The Incident Involving My Desk
Slackers are as slackers do. I have blogged so infrequently for so long that I couldn't remember my password when I first tried to sign in tonight. It eventually came back to me of course, but you get the picture.
With little further ado:
The Desk Incident
Chapter 1
On a calm day in early April of this year, my life as a Mito City AET was shattered. For about 5 minutes. Until 3:15 on that day, it had been one of the best days ever at school. My school had become infested with the excitement of Spring, a new start to the year (work-year), a new start to school. Everyone was cheerful, gregarious, and unusually brave about cross-cultural communication (i.e. talking to me). I spent the day running around the school, now in the teacher's room conversing with chatty teachers, now in the hallways shouting "hello!" to bright-eyed students, now in my beautiful English classroom enjoying my majestic second floor view.
Chapter 2
Within that classroom, there lived a desk. It was a beautiful desk. A happy desk, I would say, a desk that belonged to a happy, good-natured boy like me. We fit well together. Some might even say we were made for each other.
Chapter 3
At 3:10 on that fateful day, unsuspecting I entered classroom mine--strangely to find, there, three meddlesome boys, shifty-eyed, will-bent, and philandering. I asked them what they were doing, and they eventually communicated to me their intent--they were looking for wall hooks for their classroom, confirming my guess: They were scavengers. I decided to help them anyway and went to my prized desk to procur some hooks. But the object of my desire was missing. Indeed, there were no hooks, but that's not my meaning: My beautiful desk was gone!
Worse still, it had been supplanted by an impostor. Think of a flimsy, drawer-less, shabby, poorly-made desk, and you'll have begun to conjur a vision of the impostor that stood before me.
So I banished the boys from my classroom ("I don't have any hooks. See YOU."), and fell into deep meditation.
Chapter 4
I succeeded in meditation for about 18 seconds and then launched into a madman's dash around the school. I will henceforth refer to those 18 seconds as "the Dark Time." During the Dark Time, several scenes--visions, if you will, vivid and terrible--flitted before the eye of my mind. I saw myself flinging open the sliding door to my teacher's room and accosting the great assembly--40 teachers, including Kocho (my principal)--and saying, "Who stole my frickin' desk?!" (Yes, I used "frickin'"--I told you it was horrible!) "One of you stole my desk from the English room, and I wanna know who it was." The conclusion to this vision, in summary, goes: Culprit unveiled; culprit accosted--"special meeting" behind gym--AET receives desk, teacher, black eye. The other visions, more shadowy, more vague, involve me, condemned hero of Kafka, wasting away day by day interrogating teachers, students, and parents, trying, always striving, to uncover the mystery of my desk--failing, quelling, and falling into darkness.
To Be Continued... (I have to go see a movie in Tsukuba!)
With little further ado:
The Desk Incident
Chapter 1
On a calm day in early April of this year, my life as a Mito City AET was shattered. For about 5 minutes. Until 3:15 on that day, it had been one of the best days ever at school. My school had become infested with the excitement of Spring, a new start to the year (work-year), a new start to school. Everyone was cheerful, gregarious, and unusually brave about cross-cultural communication (i.e. talking to me). I spent the day running around the school, now in the teacher's room conversing with chatty teachers, now in the hallways shouting "hello!" to bright-eyed students, now in my beautiful English classroom enjoying my majestic second floor view.
Chapter 2
Within that classroom, there lived a desk. It was a beautiful desk. A happy desk, I would say, a desk that belonged to a happy, good-natured boy like me. We fit well together. Some might even say we were made for each other.
Chapter 3
At 3:10 on that fateful day, unsuspecting I entered classroom mine--strangely to find, there, three meddlesome boys, shifty-eyed, will-bent, and philandering. I asked them what they were doing, and they eventually communicated to me their intent--they were looking for wall hooks for their classroom, confirming my guess: They were scavengers. I decided to help them anyway and went to my prized desk to procur some hooks. But the object of my desire was missing. Indeed, there were no hooks, but that's not my meaning: My beautiful desk was gone!
Worse still, it had been supplanted by an impostor. Think of a flimsy, drawer-less, shabby, poorly-made desk, and you'll have begun to conjur a vision of the impostor that stood before me.
So I banished the boys from my classroom ("I don't have any hooks. See YOU."), and fell into deep meditation.
Chapter 4
I succeeded in meditation for about 18 seconds and then launched into a madman's dash around the school. I will henceforth refer to those 18 seconds as "the Dark Time." During the Dark Time, several scenes--visions, if you will, vivid and terrible--flitted before the eye of my mind. I saw myself flinging open the sliding door to my teacher's room and accosting the great assembly--40 teachers, including Kocho (my principal)--and saying, "Who stole my frickin' desk?!" (Yes, I used "frickin'"--I told you it was horrible!) "One of you stole my desk from the English room, and I wanna know who it was." The conclusion to this vision, in summary, goes: Culprit unveiled; culprit accosted--"special meeting" behind gym--AET receives desk, teacher, black eye. The other visions, more shadowy, more vague, involve me, condemned hero of Kafka, wasting away day by day interrogating teachers, students, and parents, trying, always striving, to uncover the mystery of my desk--failing, quelling, and falling into darkness.
To Be Continued... (I have to go see a movie in Tsukuba!)
posted by Peter Rice at 4:17 AM
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