Rolling In Dough

One of the many lizards who ran across my path when I walked to lunch yesterday.

There was a bit of drama in my anthropology class last night--the class is three hours long and the teacher likes to give us ten minute breaks every hour. At which time he sits down behind his desk and chats with people in the class about movies and television, mostly. This time, for some reason, he decided to tell a girl who sits at the front of the class, "You look like a female unabomber."

The girl in question almost always wears an olive green hoodie and usually seems to be in a bad mood, quiet with her head down. A moment passed after the teacher made the comment before she got up to leave. "Don't forget your book!" said the teacher with a smile.

"I'm coming back," she snapped.

"Okay," he said. A moment later he told the rest of the class, "Remind me, after the break, I have some very bad news. An announcement to make."

The girl in the green hoodie hadn't come back after break when the teacher made his announcement, which was that budget cuts would now require the school to let go of all part-time teachers, and that seventy percent of the teachers at the college are part-time.

He seemed very slightly like he was going to cry while he told us so someone asked if he was a part-time teacher, to which he replied, "Yes."

So I guess he was telling us he was about to get fired. This was after, earlier in the class, when he'd been teaching us about the seven social classes in the United States (Upper Upper, Lower Upper, Upper Middle, Middle Middle, Lower Middle, Upper Lower, and Lower Lower), he mentioned that despite technically being in the Upper Middle class, he doesn't make very much money.

A little later, while he was reading terms out of his notes for us to be sure we knew for next week's midterm, the girl in the green hoodie came back, grabbed her book, and stormed out. When she was outside, I heard her say, "Learn some fucking manners!" I don't think the teacher heard her because he was still reading off terms somewhat mechanically.

Thinking about it later, if it is true that 70% of the teachers are being let go (and I can't find any confirmation of this through google), that's horrible but I decided I'm not going to feel bad for this guy. A teacher shouldn't tell an obviously sensitive kid that she looks like the unabomber, and that's just one of many examples of this guy acting like a giant infant. He's a fat guy, so maybe that makes him feel entitled speak disparagingly of fat people, but what a middle-aged man might think sounds self-deprecating might sound different to one of the overweight teenage girls sitting at the front of the class. I'm a believer in the freedom to make fun of absolutely everyone for anything, but I don't like thoughtlessness or pointlessly destructive behaviour. A lot of teachers use their classes to unload their meshugas, but this guy's one of the worst. His lectures constantly veer off into tangents about his life and beliefs, some of which are relevant, many of which aren't, and it's not often clear when he's deviating from the class material.

He wears Hawaiian shirts and sandals all the time, but last night he told us that on his day off he only wears t-shirts, as though what he's wearing in class is somehow more presentable. He said he didn't know why anyone would ever want to wear something other than a t-shirt.

And, may I remind you, this is the guy who's constantly making spelling and grammar errors and makes jokes about people who make spelling and grammar errors. This guy thinks he's the centre of the universe.

Here's a spider I found in a clove of garlic last night;