![]() He is a Pakistani in his forties, short, and lean. I actually find myself bouncing to class, pleased to sit authoritatively behind my desk waiting for Ismail to walk in, always with that loose neon-blue backpack bumping toward his high ass, always with the slightest, smoothest shift of the eyes, always catching my eyes with the very corner of his. This year, for the first time in a long while, I have a favorite. But that was before burnout set in, before I saw too many of my students get nowhere or get terminally frustrated or get deported, their well-taught English turned to spite. I wanted to feed that hunger, wanted to snake American customs and social niceties and the correct use of adjectives into their heads like so many cold spicy noodles. I could smell the hunger to fit in, to regenerate into fatter, tanner, more legend-worthy versions of themselves, and it aroused me intellectually. I used to love all this, used to get off on the very odor of the classroom-a volatile magic of knockoff perfumes, ethnic spices, and cheap wet leather. They bring lunches that have nothing to do with where they come from-the Polish woman eats supermarket sushi, the Japanese teenager downs a burger, the Somali carries in boxes of Chinese takeout and snakes cold spicy noodles into his mouth with his equally serpentine fingers. They all wear Gap-ish clothing, even if it's secondhand or Kmart. They are the tired, the huddled, the oddly uniform masses who yearn for Oprah and Wolfgang Puck and Intel. My students come from Mongolia or Turkey or Laos, yet I rarely know it. ![]() "Con, it's not like we let him watch Wild Police Videos." "He watches too much TV as it is," Connor says. "They act as if all information is equal." ![]() "That damned Discovery Channel," Connor says. "It was a National Geographic Special, Con. "It's going to be my fault now-is that the concept?" I zip my jacket high over my throat. "You think that has anything to do with it?" We cover the globe here in the Pacific Northwest." Alise, let me ask you something." Connor doesn't even turn off NPR. The fricking moron broke his leg, pissed off my dad, and ended the superhero summer." Do you know my brother swore he was Spider-Man for a month? One day he started up our garage and he actually thought his hands would stick. "Why don't you ask one of your freaky child-psych friends," he says when I'm already halfway out of the car. In our usual routine, Connor drops Wes in front of Hawkins Elementary and me at the equally dour-looking community center. "And Dad, even in Mongolia sheep don't go to school." "It's not a pile of crap," Wes states, entirely cool. "You're not dragging that pile of crap to school," Connor says with a snort. ![]() "What about Ethel?" I worry all the time about my son's fading allegiance to our elderly dachshund, about his breaking her very fine heart. "What in the world are you doing?" Connor asks. Wes comes out of the bathroom dragging a huge ball of toilet paper, at least three quarters of the roll, wrapped into an amorphous blob and hitched to his wrist with mint-flavored floss. "What I'm saying is, he has a lot of good reasons." "I've got this weird stomach thing again," Connor says, tossing away his pumpernickel bagel. "A fledgling imagination is at stake here," I say. When Wes is in the bathroom, Connor seriously suggests that we stage a midnight raid, rip off the kid's costume while he's asleep, and toss it in the trash compactor. On the seventh day, at breakfast, we all sit in silence and glare: I at Connor, Connor at Wes, Wes at no one in particular. "For now," he says, "you can call me Baltnai."Ĭonnor refuses to call his son Baltnai. Connor, who sells next-generation CAT- and PET-scan equipment to major medical centers, survives on his ability to make up other people's minds, to blunt dissent with reason.Īt dinner he shouts at our son, one word at a time: "Who are you?" Wes's father, Connor, is more annoyed than troubled by this unexpected detour into Ulan Bator. But just try to touch his hat-say, to wash his hair-and he turns all claws and parental condemnations. We threw the gap-toothed pumpkin out two days ago, and Wes merely yawned. What seemed impossibly clever at the end of October has by November grown a bit disconcerting. He goes to school in the bushy fake fez he ordered off the Internet, tromps across the light Portland snow in his bloated felt boots. Accessed March 1, 2022.Six days after Halloween my nine-year-old, Wes, is still dressing in the furry, puffed-out uniform of a Mongolian nomad. Medical management of gastroesophageal reflux disease in adults. What are the warning signs of a heart attack? American Heart Association.Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux in adults. In: Sleisenger and Fordtran's Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis, Management.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |