Twenty-Four

The very first thing today, at 5:22 AM, is inexplicably thinking, Kurt Cobain!, and hitting the snooze button. The second thing also involves the snooze button, and the third too. The fourth almost involved the snooze, but is actually getting up, showering, and putting together today's outfit: The Sixties. Rediculously flared pants, authentic "LOVE" ribbon as a belt, Beatles shirt because there was some kind of plan hatched in Ancient History for several people to wear them together.

Fifth thing is running out the door, sixth is "Good Day Sunshine" and "Morning Glory" waiting for the bus. Seventh is realizing all three girls at our stop have missed it. Eighth is being driven to school in my neighbor's car. Ninth is a parking-lot meeting with G, who missed the same bus while hair-straightening. Ten is rediscovering there's an assembly second period, and I needn't take most of what I usually carry to first hour.

Eleven is hatching and crosshatching in drawing; twelve is learning French Boy has his first-hour class just up the hall, and thirteen is the socially unflappable Brittany striking up a very real and very articulate conversation between us. Thirteen is being so distracted I walked away from the auditorium and felt like an idiot.

Fourteen is an assembly about how sex must come after love, trust, honor, respect, and marriage, as punishable by AIDS; fourteen and a half is Hanting practically cuddling, which is minorly lesbian but mostly cuddly. Fifteen is being EP class recorder, and writing more than the last three weeks' worth of recorders combined.

Sixteen and seventeen don't count by reason of being freshman mentoring and softball, respectively.

Eighteen is my awesome chemistry teacher sticking a green glowstick in a lead-lined case marked Caution: Radioactive Materials to freak us out. Eighteen and a quarter is watching him Geiger-counter decades-old boxes of various elements; eighteen and three-quarters is the fact that the broken red Fiestaware was by far emitting the most beta, and that the lead-lined box was leaky.

Nineteen is my accidental suggestion, during an off-topic session about kidney stones and HIV in history, that a former student was incestuous. Twenty is realizing that I'll probably do very well on my functions test tomorrow, and that the next unit involves nothing more fanged than systems of equations. Twenty-one is going home and doing easy systems of equations while listening to the John Roberts hearings. Twenty-two is curly fries at dinner; twenty-three is the BBC reporter on The World who pronounced the "Baton" in "Baton Rouge" like "batone".

Twenty-four was going to be buying myself a copy of the new Franz Ferdinand song from iTunes, but I think I'll save it for a day when I actually need the pick-me-up. So twenty-four is for you: it's twenty-four things about my desk, which is more a display case than a work space, partly because the chair is always hung over with half-developed, half-baked outfits.