In the end, everything turned out fine. We found a TV mom for the sketch–Mimi Kennedy from Dharma and Greg–and booked Paula Jones parasite Susan Carpenter-McMillan to replace Ambassador Alan Keyes.
(The show even turned out to be pretty funny. The man who signs my paychecks is a pretty talented, funny guy, and I don’t care who knows I think so.)
Everyone did their work, and watched the shows in their offices, and had their dinner, and went home.
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My parents were both teachers. I have aunts and uncles who are teachers. My stepfather was a counselor at a juvenile detention center. My grandmother was a librarian. If I were a teacher, I know what I would tell my students: I would tell them that everything turns monotonous when it’s done five days a week. Blue-collar work, white-collar work, gigoloing, trench warfare. I would tell my students: If you’re bored now, just wait.
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When I was in high school, in Quebec, everyone I knew had one plan: to get out of school, buy a car, and drive it nonstop until they got to California. I wonder what California kids wish for.
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I have to buy my mom a Mother’s Day present. My mom was a reporter for the Montreal Star and the Montreal Gazette, and she taught communications at Dawson College, in Montreal. I think I’ll phone her up and ask her what exciting things she promised her students were out there just waiting to happen to them.
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Here’s a piece of advice my mom gave my brother James: This was a few years ago, James was a teen-ager, and Mike Tyson was on trial for rape. Tyson believed that by voluntarily entering his room, a woman was acquiescing to sex with him. The woman believed she had certain human rights, whether or not she was in a hotel. My mom chose to use the Tyson incident as a learning tool to warn my brother about the calamitous ambiguities with which sexual relationships were potentially fraught. “James,” she said, “let this be a lesson to you: Never have sex until you’re married. And after you’re married, think about it.”
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Tonight I was home by 9:30. Lexie woke up when I came in. She wanted to look at the Noah’s ark pictures in the Bible for Children, so we did. She wanted me to read her Who’s Afraid of Godzilla?, so I did, and then she went back to bed.
