Subculture

First day at Sub Teacher Training. Think Police Academy movies, then take away everything funny, then add immigrants, workout dudes, grammas, mean old English tutors, young punk TAs with bad grammar, and me wearing underwear for the first time in years, and you've got the room. Skeevy downtown street, 8 floors up with plumbing broken on 1st floor, late because traffic was so bad getting into Undisclosed City (now that I'm going to be working for them, they said no personal stuff on your personal websites or blogs, Los Angeles). But at least I was not getting paid for sitting there practicing being something I don't even want to be. A nice turn. My life has taken. It was actually fun if you scale way down your definition of fun, to like .5. Then it was flavor blasted. The teachers were fun because they were teaching us how to be leaders in the classroom by ACTING LIKE TEACHERS and WE were their classroom. It was subtle. It was awesome subtext. But between wondering what was in the vending machine down the hall and hoping it would all be over soon, we made a bunch of posters about child abuse and sexual harassment (seemed way more important than classroom activities)(I guess they were ruling out what NOT to do), and my table rocked but we did not win any stickers even though I was sitting up straight like she said. Well I was sort of sitting up straight. When I wasn't trying to rest my feet on my puffy haired neighbor's purse. Her hair was flat in front and puffy in back, like she started and then just gave up. I kept staring at it. I am a terrible student, I think. But I felt sort of invisible, like I'm looking out these goggles at all the REAL people, and they're so interesting. The rules are okay and kind of crucial in a classroom, I get it, but don't you kind of want to know what that guy's house looks like? Who his mother is? Why we're all here in this little room on this gross city street on a Tuesday in mid-life? Oh wait, that's only me. I was happy for my non-puffy hair. Here's what I learned. Never allowed to touch a kid. Say 8 good things to 1 bad thing. Which goes against my nature, I'm more of a 4 and 4 girl, or maybe even 7 to 1. That's from 13 years of tired parenting. At home I can still be an asshole, but at school I'll try to bring my mystery box and be ruled and benevolent. We took about three breaks and lunch in the 6 hours I was there. I could not eat that much. I ran up and down the stairs to exercise and then found out you get locked out that way. So had to take the elevator back up. Was very Eloise. You could say I was inspired by the corpulence of some individuals surrounding me. A lot of it was like waking up in someone else's life. But I know it's just because the training for things is weird. The reality of it is I'll be at the school I've been volunteering in for 9 years, I know everyone, I'll have to learn all the rules and stuff, and try to be the best I can so I can make money for the family. That's my goal. I don't have to be a killer teacher. I have to be a killer writer about being a fake teacher, and try not to get fired for writing about my time subbing in Undisclosed City. Los Angeles. Or is it? (I'm already starting my mystery box.) Day two tomorrow. I'll let you know how the hairdos fare in the morning. I'm so excited because it's my graduation, and we've all come so far.