Substitute (Part 2 of 2)

I Can See Better Through the Fog is a storytelling podcast series in the vein of This American Life and the Moth. It tells the ongoing story of an echo boomer’s quarter life crises, featuring life, art, love, and San Francisco. Press the play button below to hear an audio recording of this latest entry. If it doesn’t work, you may need the latest version of flash software. (click here to download). Another troubleshooting tip would be to go directly to the soundcloud website. Sit back and let your ears do the work. The text version of this entry is provided beneath the list of selected tracks.

Runtime: 5 minutes and 39 seconds.

Selected tracks: Explosions in the Sky “Be Comfortable, Creature” and Lykke Li “Love Out of Lust”

The kids filed back into the classroom after recess. Mr. Garza plopped into a chair in the reading corner. Connie herded the kids over to the rug outstretched before the stoned substitute. If I wasn’t so emotionally sensitive to the Mary Jane, I might have considered asking Garza about his stash. Anything to cool my angst was a welcome idea.

“Now I’m going to recite to you a poem by a far out writer named Langston Hughes,” Garza announced. “This beautiful piece is called ‘April Rain Song’.” The kids shifted around on the rug, their energy from recess not yet expelled. “Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk. The rain makes running pools in the gutter. The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night. And I love the rain.”

Mr. Allen’s class now lay still and silent, soothed by Mr. Garza’s lyrical recitation. All I wanted was to let the tears rain down for what I had lost, but they would not come. My stoicism relegated my healing process to the inside.

Garza continued to pique the kids’ imaginations by reading a chapter from Percy Jackson in which Mr. Allen had left off. With the students’ attentions parlayed, Connie prepared a lesson on atoms and static charges. In the middle of her preparation, a well dressed Asian woman in her late 50s entered the classroom. It was Connie’s professor, there to observe her teaching. She bore pearl earrings, a short bob of black hair, trim, stylish glasses, and mulato leather boots that anchored just below her knee caps. Post arrival and greeting, the professor clomped to the back corner of the room and set up shop. She carefully pulled a macbook from her tote and placed it on the desk before her.

Connie walked over to the reading corner and caught Garza’s eye. He finished the last paragraph he was on and handed the class back over to her. “You remember Monday when Mr. Allen rubbed balloons on your heads and your hairs stood on end?” Connie recalled. The class gave an ecstatic confirmation. “Well, we’re going to learn why that happened today.” The professor was now typing away robotically at her macbook.

At the kids’ desks were tiny marshmallows atop paper plates. Drawn on each marshmallow was one of three symbols: a negative sign, positive sign, or a zero. “Everything, everywhere is made out of something called an atom,” Connie explained. She stood at the bow of the classroom, beside a projected drawing of an atom and its charged particles. “You, me, this table, a dog, a lion, everything. We’re all made from tons of atoms so small we can’t even see them with just our eyes. And each atom has a couple things inside them. They’re called protons, neutrons, and electrons.”

Connie continued her lesson until the charges in atoms and the attractions between them were sufficiently explained. She then set the kids on an activity of building their own atoms with the marshmallows provided.

“What do two neutrons do again?” a student named George asked me. “They lay beside each other, side by side. They coincide, but they don’t stick together,” I answered. George proudly responded “And protons are attracted to electrons!” “Right,” I commended him. “And two protons or two electrons hate one another. They repel!” George had it right. “Does everything always have the same charge?” he asked. I pondered his questioned for a moment. “No. Not always. Some charges can change under certain circumstances. Luck of the draw sometimes. But that’s life.” George looked on at me confused. He was too young to fathom and accept all of this world’s complexities.

Substitute Part 1

I Can See Better Through the Fog is a storytelling podcast series in the vein of This American Life and the Moth. It tells the ongoing story of an echo boomer’s quarter life crises, featuring life, art, love, and San Francisco. Press the play button below to hear an audio recording of this latest entry. If it doesn’t work, you may need the latest version of flash software. (click here to download). Another troubleshooting tip would be to go directly to the soundcloud website. Sit back and let your ears do the work. The text version of this entry is provided beneath the list of selected tracks.

Runtime: 7 minutes and 10 seconds.

Selected tracks: Peter Bjorn & John “Eyes” and “Young Folks”, and Lykke Li “Sadness is a Blessing”

Through the small window on the classroom door, Connie, Mr. Allen’s student teacher, saw me approaching. Her look telegraphed a statement of relief that resembled “Boy, am I glad to see you!” She normally acted as a volunteer, a requirement to receive her teaching credential. But today she was taking over for an absent Mr. Allen. “You’re in for an interesting day,” Connie warned as I walked in.

The class was more fidgety and talkative than usual. From what little interaction I’d had in the past with Connie, I had at least partial confidence that she was ready to take the reins from Mr. Allen. Naturally the kids would not remain at their tamest without their trusted conductor at the helm.

At the far side of the room I noticed an older man. He looked like a cross breed of Tommy Chong and Santa Claus: plump frame, light brown skin, white beard, thinning, unkept white hair, and a seasoned stoner’s eyes. As I settled at the back of the room, the man got up and introduced himself to me. “Hey man. I’m Mr. Garza.” He was the hired substitute. He put his hand out, curled, to meet my own. Instead of meeting my right hand with the same, he oddly chose his left to shake. It seemed so natural a response for him that I questioned if it was his normal greeting.

Connie, meanwhile, struggled to keep the class focused and on task during a unit on pronouns. Many students I’d never taken to be difficulties were now reclusive. I did my best to reinforce Connie’s discipline. We both used some of the strategies we’d taken in from Mr. Allen, but there was no substitute for the real thing.

The kids finally settled down close to recess. Once the bell rang, all of us received a much needed armistice. I sat  in the back of the empty classroom, sipping my coffee and uncontrollably thinking about Jack. The fling with him had ended, as suddenly and unexpectedly at it had materialized. Our last moment together gave me no indication that he was disinterested in continuing what we had. I mentally checked off that odds were now that a promising romance would end after I kissed the guy goodbye at a bus stop. Fang and now Jack. Granted, both flings lasted no more than a month each, but they still were the two most intimate romances I’d ever had. At the very least I was fortunate enough to get closure from Jack himself. He had texted me a genuine assurance that it was hard to resist dating me. He had even shed some personal responsibilities on multiple occasions to spend much desired time with me. Over the course of our two week fling, he realized that he had many things on his plate to balance. Dating someone, anyone, was the excess he knew he had to trim.

There was no immediate substitute for what I had lost. However, I did feel reassured knowing that this new experience brought me one step closer to filling a boyfriend void. I understood now my need for an intimate partner and how to plow through the hardships and awkward steps to finding lasting, satisfying intimacy.

The night of my onset melancholia, I tracked through my itunes library, searching for songs of comfort and compassion. A set of Swedish artists, Peter Bjorn & John and Lykke Li, couldn’t have been more appropriate. I started with Peter Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks”. “If I told you things I did before, told you how I used to be, would you go along with someone like me. If you knew my story word for word, had all of my history, would you go along with someone like me.” The combination of encouraging circumstance and pessimistic questioning lay present in the song’s lyrics and mood. “I did before and had my share, it didn’t lead nowhere. I would go along with someone like you. It doesn’t matter what you did, who you were hanging with. We could stick around and see this night through.” In my mind’s eye, me and Jack were the young folks. He had been willing to go along with someone like me, a guy with zero relationship and sexual experience.

I let the nostalgia fade and moved on to Lykke Li. “Sadness is a Blessing” from her heartbreak driven album “Wounded Rhymes” was a gem. “My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight. And I keep it like a burning, longing from a distance. I ranted, I pleaded, I beg him not to go. For sorrow, the only lover I’ve ever known. Sadness is a blessing. Sadness is a pearl. Sadness is my boyfriend. Oh, sadness I’m your girl.” The same melancholic whistling and drum beat were the spine in both Li’s and Peter Bjorn & John’s tracks. In the night, it brought some, but not complete catharsis.