The following is a play-by-play of a typical day in one of my senior year English electives, Print Media. As may become apparent very quickly, we did not respect this teacher at all, and even with sixteen years of perspective, I have to say that this guy was SERIOUSLY THE WORST. His identity is protected here by the nickname we had for him, Mack. Here goes:
1-20-98: OK -- funniest Print Media class EVER. Jasi and Larry, while wrestling, caused quite a commotion.
Just the fact that two students could EVEN BE WRESTLING in the middle of class tells you quite a lot about the dynamic with this teacher.
Larry cheated by resorting to tickling. Naturally Jasi was forced to fall to the ground, scraping her back on the chalk tray! Mack began inquiring, "Did she faint? Did she faint?"
Not, though, "Why the fuck were you wrestling in here?"
It seemed like an easy way out, so Jasi responded, "Yes. Yes I did." Mack kept asking, "What happened?" No one wanted to use the word "wrestling," so finally Jasi came up with an alternate story. She explained that she had tripped and fallen upon trying to "enter the closet." (In actuality, it's a cabinet. It contains shelves, and therefore it's virtually impossible to step inside.) She blamed her fall on the "loose wires" on the ground. (Actually there was only ONE wire, and she herself had knocked it to the ground while falling.) Mack insisted upon filing an "accident report."
First responsible and professional moment from Mack so far. But one that could also possibly incriminate him, right?
Jasi was like, "No! I'm fine." Actually, the "laceration" on her back was terrible looking (As Andria Jones put it -- "You look like you got electrocuted!") This whole incident sparked another: Pat wanted to trip over the garbage can and spill its contents.
My memory is a little hazy on this one, but I feel like that was a near-daily occurrence: Pat trying to trip over the garbage can to be funny. You can tell there was very, very little actual academic work happening. In fact, my senior year, we didn't produce a newspaper at all with the exception of a back to school issue in August and "The Knight Times: Senior Edition" at the very end of the year. We were supposed to have like one a month. Perhaps this diary entry sheds some light on why we did not. Anyway, we left off with Pat's attempt to purposefully trip over the garbage can:
Instead he ended up actually falling INTO it! Steph and I were dying. And the garbage can was in pretty sorry shape.
In the upper margin of this page, I drew Before and After pictures of the garbage can. In the Before picture, the garbage can opening is a perfect circle. In the After picture, it looks like the outline of an amoeba.
Mr. Mack was like, "THAT'S IT! EVERYBODY HAVE A SEAT!"
He should absolutely rip us a new one. We're being total dicks in his classroom.
We thought we were in trouble for sure. However, he merely wanted us to sit down because "apparently no one can walk around in here without falling!" He wondered, "Is there too much radon in here? Do you all have to urinate in a cup to make sure everyone's not on drugs?"
That's the thing I can't figure out about my high school experience. We never WERE on drugs, but we ALWAYS ACTED LIKE WE WERE. I have no idea what caused that or how it might have been exacerbated by actual drugs. I can't even imagine it.
Larry pointed out, "You'll have to file ANOTHER accident report!"
Oh, that Larry!
We found it to be incredibly interesting that Mack actually believed it to be a coincidence that TWO people fell in one period! Later Andria tripped on purpose on her way up to talk to him, and I knocked over a chair.
Jesus. We had NO IDEA when to stop. But, with no consequences LIKE EVER -- why stop?
Steph and I later designated the 20th of every month "Stumble / Injury Day."
That's another thing we were always doing in high school: making up weird holiday-like celebration days. And we completely REMEMBERED them and CELEBRATED them. This is why I didn't have time to do my math homework. I had so many holidays to keep track of, and I wasn't alone in this endeavor. My friends were just as fucking weird as I was. But I think they probably got more homework done than I did.
In retrospect -- especially from a teacher's perspective, now -- I really can't feel sorry for Mack. It was obvious then (and it's even more so now) that HE DID NOT GIVE A SHIT about teaching. He was some sort of amateur actor in local plays (I remember that, once, he played God), and he wasn't exactly secretive about the fact that he cared more about that than teaching. This account is actually kind of one of the CALMER days in Print Media -- I have a bunch of other journal entries about the picnics we would have in there, even when he expressly forbade us from having picnics. But that's a story for another time.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Friday, June 27, 2014
My Fitness Enemy
These days, along with approximately 65 million others around the globe, I meticulously track my food, exercise, and water consumption on a handy little app called My Fitness Pal. Twenty-three years ago, though, the only app I was concerned about was my "appetite" -- that is, my pre-teen tendency to want to eat all the things.
In an earnest attempt to fight what I then clearly perceived as a terrifying slide into obesity (when, in reality, I didn't even weigh 100 pounds), I decided to write down every single thing I ate and every physical exercise I performed -- but in true early nineties Ashleigh style, there were no lists or bullet points: we're talking pure narrative, people. So here, with a horrifying blend of shame and amusement, I give you a day in the life of my dieting self circa 1991:
Monday, July 8
Well, I started my diet plan. First thing in the morning I was supposed to ride my bike 10 times UPHILL! (ouch!) But guess what? It rained. Also, I'd planned to ride around 8:00, when no one else was up, and then eat breakfast. I didn't wake up until 8:30.
Okay, so clearly I was not even awake at 8 a.m. to determine that the rain would put a damper (ha) on my bike-riding plans. I like, though, how I blame the rain here BEFORE acknowledging that, side note, I WAS STILL FREAKING SLEEPING.
Besides, I wasn't looking forward to breakfast. I had a choice of:
1/4 a bowl non-sweet cereal, dry
2 rasin BRAN muffins
1 blueberry muffin or Naner Nut (This is clearly supposed to be Banana Nut. Why the hell did I write it like that?)
I rye english muffin -- 1 side LIGHTLY buttered, other not
1 piece of toast, DRY
There are so many things wrong with the above list. I will now present them in list form:
1. What's up with the very liberal use of underlines? Are they supposed to represent grim determination / resentment? "BRAN and RYE, I mean it, now. I said LIGHTLY buttered, you asshat. And don't even try to butter both halves of that english muffin, and definitely don't capitalize the E, either."
2. This actually looks like a lot of choices. This is six choices. Why was I not looking forward to breakfast?!
3. Why am I allowed to have TWO "rasin BRAN" muffins but only one blueberry or Naner Nut? I fear I might have been placing far too much faith in the magic of bran.
4. Why is it okay to butter the "rye english muffin" but not the piece of DRY toast? I must have been assigning magical properties to rye as well as bran.
5. Why on earth can't the "1/4 bowl of non-sweet cereal" even have the dignity of a splash of milk? Who made this list of breakfast options -- Hitler?
Anyway. I go on:
See what I mean? YECCH. As it turned out, I ate 2 rasin bran muffins.
Still with the freaking underlining. Still misspelling raisin.
I got dressed then -- red shorts and top (red). Then I read a book. While I read, I did about 20 leg lifts for each leg (maybe more) and then did 5 lifts each where I hold my leg in place. It really hurts!
Hey, fool. If you are REALLY trying to be healthy and active, maybe PUT THE DAMN BOOK DOWN and go for a walk. Don't lie on the floor of your pink bedroom and lift your legs all over the place, for God's sake. What a waste of your awesome monochromatic red outfit.
Then lunch. I have a lot of choices here, but some of them I can only eat if Ido make lunch myself.
Huh?
I ate 4 lightly salted crackers and then a slice of cheese. (Mom didn't see what I ate.)
Because if she had, she might have said, "Hey, asshat. Eat some real food." And then she would have told me to put some more salt on those crackers, because if there is one condiment Marsha Steiner Fox defends with her whole heart, it is salt.
And also water.
Oh, good: you had some water, too. You effectively ate less than half of the lunch afforded to an inmate of a maximum-security prison. Well done, Fox.
After lunch I rode my bike. My thighs really hurt! By the time I put my bike away, my legs throbbed so much I could barely walk. Even so, I ran one lap around the house. I'm supposed to do 5 maybe 10, but after "1" I nearly "collapsed"!
What is going on with the use of quotation marks here? Did I only figuratively nearly collapse? I remember being a healthy, strong girl, but here is evidence that I almost "collapse" after running ONE FREAKING LAP around my house. (Maybe, though, that is because I legitimately thought FOUR SALTINES would fuel my body for a productive workout.)
Then I went inside, and practically inhaled 3high tall cups of water.
"No, no. They weren't high cups. They were TALL cups. Thank God I'm self-aware enough to edit this missive as I go, or my future self will be wholly unable to picture the height of the cups of water I inhaled."
Later, around 5:00, left for Grammy's! Dinner there was a problem. Grammy always has goodies. Dinner wasn't really a goodie; in fact, under normal circumstances, I might have turned up my nose at it.
I both love and hate that, by the end of fifth grade, I had mastered sentence patterns that I can now persuade hardly any tenth graders to embrace. I don't at all love and only hate the portrayal of myself here as an asshat who, under "normal circumstances," turns up her nose at her grandmother's homemade dinners.
But after my skimpy lunch, ANYTHING sounded good -- even green bean, potato, and ham stew, with Italian seasonings, which I topped off with 1/2 a piece of cake, large slice watermelon, & three cookies. I really, really shouldn't have, but I was so hungry!
That's . . . five desserts. FIVE. Yeah -- you shouldn't have.
Even after all that I was still hungry.
(WTF?)
So I ate some salad. (See? I did eat healthy stuff!) But the salad, at least I thought, was wilted. It was from last Thursday, and the lettuce was soggy, the tomatoes smushy, the cheese smelly, and the croutons soft. A regular "S" parade!!
Yes, you fucking weirdo. A regular "S" parade is EXACTLY what that rotting salad resembled. Good description.
So I pretended to eat it, but I was really spitting it out in my napkin.
Add "spit" to the "S" parade.
After dinner, Cam played Turtles (R) and I started a book, but I was bored. So I suggested a game of hide'n'seek.
I'm so glad you used the registered trademark after Turtles to describe what Cam played. In case the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise ever reads this diary, you won't owe them any explanations or fines regarding inappropriate use of their product name. Also, though -- what the hell is "playing Turtles"? Is it a video game? Is he just . . . somehow playing all the parts? I wish, in my 1991 hastiness, I had not been quite so vague.
We played almost the whole time we were there. I ran a lot. I hope I ran off some of that fat. After that, Cam and I picked berries for Grammy. Our reward for doing that and helping her weed was . . . grape pop! I'm sure it had lots of calories. Oh, and at dinner we also had limeade. (High-calorie.) Anyway, I drank my whole can of pop, then 1/2 of Cam's. (He hates grape.)
Since the pop is clearly high in calories, make sure you drink ALL of yours AND half of your little brother's.
THEN I went in & drank some more limeade. And THEN (are you getting tired of then's?) Grammy gave us a bowl of puff'n'corn (like popcorn but softer).
My mother and I were just reminiscing about puff'n'corn on the phone the other day. Full circle, people.
Cam didn't like that too much either. So I ate most of it.
Are we detecting a pattern here, possibly?
Later I put cream on Grammy's feet and painted her toenails. (With clear polish.) Then Cam & I finished Grammy's popcorn, about 1/4 of a bowl.
I would pretty much bet my life on the fact that there is NO WAY IN HELL I would have washed my hands in between lathering up my grandmother's feet with Avon Skin So Soft and eating MORE popcorn with my bare hands. Good times.
Cam offered me a candy orange slice, but I turned that down.
DO YOU SEE THAT RESTRAINT, PEOPLE? I turned down that candy orange slice with NO PROBLEM. Maybe because I had just eaten a dinner, five desserts, and nine thousand calories of popcorn. But -- wait for it:
Then Cam & I went in the kitchen & ate 1 more cookie each.
Dear sweet Lord in heaven. ENOUGH WITH THE COOKIES, FOX.
By that time, it was 9:45. At 10:00 Mom came home. Then we all went home.
Once again, the use of the underlining is wholly unnecessary, bordering on misleading; it implies that Grammy came home with us, which I totally know she didn't. The use of "home" to describe both Grammy's house and our house is also confusing. Finally, where had Mom been until 10:00 p.m.? I cannot for the life of me imagine. Mom will have to consult her diary entry for July 8, 1991, and let me know. Thanks in advance, Mom.
I don't know what else to say about this day. This was a real day. I really did eat those things and write those things, apparently. Perhaps one day twenty-three years from now, when I'm fifty-seven, I'll access the My Fitness Pal records from June 27, 2014, and I'll scoff, "Apparently she had a light lunch and walked five miles at North Park with Jess Frieder, but then she ate a bunch of pizza and ice cream. Asshat."
In an earnest attempt to fight what I then clearly perceived as a terrifying slide into obesity (when, in reality, I didn't even weigh 100 pounds), I decided to write down every single thing I ate and every physical exercise I performed -- but in true early nineties Ashleigh style, there were no lists or bullet points: we're talking pure narrative, people. So here, with a horrifying blend of shame and amusement, I give you a day in the life of my dieting self circa 1991:
Monday, July 8
Well, I started my diet plan. First thing in the morning I was supposed to ride my bike 10 times UPHILL! (ouch!) But guess what? It rained. Also, I'd planned to ride around 8:00, when no one else was up, and then eat breakfast. I didn't wake up until 8:30.
Okay, so clearly I was not even awake at 8 a.m. to determine that the rain would put a damper (ha) on my bike-riding plans. I like, though, how I blame the rain here BEFORE acknowledging that, side note, I WAS STILL FREAKING SLEEPING.
Besides, I wasn't looking forward to breakfast. I had a choice of:
1/4 a bowl non-sweet cereal, dry
2 rasin BRAN muffins
1 blueberry muffin or Naner Nut (This is clearly supposed to be Banana Nut. Why the hell did I write it like that?)
I rye english muffin -- 1 side LIGHTLY buttered, other not
1 piece of toast, DRY
There are so many things wrong with the above list. I will now present them in list form:
1. What's up with the very liberal use of underlines? Are they supposed to represent grim determination / resentment? "BRAN and RYE, I mean it, now. I said LIGHTLY buttered, you asshat. And don't even try to butter both halves of that english muffin, and definitely don't capitalize the E, either."
2. This actually looks like a lot of choices. This is six choices. Why was I not looking forward to breakfast?!
3. Why am I allowed to have TWO "rasin BRAN" muffins but only one blueberry or Naner Nut? I fear I might have been placing far too much faith in the magic of bran.
4. Why is it okay to butter the "rye english muffin" but not the piece of DRY toast? I must have been assigning magical properties to rye as well as bran.
5. Why on earth can't the "1/4 bowl of non-sweet cereal" even have the dignity of a splash of milk? Who made this list of breakfast options -- Hitler?
Anyway. I go on:
See what I mean? YECCH. As it turned out, I ate 2 rasin bran muffins.
Still with the freaking underlining. Still misspelling raisin.
I got dressed then -- red shorts and top (red). Then I read a book. While I read, I did about 20 leg lifts for each leg (maybe more) and then did 5 lifts each where I hold my leg in place. It really hurts!
Hey, fool. If you are REALLY trying to be healthy and active, maybe PUT THE DAMN BOOK DOWN and go for a walk. Don't lie on the floor of your pink bedroom and lift your legs all over the place, for God's sake. What a waste of your awesome monochromatic red outfit.
Then lunch. I have a lot of choices here, but some of them I can only eat if I
Huh?
I ate 4 lightly salted crackers and then a slice of cheese. (Mom didn't see what I ate.)
Because if she had, she might have said, "Hey, asshat. Eat some real food." And then she would have told me to put some more salt on those crackers, because if there is one condiment Marsha Steiner Fox defends with her whole heart, it is salt.
And also water.
Oh, good: you had some water, too. You effectively ate less than half of the lunch afforded to an inmate of a maximum-security prison. Well done, Fox.
After lunch I rode my bike. My thighs really hurt! By the time I put my bike away, my legs throbbed so much I could barely walk. Even so, I ran one lap around the house. I'm supposed to do 5 maybe 10, but after "1" I nearly "collapsed"!
What is going on with the use of quotation marks here? Did I only figuratively nearly collapse? I remember being a healthy, strong girl, but here is evidence that I almost "collapse" after running ONE FREAKING LAP around my house. (Maybe, though, that is because I legitimately thought FOUR SALTINES would fuel my body for a productive workout.)
Then I went inside, and practically inhaled 3
"No, no. They weren't high cups. They were TALL cups. Thank God I'm self-aware enough to edit this missive as I go, or my future self will be wholly unable to picture the height of the cups of water I inhaled."
Later, around 5:00, left for Grammy's! Dinner there was a problem. Grammy always has goodies. Dinner wasn't really a goodie; in fact, under normal circumstances, I might have turned up my nose at it.
I both love and hate that, by the end of fifth grade, I had mastered sentence patterns that I can now persuade hardly any tenth graders to embrace. I don't at all love and only hate the portrayal of myself here as an asshat who, under "normal circumstances," turns up her nose at her grandmother's homemade dinners.
But after my skimpy lunch, ANYTHING sounded good -- even green bean, potato, and ham stew, with Italian seasonings, which I topped off with 1/2 a piece of cake, large slice watermelon, & three cookies. I really, really shouldn't have, but I was so hungry!
That's . . . five desserts. FIVE. Yeah -- you shouldn't have.
Even after all that I was still hungry.
(WTF?)
So I ate some salad. (See? I did eat healthy stuff!) But the salad, at least I thought, was wilted. It was from last Thursday, and the lettuce was soggy, the tomatoes smushy, the cheese smelly, and the croutons soft. A regular "S" parade!!
Yes, you fucking weirdo. A regular "S" parade is EXACTLY what that rotting salad resembled. Good description.
So I pretended to eat it, but I was really spitting it out in my napkin.
Add "spit" to the "S" parade.
After dinner, Cam played Turtles (R) and I started a book, but I was bored. So I suggested a game of hide'n'seek.
I'm so glad you used the registered trademark after Turtles to describe what Cam played. In case the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise ever reads this diary, you won't owe them any explanations or fines regarding inappropriate use of their product name. Also, though -- what the hell is "playing Turtles"? Is it a video game? Is he just . . . somehow playing all the parts? I wish, in my 1991 hastiness, I had not been quite so vague.
We played almost the whole time we were there. I ran a lot. I hope I ran off some of that fat. After that, Cam and I picked berries for Grammy. Our reward for doing that and helping her weed was . . . grape pop! I'm sure it had lots of calories. Oh, and at dinner we also had limeade. (High-calorie.) Anyway, I drank my whole can of pop, then 1/2 of Cam's. (He hates grape.)
Since the pop is clearly high in calories, make sure you drink ALL of yours AND half of your little brother's.
THEN I went in & drank some more limeade. And THEN (are you getting tired of then's?) Grammy gave us a bowl of puff'n'corn (like popcorn but softer).
My mother and I were just reminiscing about puff'n'corn on the phone the other day. Full circle, people.
Cam didn't like that too much either. So I ate most of it.
Are we detecting a pattern here, possibly?
Later I put cream on Grammy's feet and painted her toenails. (With clear polish.) Then Cam & I finished Grammy's popcorn, about 1/4 of a bowl.
I would pretty much bet my life on the fact that there is NO WAY IN HELL I would have washed my hands in between lathering up my grandmother's feet with Avon Skin So Soft and eating MORE popcorn with my bare hands. Good times.
Cam offered me a candy orange slice, but I turned that down.
DO YOU SEE THAT RESTRAINT, PEOPLE? I turned down that candy orange slice with NO PROBLEM. Maybe because I had just eaten a dinner, five desserts, and nine thousand calories of popcorn. But -- wait for it:
Then Cam & I went in the kitchen & ate 1 more cookie each.
Dear sweet Lord in heaven. ENOUGH WITH THE COOKIES, FOX.
By that time, it was 9:45. At 10:00 Mom came home. Then we all went home.
Once again, the use of the underlining is wholly unnecessary, bordering on misleading; it implies that Grammy came home with us, which I totally know she didn't. The use of "home" to describe both Grammy's house and our house is also confusing. Finally, where had Mom been until 10:00 p.m.? I cannot for the life of me imagine. Mom will have to consult her diary entry for July 8, 1991, and let me know. Thanks in advance, Mom.
I don't know what else to say about this day. This was a real day. I really did eat those things and write those things, apparently. Perhaps one day twenty-three years from now, when I'm fifty-seven, I'll access the My Fitness Pal records from June 27, 2014, and I'll scoff, "Apparently she had a light lunch and walked five miles at North Park with Jess Frieder, but then she ate a bunch of pizza and ice cream. Asshat."
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