really wax nostalgic about your adolescence. Facebook has robbed your sense of morbid curiosity about the others because most everyone you went to school with is also living a fairly normal life. 

Out of boredom, you decide to have your own high school reunion from the comfort of your living room. You scroll though the profiles of people you haven't spoken to in nearly a decade. What you find is that you don't really need these people in your life, nor do you want to reconnect. 

Still, you leave them in your friend's list on the off chance that one day through the many years of time and change that you do have something to say to them. Thankfully, this can be said through an online message, and not at a high school reunion. 

Tactile Response

"Would you rather be blind or deaf?" is the typical dichotomy that people are asked to ponder. Most people have a ready response, but upon reflection, I don't worry about being blind or deaf. I'd be more upset about losing my sense of touch. Sure, you wouldn't be able to feel pain, but pain is a good thing. It helps you monitor injuries and brings attention to the fact that your hand is resting on the stove. Secondly, say goodbye to your sex life. At this point, wouldn't you rather be blind or deaf opposed to not being able to feel anything?


For me though, I place a high importance on my sense of touch for a number of other reasons. Yes to the aforementioned ones, but also because I have always had a strong tactile response. I like to feel the heft and texture of the world. Nothing beats running your hand along a picket fence or old brick buildings. If I can hold it, I can understand it. During the geology unit of Outdoor School, I was always able to tell the difference between minerals simply by the weight in my hands. That's not a difficult trick, but I trusted the feel of it over what I could see. 


As a child, I climbed trees. I fell out of trees too, but that didn't stop me from shimmying up trunks and branches. The wind is different 20 and 30 feet in the air and there's nothing quite like the feel of rough bark against your cheek as you cling to your wooden lifeline that sways lazily in the breeze. 


Maybe my personal response to the tactile explains my sensitivity to other people touching me. If I'm close to someone, then physical contact isn't an issue. In those cases, I enjoy the proximity and overlapping boundaries. By all means, violate my personal space. However, for most casual acquaintances, I'm much more comfortable maintaining some physical distance. 

I'm reminded of J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye where he writes: 

...she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we won't quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

Dear 18 Year Old Me

Dear 18 Year Old Me,

You've got your whole life ahead of you and let me reassure you that your life is going to turn out just fine. Spoiler Alert, at the very least, you'll live to see 27. In the mean time, you end up passing college, making some lifelong friends and creating many memories. You'll get a job with decent pay and you don't have to move back in with Mom and Dad. 

But, 18 Year Old Me, there are some things I really need to tell you, things that are going to make your experience in college and in life much more bearable. Are you still with me? Try not to think about the paradox of the situation too much and just soak up some good advice. 

First and foremost, buy some clothes that fit. Better yet, since Mom and Dad are still footing most of your bills, get them to buy you some clothes that fit. You wear a 32/33 and 15 and 1/2 dress shirt. You'll be tempted to buy the regular cut shirt. Don't! It's a trick. You aren't shaped like a box, so buy the fitted or slim fit shirts. While you're at, get a few polos and throw out any shirts that are large or above. Also, slim or straight cut jeans and khakis all the way. I'm not even going to go into the shoes you are wearing. That's a hopeless case for the moment. You'll learn that lesson the hard way. 

You might be wondering why I chose to nitpick your fashion sense first. Well, it's damned important. I know you just won the senior superlative award for biggest bum dresser, but you're going to be going to college soon and it's time to dress in a manner that might get you a girlfriend at some point. 

While we're on the subject of girlfriends, can I tell you that you are surrounded by women in college? Don't take it for granted. After college, meeting other people is not as easy. Yes, some of these women aren't your type, others won't want anything to do with you, but you have a decent enough personality and looks that somebody will find you attractive. Also, hit the gym. Seriously. Don't roid rage out on me, but go to the rec center at least three times a week. You'll look better, feel better, and you might also meet women. 

Most everything else, you should probably learn on your own. There's value in experiencing some lessons firsthand, and I don't want to shelter you from that. However, I did want to mention that you are lactose intolerant. Stop drinking milk. Ice cream too. Cheese is fine though. The future is not a complete horror. 

If you have questions or you feel like you're second guessing yourself during the next 10 years, that's fine. Try not to worry too much. You'll transition into adulthood, but not without a few damaging experiences. If life feels like it's going off the rails, it probably is. Some parts of your life are really going to suck, but you'll learn from it and come out a better person in the end. (Most of your life will be really good by the way.) Hopefully, if you follow any of my advice, you'll at least face these trials and tribulations dressed as a presentable adult, and not as a potato sack of fashion woe.  

PS Don't ever start playing World of Warcraft. 

"The chocolate moonpie was a let down."

Again, the challenge is to write a short story in an hour using someone else's sentence somewhere in the narrative. This one took 47 minutes to write and the sentence was, "The chocolate moonpie was a let down."

There was a decency to the system even if Allen had rarely done the decent thing his entire damn life. Sure, there were moments during childhood when without being asked, he’d hug his mom or feed the dog, but those were decent actions outside the age of true discretion. As he grew older and understood the consequences of his actions, doing the decent thing and doing the thing that would benefit him were not so much Venn diagram comparisons, but two separate circles.

But the system was decent, not good, or just, or right, but decent at least. It was decent enough to provide Allen with a last meal. As a lifelong diabetic, Allen had been scrupulous with his diet, in the same way he had been scrupulous with his murders. Everything was timed, regimented, and precise.

He probably would have gone on like this, eating his carefully calibrated diet and executing his carefully calibrated murders were it not for one of his victims getting away. He had been driving away from the victim’s house at exactly 2:21 A.M. His exit had been timed to hit every green light. What he hadn’t counted on was a drunk driver smashing into his van. The rear door popped open and out spilled a body mummified in duct-tape.

The investigation was sloppy; Allen disliked that for professional reasons, but it didn’t take a whole lot of work to piece together that Allen had been behind a dozen or so disappearances in the past five years. The trial was swift, and the execution a forgone conclusion.

Allen spent most of his days thinking not about reprieves or remorse or the afterlife, but what he was going to eat for his last meal. He was finally completely free of consequences, something only a death sentence could give him. For him, a perfect murder.

The idea for his last meal was absurd, but satisfied him in more than benign way. In outside world, chocolate moonpies were sugary treats used to placate children, but in prison, moonpies were currency. Sexual favors, weapons, and assaults could all be traded in the moonpie market. Allen had a number of them stashed away in his bunk for all three purposes. He had never eaten one of course, had rarely eaten anything with concentrated sugar levels at all, but as a last meal request, it seemed fitting.

The day of his execution came like any other day. The sun didn’t exactly rise, but the automated lights came up. The night before he had eaten his last meal and had slept exactly 7.5 hours as he had done for the last 32 years. Not even death breathing down his collar could deviate habit and biology. As Allen walked into the execution chamber, he could see a packed theater for his final performance. Most of the faces were stony gargoyles, but a few of them were weeping rain.

The warden walked over to Allen, and asked if he had any last words. These people had come for closure and who was Allen not to oblige them this one last request?

Standing up straight, hands held together in mock prayer from the handcuffs that bolted his arms and feet together, Allen turned to address the crowd. They leaned forward, clenched their jaws and waited for the murderer of their love, of their hope, of their reason to breathe to say his final words.

Allen cleared his throat, smiled and said, "The chocolate moonpie was a let down."

"Does that count as a sentence"

This is another example of a one hour story challenge where I try to write a story in an hour using a sentence suggested by another person. The sentence was, "Does that count as a sentence" as suggested by a friend. The story is a bit rough, but such are the constraints of time.

“Does that count as a sentence?” she asked me. I was hunched over a notebook, and up until a moment ago had been furiously diagramming sentence trees in French. The girl with the chocolate braids wasn’t exactly sitting in the chair across from me. Perching would be a more accurate description.

“Come again?” I said.

She didn’t repeat herself, choosing instead to reach across the table to take away my paper. She leaned on an elbow, picked up my pen and added a few marks of her own. After a moment she stuck the pen behind her ear and said, “Yeah, I was right. I couldn’t be sure reading your paper upside down, but number three is definitely not a sentence.”

“I suppose you speak French then.”

“No, but my mom’s the professor, and I run all the copies for her. You stare at an answer key long enough and you’re bound to memorize something, even if you don’t understand it.”

Well that explained a few things. Not only was she a townie, but a professor’s kid. Her presumption to correct my work, the disregard for personal space, and the faint smell of Amish soap all corroborated what she said. Not like I had any reason to doubt her. She was a deadringer for Dr. Shep, younger obviously, and without the greying hair or glasses. Still, I liked her brazen approach, and if it helped me do better in French, then who was I to complain?

From time to time during the semester, I’d see Dr. Shep’s daughter in the dorm. I wasn’t even sure if she lived on my floor, let alone the dorm itself, but I never saw her anywhere else on campus. Our conversations deviated more and more from homework to  music, life, and philosophy. Long after quiet hours had gone into effect, we’d be chatting at the study table.

As the semester drew to a close, I began seeing less and less of her, until finally three weeks went by without a sighting. I was concerned. Nobody else seemed to know who she was and when I tried looking her up on Facebook, I couldn’t find a profile. Finally, I decided to ask Dr. Shep.
I had just finished my final and handed my paper in when I asked a question I hoped wasn’t too loaded with intention. “So, where’s your daughter been? I haven’t seen her around recently.”
Dr. Shep’s eyes, narrowed. She took my paper and placed it in a separate pile away from the other tests, as if my responses were diseased and could infect the whole class.
“If you’re talking about Jenny, she’s been at home.”
“Oh,” I said lamely. “Is she sick?”
“No, but she is in high school and we caught her breaking curfew. Now, is there something I can help you with? Better yet, is there something you can help me with?”
I opened my mouth to explain, but nothing sensible came out. I sputtered a few words about her helping me with homework and I’m pretty sure I could hear an audible gnashing of the teeth when I mentioned she was in my dorm.
“That’ll be all, Mr. Jackson.”
The room suddenly felt small and cramped. I left holding my stomach and mumbling apologies, in English, not French.
When grades finally came out, I saw that Dr. Shep had given me a D. It’s not the grade I earned, but somehow, it still felt like the grade I deserved.