Call Me Dingo Fierce

Things have pretty much sucked since my last post, Innernetz.  With so much going on it’s been difficult to write with blinding tears and snot running all over the keyboard and whatnot.  Everything I wrote sounded like, Waaaaaaa!  Waaaaaaaaa!  Moving sucks!  Waaaaaaaa! I hate living in the ‘hood! Waaaaaaa!  We’re broke! Waaaaaaa! See how boring that gets after a while?  I tell you waaaaat, I was sick of myself.  I needed something to take my mind off of my pathetic pity party and the unsettling feeling of just seeing my new neighborhood on Cops. 

And then, then Innernetz, I got an email from the folks over at Noble Works Cards.  They asked if I’d be interested in hosting a giveaway on my blog.  Giveaway?! Hells yeah, I’d be interested in a giveaway!  One lucky and creative As I Was Saying reader is going to get a $25 gift card to spend on some of the hilarious, irreverent, and often downright offensive Noble Works gift cards, mugs, calendars, and memo pads.  Could anything be more perfect for you, Innernetz?!  But simmadownnow, bitches.  You gotta work for this. 

Here’s how this is going down.  Head over to Noble Works Cards and take a look around. Pick your favorite card and leave a comment to this post telling me what card made you pee in your pants, who you’d send the card to, and any additional comments you’d write on the card before dropping it in the mailbox.  You have until Saturday, February 13th at noon (because I’m not rolling outta bed before then) to submit your comment.  On Valentine’s Day, I’ll announce the comment I love the most.  And Voila!  You have a $25 gift card!  How easy is that?

You wanna know how easy it is?  Here’s a card I ordered for Mr. Dingo’s former employer with the $25 gift card Noble Works sent to me for hosting the giveaway.  And here’s my P.S.:

I hope that you get syphilis of the soul from all the people you’ve fucked over and that the dried piece of jerky you call a heart is absorbed into your lower intestine like a cancer and passes through your anus like the hardened piece of shit you are.

Dingo

I wonder if I should sit on it for a day or two?

But Innernetz, my absolute favorite purchase is the St. Bitch the Fierce Magnetic Memo Pad.  I love this memo pad.  It’s a legally recognized license to be the fashion police and to launch a citizen’s arrest all wrapped up in one delightfully robed visage — St. Bitch the Fierce.  I can’t wait until they get here.  I will be a superhero!  I can write wrongs and right wrongs.

My first citation will be given to the baby mamas and their crotch fruit who live directly above me.  How shall I put this?  Oh yeah, I hate them.  Hate.  Them.  The never ending noise. Sweet baby jebus, the constant noise!  Are they wearing cement shoes?  Why are they running around in circles for hours and hours every single night?  I mean, shouldn’t the little semen demons be in bed by 8?  But the running, jumping, and screaming continue until 2 or 3 in the morning.  Are they herding sheep before they count them?  All that running simply reminds me that polio once played an important role in child care.  And then there’s the music.  I may have been able to forgive the loud thumping bass that rattles the three-inch-thick steel security gates over my windows but I cannot forgive the desecration of the King of Pop and Billy Jean.  Aren’t there copyright restrictions that prevent Menudo wannabes from singing “Billy Cheen es not my luvah.  Cheese jussa girl says dat I am de juan”?  Really, Baby Mamas?  Is that the song you really want to have on repeat?  I know, I know, many of you are probably saying, “Oh Dingo, have you tried talking to them?” Silly Innernetz, do you want me to get stabbed in the face?  Because a knife sticking out of my face would not be a good look for me.  And that’s where my St. Bitch the Fierce memo pad comes in handy.  I can anonymously leave them a polite note asking them to respect their neighbors and STFU.  I should get a good citizen award but I’m already a saint and it would be a sin to be so greedy. 

Two nights ago the thumping and jumping reached Def Con 4.  My earplugs whimpered in defeat.  And then, it happened.  There was crash that shook the ceiling and sent Dingo Girl running for cover.  All was quiet for about five seconds and then there was keening and howling like a pack of drunken coyotes on a Spring Break bender.  Holy shit.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  Should I bang on the ceiling?  Call an ambulance?  The po-po?  No, I St. Bitch the Fierce had an even better idea. 

Running into the bedroom where the crying was the loudest, I climbed on top of the dresser.  I was only six inches away from the shrieking and crying.  But it was six inches too far.  I stretched up on my tippy toes.  My calf muscles, still sore from the move, groaned in protest, but this was important.  I was not going to stand by and do nothing.  Bracing my hands on the wall to give me some leverage and traction, I was just three inches from the ceiling.  Three scant inches from ground zero.  I didn’t hesitate.  I inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with air, and shouted:

HAHAHHAHAHAHWOOOTWOOOTHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHTAKETHATMUTHAFUCKA!!

And for five blissful seconds, the yelling, crying, and music stopped.  I held my breath.  Fuck.  And then I breathed a sigh of relief.  I am St. Bitch the Fierce.  And I don’t care how obnoxious you are, you wouldn’t stab a saint in the face.  Would you?

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And Then . . .

Christmas blew like an enthusiastic whore with razor blade braces.  As I was shopping among the holly jolly holiday lights at Victoria’s Secret and deciding between the comfortable cotton jammies and the brittle acrylic slip that looked as if it had been Bedazzled by blind kindergartners, Bob Cratchit Mr. Dingo was in a nondescript office holding a slip of another sort.  It was pink.  Yes, the Tuesday before Christmas, Mr. Dingo lost his job.  We’re fucked.  The holidays have been spent deciding whether our bed will fit under one of the city’s main bridges and scouring the internet and classifieds for apartments we can afford with frequent flyer miles and an adjunct teacher’s salary (Hahahahahahaha! *wipes tears from eyes*).  We eventually nixed the bridges because there’s no Innernetz.  In spite of all the hype, there are no habitable bridges on the Information Superhighway.  I can live without cable, and electricity, and running water.  But who can live without Innernetz?  I love you, Innernetz.  I really do.  I also love writing comments I never post and sending emails I regret ten seconds after cutting the umbilical cord.  Besides, there’s no Starbucks under any bridges in New York City.  Not yet, at least.  Still, having investigated the bridge option, I now know where all my Starbucks Friends come from. 

So, that’s my Christmas post. 

And here’s my New Year’s post:  Happy Fucking New Year. 

Moving on….

About a week ago, as I sat in front of the computer screen transfixed by our bank account — what does it mean when all the numbers are preceded by a hyphen? — Dingo Girl had just about had enough.  She wanted to play.  She wanted to walk.  She wanted to run and be free of my foul mood and my phone calls canceling things.  Now, Dingo Girl, she’s my chill pill, my Paxil, my shred of sanity, my mutually co-dependent canine compadre.  Dingo + Dingo Girl = BFF4EVA!  Walks with Dingo Girl are never run-of-the-mill.  It’s more like run-after-squirrel and run-after-child-eating-cookies.  Her favorite thing, though, is run-through-puddles.  After the previous week’s rain, I knew the park would be the muddy stuff of a redneck Bubba’s wet dream — dirt so soggy it demands that monster trucks pull tractors, that bikini-clad women wrestle, and that you take your boots off to keep them from getting dirty.

Cresting a hill, we found a stream that had overrun its bank and covered the path.  Fallen trees icky with moss, fungi, and the rest of nature’s enormous assortment of snot blocked one side. The other was a steep drop off into a used condom- and beer-can-infested pond.  There were only two choices: through or around. The wall of logs looked stable, but that was as misleading as an Enzyte commercial.  I kicked the center of the gnarly mass and the log jam shifted.  Something scurried underneath.  I couldn’t really see it, but it looked like it glanced at the ring on my finger and whispered, “my precious.” Oh, hell to the no!  Dingo Girl, we’re turning around.  Dingo Girl gave me the “Bitch, puh-leeez” look as I backpeddled from the Leaning Tower of Nasty.  Mouth open and tongue flying, Dingo Girl cannonballed into the middle of the puddle.  And disappeared.  She vanished.  I looked around me to see if anyone had seen the thirty-pound dog in the fifty-pound body disappear but also half expecting Dingo Girl to be behind me, shaking her paws in my face and telling me I just got freaked.  But I was alone.  All alone.  Dingo Girl had pulled an Osama bin Laden on me without so much as a bark goodbye.

I could hear Gollum sliding around under the Leaning Tower of Nasty, but the puddle was still.  I searched the sky.  There had been a meteor shower over New York City a month or so before, and strange, flashing lights had been spotted all over the place right around Christmas.  That could only mean one thing: alien zombies.  “Give me back my dog you big-headed, one-eyed, undead motherfuckers!” I screamed at the UFOs hovering overhead. 

And it worked!  Suddenly, the surface of the water broke.  That little overflowed puddle was much deeper than it looked!  Dingo Girl emerged on the other side of the puddle sputtering blach, blaaach! blaaaaghhhh! and snarling at the water. 

Ha!  Served her right.  Puddles are one thing.  Total submersion without her wetsuit and fins is another.  She was one mad dog. 

I started to climb over the Leaning Tower of Nasty to get Dingo Girl when my disorder surfaced like a floater.  I was FUCKED.  At the pinnacle of the heap, one foot darted to the left.  I caught my balance. Then, my other foot went right. Leftrightleftrightleftright.  My feet slipped in an increasingly rapid rhythm until I was doing the hillbilly hoedown, knees up to my ears, hands flapping and arms waving like a pew-jumping Pentecostal on So You Think You Can Dance.  The more I tried to regain my balance the more I looked like a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man.  And then the logs shifted.  Gollum was coming!  I was running in place, trying to keep up with the rotation of the logs to keep Gollum from nibbling on my fingers — highkneeshighkneeshighknees — when suddenly my ass hit the log pile and I slid, branch by anal probing branch, until I landed on my back in The Puddle That Ate My Dog.  Dingo Girl whined and pawed at the ground. 

And then, something finally began to go my way. 

Unfortunately, it was the Leaning Tower of Nasty.  It creaked and groaned and swayed toward me like a withered old nun with a ruler in her hands.

Just then, the water moved.  The water didn’t ripple.  It moved.  By itself.

I was on my feet and by Dingo Girl’s side faster than Britney Spears speed-dialed her attorney after she woke up married to Jason Allen Alexander.  Dingo Girl and I were both sputtering blach, blaaach! blaaaaghhhh! and snarling at the water until, suddenly, Dingo Girl turned and ran, leaving me at the edge of the underwater portal to another dimension.  I turned to chase her.  As I turned to go, out the corner of my eye, I saw something slither out of the puddle into the pile of rotted wreckage.  I’m not joking.  It was not human.  Not animal.  Not my imagination.  Dingo Girl barked again.  I followed her in my water-logged boots — squishsplatsquishsplat.  You won’t get us, you big-headed, one-eyed, undead freaks, I muttered. 

Not today, anyway.

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Cookie Monsters

Ooooh, holeEey niiIIIght—

A clatter from the kitchen interrupted my shower serenade and made me drop my microphone loofah. What the —?!  Another crash, followed by what sounded like someone digging through my breakfast cereal looking for the prize.  Ha, ha muthafucka!  I already took out the prize!  It was a Lego toilet or something.  And Dingo Girl already chewed it into a pulpy wad of plastic!  You FAIL, chump!

Wait!

I was home alone.  I was in the shower.  The ruckus from the kitchen could only mean one thing — zombies.

Trapped in my bathroom, my only hope for survival would rest on how resourceful I could be.  I needed a weapon.  I looked around.  I could concoct a Molotov cocktail in my empty mouthwash bottle with Nyquil and a wash cloth.  But the wash cloth was wet and I had no matches.  Nyquil alone would certainly knock out someone who is a zombie even before they take it, but how would I get him to drink it?  I couldn’t even find the little plastic cup.  I needed something foolproof.  I could squirt shower gel in the zombie’s face.  If it didn’t close its eyes, that would sting like hell.  And zombies don’t blink all that much.  I had about half a bottle of Aveda Rosemary Mint Hand and Body Wash.  But it’s a small bottle and, serious, it was almost $20.  It should cost less than $10 to blind a zombie.  I needed a cheaper weapon.

I did have morning breath, a known WMD, and no mouthwash.  I breathed into my cupped hand.  Oh yeah, I thought.  Locked and loaded.  But, you know, no need to rush into anything.  Besides, I hadn’t yet washed off my oatmeal-honey scrub mask.  Maybe hiding out in a steamy shower covered in breakfast was the appropriate way to deal with the zombie hordes.  Kind of like how Governor Arnie handled those aliens in Predator.

No.  Dingo Girl and Not a Dingo were out there.  I had to make a move.  I was carefully and oh. so. quietly sliding the shower curtain aside when I heard the dishes by the sink clatter to the floor.  Innernetz, this was serious.  There was really something in the kitchen.  I may or may not have peed my birthday suit. 

I stepped carefully across the bathroom floor.  It was probably not a good idea to apply the oatmeal-honey scrub mask to my entire body because it was really hard to move with ninja-like stealth with my butt cheeks stuck together.  I pressed my ear to the door.  The sounds were definitely coming from the kitchen.  I really needed a weapon.  The plunger!  Grabbing Excalibur from behind the toilet, I gave a few practice thrusts and put on my mean face.  “Don’t come any closer, asshole!” I whispered.  “I have e coli and I’m not afraid to use it!.”

I was ready. 

The door creaked open on its warped hinges. The kitchen went silent.  Damn!  Had I lost the element of surprise?  I eyed the living room through the quarter-inch crack.  I didn’t see Dingo Girl.  She was probably protecting me from under the bed.  Into my peripheral vision strolled Not a Dingo.  Evidencing the fearless mien of her leonine ancestors, she mercilessly stalked a sunbeam. And then got bored. Yawing and stretching, she plopped down in the middle of the floor, hiked her hind leg over her ear and began to slurp her cooter.  I remembered reading an article about a cat that saved her owner from an intruder and another one about a cat that dialed 911.  I knew I could count on Not a Dingo. “Run, Not a Dingo!  Go get help!” I thought.  I could tell the moment Not a Dingo received my instant mental message.  She looked up from her cooter slurpin’ for just a moment and messaged back, “Hey!  Look what I can do!”

There was another crash from the kitchen.  Damn, damn, damn! I thought.  It sounded like the cookie jar.  And then I got mad.  Oh, no you din’t! You did NOT come to my kitchen and steal my cookies.  The front door was just inches away from the bathroom and I was confident I could make it. But there was no way I was going to leave Dingo Girl and Not a Dingo in the apartment with a killer.  And I knew it had to be a killer.  Anyone with enough balls to sneak into my apartment and touch my Snickerdoodles had to foresee the potential need for deadly force. 

One hand on the door, the other holding Excalibur, I had to make a decision.  And then I heard it.  tich, tich, tich.  I knew that sound!  tich, tich, tich. But in the kitchen?  Drying oatmeal flaked off my trembling body and crumbled to the floor.  My feet left wet tattoos on the cold hardwood as I snuck to the kitchen.  Every Law and Order episode I’d ever seen flicked through my brain.  I could see Ice-T standing over the chalk outline of my body shaking his head saying, “Ah, here!  See this footprint?  This is where the victim did something really stupid.” I took a deep breath that never quite reached my lungs and peeked into the kitchen.  Pots, pans, dishes, and cookie crumbs were everywhere.  And there, in the middle of it all was the black-eyed fiend. 

“Pinky!” I yelled.  “You scared the shit out of me!”

Pinky’s bushy tail waved at me wildly as she dove into the tub of nuts by the fridge searching for the walnuts that warm her squirrel heart.  A cold breeze alerted me to the open window.  “Get out of here,” I hissed.  “Do you know what will happen if Not a Dingo sees you?”

Pinky was unperturbed.  A quick glance over my shoulder revealed Not a Dingo oblivious to the gamey morsel just within her reach as she practiced the Licking Your Own Belly With Two Outstretched Legs In The Air yoga routine that still gives me a sore neck when it’s just about to rain. 

“Get back outside,” I said to Pinky.  “I’ll bring some walnuts to you.”

Pinky ran to the window, pausing briefly to scoop up a piece of Snickerdoodle.  She waited impatiently while I sorted through the tub of nuts.  I presented her with the largest walnut I could find.  Without so much as a “thank you,” she grabbed it from me and scrambled away.  I closed the window.  I had twenty minutes to get to work.

Although I managed to wash off most of the oatmeal and honey, the areas I missed formed an insoluble binding agent between my clothes and skin.  Walking to work like a drunken hula girl in an attempt to dislodge the resulting denim wedgie was a painful reminder not to miss my waxing appointment later that afternoon. 

But the day was not through fucking with me yet.  Alone in my office, frantically printing out the day’s lesson plan, the lights suddenly went out.  It could only mean one thing — zombies.

******I have a new post up over at The Greenists. It’s about food!****

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Furby

So, there I was at Starbucks, grading papers and trying to ward off an Overused Comma coma with a Cranberry Bliss bar, when Tiny Bladder at the next table asked me to watch his stuff for the millionth time.  I rolled my eyes, stuffed a chunk of Cranberry Bliss into my mouth and said, “Dude, I don’t care how cold it is outside, no one wants your dollar-store notebook and the ratty goddamn trench coat your mama obviously dressed you in.” Somehow, through the crumbly brown sugary goodness that fell from my mouth he heard, “Sure! No problem!” Then he dashed off.

While Tiny Bladder ran to the bathroom, a fetid odor snuck into the coffee shop, curdling the last of the lemon frosting sticking to my fingers.  I held my nose in the nick of time because, given a few more seconds, it would have jumped off my face and scurried out the door.  For there in the doorway stood Furby.  I groaned.  I had thirty-three more papers to grade with sentences like:

Homosexuality didn’t have a name in the 12th Century.  It was called gay in the 20th Century being that men what lived together were happy.

And

During the American Civil War in the late 1960s feminism was dying.  It was in its death throws.

I did not have time to deal with Furby’s brand of crazy.  My stomach tried to dissolve itself with its own acid as Furby’s pungent, dank, mop soaked in urine, moldy cabbage scent settled over the store.  I turned back to my papers hoping Furby would not sense the crazy magnet implanted behind my left ear during a secret government experiment in the 1980s.  He had thirty or so mangy stuffed animal torsos from the Island of Plague Infected Toys pinned to his moldy jacket and 70s era running shorts.  As he made his way toward me (natch!) eyeless heads with mouths disfigured by rats and dry rot taunted me, “We’re coming to get you, Dingo!  We’re coming to get YOUooouuuuUUU!”

It’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, it’s just a dream, I told myself, closing my eyes and wishing it all away.  It worked.  Sort of.  When I opened my eyes, Furby was seated at Tiny Bladder’s table drinking Tiny Bladder’s coffee and writing in Tiny Bladder’s notebook. 

“Excuse me, “ I said.  “Someone’s sitting there; he’ll be right back.”

Furby continued to scribble in Tiny Bladder’s notebook.  Although Furby ignored me, his Typhoid Toys did not.  Bouncing and bobbing with every elaborate flourish of Furby’s Tiny Bladder’s pen, their empty eye sockets stared at me accusingly, spewing reproach (not to mention hantavirus) in my direction.  I was supposed to be watching Tiny Bladder’s things!  What kind of derelict sentinel am I?  I had to do something.

Before I could interrupt him again, Furby paused from his frantic writing.  Apparently, all that creative activity, together with the large coffee, were making him warm.  So he removed the head-studded coat with some fanfare, and the smell of sick room sweat and body odor became even more overpowering. 

But at that moment, thoughts of compassion, understanding, and kindness rose above the wormwood stench of Furby’s presence.  Furby, after all, seemed to have fallen on hard times.  I was warmed by the holiday music playing over the speakers. The beautifully lit professionally photographed pictures of pumpkin pie latte evoked Normal Rockwell images of friends and family.  Furby’s furry contingent of contagion was his family.  And I, I am a friend to man, a comrade of all mankind.  My mind floated on thoughts of “we are the world” and “we are the children,” and, miraculously, my body went with it, all the way up to the manager where I, with compassion, understanding, and kindness said, “He’s using someone else’s stuff.” Because nothing overcomes a spiritual bond with your fellow man like good ol’ property rights.  It’s the American Way!

I stayed at the counter thinking of Peace on Earth and ordering another Cranberry Bliss as the manager gently, and with compassion, understanding, and kindness, gave Furby the boot.  Furby gathered his things and flounced out of the Starbucks with a primetime pageant-worthy flounce to end all flounces.  If trumpets had heralded his departure, it would have been no more dramatic.  Still, if he had turned at the door and said, “Good day, sir!  I said, GOOD DAY!” I would have applauded.

Instead, I hummed Fa la la la la! La la la la! all the way back to my seat and launched into another poorly written paper.  Tiny Bladder returned.  Dear god!  What took him so fucking long! 

“Hey!” he exclaimed.  “What happened to my coffee?” He eyed me suspiciously.

“Well,” I began to explain but was cut short.

“And where’s my coat?”

Oh shit.  Still sitting on the chair was Furby’s coat of heads, all of them staring at me critically with their vacant eyeholes.  Tiny Bladder’s trench had departed.

“That’s not your coat?” I asked.

Yes, there are eight million stories in this naked city.  And tonight, one of those stories is a little less naked. 

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My Fat Mouth

Quick Update:  I forgot to tell you, I did another post at The Greenists.


Christmas came early to Casa de Dingo in the form of a 246-page glossy magazine.  Although I try to camouflage my fashionista aspirations beneath sweatshirts, tattered jeans, and slept-in pony-tails to avoid the ravenous paparazzi waiting to plaster my face across the latest copy of Useless and Oh no, not her again magazines, I cannot deny my love for Vogue, Marie Claire, Elle, and InStyle.  I consume them from cover to cover, ripping out the perfume inserts and rubbing them all over my body like poor woman’s Febreeze.  Except for the Prada Milano perfume insert.  It makes you smell less like Febreeze and more like the sticky stained carpet in a whore house.

It was with glee that I flipped through the pages of the November Glamour because it was the issue that promised to feature “plus-size” models — by plus size, they meant anyone who can wear corduroy without looking like a pipe cleaner.  What a disappointment!  Only two of the gorgeous plus-sized models were modeling clothes and even then, they had their arms crossed protectively in front of their bodies as if to shield readers from the sight of their unemaciated flesh:  Oh noes!  A Size-12!  Won’t someone think of the children?!1! 

I flipped through page after page of waifs, sticks, and cadavers balancing lollipop heads on necks so skinny they’d fail inspection at the broom factory.  I finally found models larger than the rolled Benjamins Kate Moss uses to snort her coke.  The luscious ladies were lumped together — literally, lumped together like tumors — in a two page spread waaaaaaay at the back of the magazine.  Fuck you Glamour.  Fuck.  You.  Nobody puts baby in — oh, wait, nevermind, Johnny Castle has left the building.

As fate would have it, last week my students were working on their research papers about advertising and media.  One of my students, a café au lait complexioned beauty with a honeyed patois that conjures images of Coronas, beaches, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” was struggling with her paper about the negative impact fashion magazines have on the female psyche. I don’t play favorites, Innernetz.  I really don’t.  I just like some students more than others.  Caribbean Queen just happens to be one of those students who could write her research paper on the back of a matchbook and light it on fire as she is handing it to me, and she would still get an A.  So, when I saw her chewing the end of her pen, I made my way to her desk.

“Stuck?” I asked.

Caribbean Queen sighed deeply and pulled a copy of Vogue from her backpack.  She slapped it onto her desk in disgust.  “I’m not in there.  I’m never in there!” she said.  I looked at this smart, funny, beautiful girl and felt her dismay.  She could forget about ever finding her Rubenesque body-type modeling an off the shoulder, cinched-waist, bracelet-sleeved, metallic pleated skirt, rock, paper, scissors, mini-shift in the pages of any fashion magazine.  The Glamour debacle, fresh as a newly erupted cold sore, propelled me to action.  Oh hellz no!  It was not going to go down like this.  I was not going to allow her to even begin to disparage herself.  I was going to change her life.  Change. Her. Life! 

I grabbed the pen from her hand and began to write.  Sparks erupted and the smoke that rose from her wide-ruled college pages was heady incense.  I gave her the names of web sites like Shapely Prose, Big Fat Blog, and Fatshionista.  I told her she is beautiful just as she is blah, blah, blah, don’t try to conform to arbitrary standards of beauty, yadda, yadda, yadda, Madison Avenue’s boy-like model of feminine beauty is more a statement about pederasty than pretty, nod, wink, nod.

I set the pen down only when the plastic casing started to melt.  She looked at me with awe and adoration.  I was humbled, Innernetz.  Humbled.  She was silent for a moment. Suddenly, tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks.  A simple “Thank you” would have sufficed. And some fresh brownies at Christmas.  And maybe a Moleskine notebook for Teacher Appreciation Day, engraved with “Best Teacher Ever!” But that’s it!  Anything more and I’d have to report it as income.

I looked into her watery eyes and mine grew watery, too.  My lips were pursed into a tight but quivering smile.  A hug was about to happen and my hands were already flapping a little.  She, meanwhile, was speechless. 

“Ms. Dingo, I didn’t . . . I mean . . .”

I managed to gasp, “Yes?”

“I want to see someone in the magazines who looks like me!”

“Exactly!” I said, and reached for that hug. 

“No!” she wailed.  “I didn’t mean fat!  I meant Black! Do you think I’m fat?”

“No! Nononononononononononono!” I spit out as fast as I could.  But it was too late.  The fat was out of the bag, spread all in her notebook.  Add some flour to her notebook, pop it in the oven, and you have a pie crust.  Add some baking soda and milk: biscuits.  Delicious biscuits.

By this time, the rest of the class had turned their attention to us, wondering why Caribbean Queen was crying and why I was backpedaling so fast I knocked yesterday onto its ass.  Fortunately, there was only fifteen minutes of class left and I decided to let them out early.  Trying to recover my composure, I walked to the front of the class and announced, “Remember, your papers are due on Friday.  And please, please, PLEASE!, remember to fat chick.  Fact check!  I meant fact check!”

Ah yes, Innernetz, life is all about Teachable Moments.  That day, however, I was the one who got schooled.

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