Here I am pretending that I don’t still have seventeen papers to read at 11:30 at night. All day I have been promising myself time on my computer. Me time. My computer, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, es la mia, no la tocas (pendejo)!

Sorry, I got understandably carried away there, as I have been taking my computer to work with me, trying to get a projector hooked up to it in order to be able to teach my class without dealing with a) copy center, or b) whiteboard snowfield, or c) copy center. But for some reason, the projector is finicky, and the “tech” dude really has no idea how to fix it. The part that irks me is that he takes off for lunch as soon as I’m not teaching classes, and so it seems that the only time option for me to try and resolve tech issues is during my class.

But during my class, I am actually handing back papers, talking about things, and not really paying attention to “tech” dudes who assume that dimming my screen to black, injuring my K key, and disabling my mouse-pad functionality will make the projector work better.

I had something of a two-hour panic attack until I managed to hunt down a computer-administer who knew something about the control keys that one might use in lieu of a mousepad in order to turn the mousepad back on. Senorito Computer-Administrator is the new hero and love-interest of my life. One should always consider breaking with personal tradition for a man who knows his way around a DOS-shell. It’s just that sexy.

On a same-day-if-you-believe-it note, I was locked behind bars by guards who growled (breed estimate=German Shepard meets Benji) at me in a very menacing manner that had me near tears. Near Tears is not a Good Start to the morning. Neither is Behind Bars. I’m not kidding here. There was my class of students, all lined up with their sweet little faces (whimpering that I wasn’t there), waiting for me in class, and there I was behind bars, begging in broken Spanish to be let go.

I’m sure you are all excessively curious about what wicked behavior I must have done to warrant being thrown behind bars. I’m a little embarrassed about that, but I must ‘fess to all misdoings.

Well, it all started with me taking a little ride on a bus the day previous to the day I was locked up. When the bus got to school, it turned around, the driver pressed the remote control to open the gate, and then reversed into the bus parking space. At this point, the gates closed and I got off the bus. It wasn’t a paying situation, so the fact that I didn’t pay has no bearing on this case. Anyhow, I went to the gate, and discovered to my chagrin that, even though it was the 16th, my new card didn’t work like they promised it would on the sixteenth.

A note here: to get out of the bus parking area, one must walk through card-regulated metal spikes that spin around. The part I really really love about the metal-spike twirlers every time I see them is that they are all two-way. This means that there are lines on both sides of the twirlers, and people just try to get their card swiped faster than the card on the other side, so that the Green Light flashes for them (ha!) and the twirlers shuffle them in the direction most conducive to their future plans, not the person’s opposite them. By the way, these aren’t revolving metal spikes exactly, so much as they are half-revolving spikes, so there isn’t a mutually-helpful sneaky way to beat the system.

Anyhow, back to my sins. My card didn’t work, so I went to the office to get them to let me through the back way. But I was told that I needed to get the card fixed. I was there an hour early at the horrible-to-admit hour of 7:30am, and so I figured I could take the time to get my card fixed. I waited in line, and then waited fifteen minutes longer as the computer-woman entered my card fifteen times (the same way) and got fifteen error messages. She said something fast to me in Spanish and I nodded, made an escape and vowed to get the issue resolved when I wasn’t dizzy with tired.

Flash forward one day: everything goes exactly the same up until the point after the computer-woman once again cannot fix my card. Everything but one aspect: I am not there one hour early, but rather three minutes early, and I’m already starting to be late. Now to the After. The card is no-go, she can’t fix it, but at this point, the guards arrest me. I am not allowed through. I have to wait (I try to ask them what for, since I already waited in line twice with little results, but they don’t like my question, and this is when the growling starts). Anyhow, after my question and telling them that I already waited, a little altercations follows, sounding something like this:

Me: “No soy una estudiante. Soy una profesora. U-na pro-fes-sora. (sound familiar… see copy center lines a few entries earlier)

Them: No importa. Tiene que esperar como todo la gente aqui.

Me (with distinct annoyance): Pero tengo un clase en este momento. Mis estudiantes estan esperandome!

Them: Lo siento. No importa. Tiene que esperar como todo la gente aqui.

Me (my Spanish slipping a little): No puedo quedar! Tengo que ir! I swear to GOD ALMIGHTY que regresso a la una. A la una, you can have five goddamn hours for all I care, but right now mis estudiantes estan esperandome! And what the hell is going to be achieved by me waiting in line to be helped by a woman who can’t help me anyways!

Them: GrrrrrrrrrrWoof,RRRRRRRRRR, slam (that was the door), rauwf, grrrrrrrr….

For the sake of expediency, I did drop a few steps of mounting tension in the middle there. I didn’t suddenly get pissed and rowdy, really. It was a slow evolution.

After the door slam, and my very loud English not-blameless cuss words, I almost started crying. Around me, the walls seemed to grow… tall black spikes. Fences with spaces too small to slip through, even for an anorexic such as myself (haha). I imagined spending the day there, under the hot sun, the bus fumes starting and stopping, the gates opening, me trying to dodge through them, and then the rough maws of the guards as they nip me into subservience. Two buildings away from there, I could hear the laments and deep sorrow of students who knew that with each moment they were falling behind in their work. And on top of it all, I had only managed about thirteen hours of sleep for the two nights before (not enough for a big sloth like myself), and was using up my not-cranky reserves, so that those poor innocent students probably would not be the winners of the situation.

Above all, I cursed myself for being a temper-tantrum girl who gives up after five minutes and lets everybody walk all over her, instead of one of those smooth calm, kill-you-with-my-facial-expression folks who say little but always win (like my mom). I hate Near Tears, goddamn it!

But then I called my lawyer (boss, savior, and a KYWMFE-person, Anita). The guards were reluctant to let the phone through the doorjamb, but my release was arranged within 30 seconds of higher-administrator talk, and I was only about 10-15 minutes late to my first class. My students were ecstatic to pull all their books back out of their bags and get to the grindstone of English grammar!

Okay, now, I have another confession to make: my assignment was to write at least 300 words on one of the following topics: happiness, love, humor, goodness, friendship, etc. I believe it was a sarcastic assignment, and I figured that the best response was to be a disobedient student (nyah, nyah, pie in your eye, I’m a teacher, don’t gotta do nothin’ I don’t want to…), and combine one of those themes with reciprocated tone. So there. Maybe I’ll change my mind later, but not until I want to. My computer. Mine, mia, mine!

PS and By the Way: for no reason that I can determine, I’ve been very cheerful today. I danced to some music in my room, and my butt looked cute in the mirror and I smiled and felt really really Pleased With Myself.