On Love - Part One

I really should stop mocking adults who enjoy Disney cartoons. If smoking and drinking are legal (and marijuana and heroin are almost legal), then who's to say that it's wrong to be hooked on cans of syrupy, song-filled side characters with foreign accents and overly handsome, baritone heroes? Romance is equal in its cost and potential for destruction when compared to any other drug. I'm just a little miffed that nobody bothered to give me the straight dope.

Cigarettes were once billed as being healthy. Any current film that takes up the banner in the war on tobacco will have a black and white clip from the 1950s showing a white-coated actor playing a doctor who will suck on a fag, flash a mouth full of teeth and describe how his low-tar cigarette is good for him. Wine makers try to convince us that sour grapes not only help to embarrass us at parties but can help us live longer to apologize for the damage. Marijuana kills brain cells, heroin will just plain kill you, but good ol' romance is responsible for a litany of destruction: divorce, depression, murder, suicide, STDs, war and of course, getting addicted to other drugs. If somebody had just simply told me that "falling in love" was a type of physio-psychological-chemical dependence, things would have been a lot easier.

Now it was true I didn't ask or even if I had or did, I probably wouldn't have gotten the answer that I wanted. My parents never gave any information even remotely close to what it was all about. I knew if your parents smoked, you'd probably smoke; but on this matter, I could never fathom the random musings of God that put my parents together. Luckily around the time I was graduating, my father did check up on me. He asked, "So you know about sex, right? They taught you in school?" I nodded. "Good." He then joined into a nodding which was tinged with an assuring hue.

The best part about love as a drug is its you still get a kick out of it even when it goes bad. You can remember the funniest time you got high, but you can't remember anything after being completely blotto. I can however, remember every time I've been turned down. There is always that moment, the twist, the increasing pitch of the faltering airplane propeller, the turn of the screw in the stomach, the forming of the 'o' on the lips. Hours, days and possibly weeks later, I am replaying the tragicomedy of it before my friends. I'll remember each break-up and at various times afterwards I'll forget the bad parts and remember the good, cheerfully and blissfully bringing the glass/bong/pipe/needle towards me again.

The next time I'm at the local DVD pusher, I'll probably run into a colleague, we'll probably drone on about work and then they will gush at having found "The Little Mermaid". I'll nod, smirk, keep my mouth shut, cast my eyes downward and also think wistfully about a fish story.

On Pride

Why do we work? Why do we force ourselves to get up in the mornings, when our bodies tell us otherwise, when we would rather be fogging about how the head of the franchise barista wound up on that advert on the side of the bus that steamed past as you stood there on the freezing pond about two blocks behind your old house when you were eight? Some will grimly quip, "It's for our children". Others will happily chirp, "To sustain the habits one has from not having children". Belonging to the second camp, I am lusciously afforded the luxury of considering an answer.

Or not. Maybe instead I'll surf the net again. Drown in the thirst for the new. Stock up on my social stalking. Oh would you look at the time. I really should copy and paste and change all the names, him's and her's for that kid's reference letter. Perhaps take a look at one of my projects. I've made an online calendar. I suppose I should fill it in now too. Drat, was that the sound of the bell? Am I late for class? My back hurts. These kids are the dumb ones. No wait, I shouldn't say that. Sigh. What is that piece of garbage on the floor? I don't get paid to clean up this mess. I get paid to teach. Hand out some worksheets now. I forgot to correct that typo from last year. I really should try to get some marking done after school. I'm so tired I can't focus. I wonder if anyone replied to my blog. Let's have a look.

That doesn't seem right at all. But neither does having your boss tell you that you're not doing a good job. And then having your other boss tell you that you are. I should have just walked out of there. I should have stopped my active listening. I'm going to quit. I really am. I really should. I'm going to make a big fuss of it all by writing an e-mail or maybe even a letter; when I'm gone, they'll be sorry. But I can't really quit because that would be quitting. I can't let anyone down because they would never let me down. Well would you look at that? That student did much better on this than he did last time. I probably had nothing to do with it, but I think I did.