A Special Birthday Message

His friendship has provided me with oodles of good blog fodder, and so, on this day of his birth, I dedicate this post to BFF Matt.

Happy Birthday, Muffin!

I want one of these

I want one of these very, very badly...



From Gizmodo...

Departure

from a window at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Act by which individuals leave a piece of their shadow behind. When departures are sudden, there is usually a delay of the soul. The physical site where a departure has taken place acquires a slight weight that is usually imperceptible to those who have never experienced loss. Departures are two-sided, like joints between past and present worlds. They serve as the diaphanous bridges of our memory. Sometimes departures are temporary, but those who return can never become the same person. Those who seek to escape from themselves often depart to never return.

Language Lessons

I recently started taking a fantastic writing class that meets downtown once a week. As part of our training, we are required to do 5 to 10 minutes of unedited, uncensored, freestyle writing practice every day. We are given (or give ourselves) prompts to get us going and then encouraged to just take it from there. The following is a bit from today's writing practice. Please note that it's not meant to be polished--it's just what came out during that moment. The prompt was "a color" (I chose red.):

The burnt clay rooftops blur into an expanse of red as we race along the highway. I recognized them from movies and the guidebooks, which warned would-be travelers to resist climbing out onto the inviting, but dangerously fragile tiles.

I was sharing the cab with a girl named Laura that I'd met less than an hour earlier as we deplaned on the rustic Florentine runway. Her ears had picked up my American accent and brief pleasantries had revealed that we were both headed towards the same rental agency. It was a happy accident that had allayed my worries about managing my five large suitcases on my own and hers about communicating with an Italian cab driver. Together we collected our luggage, piled it onto a cart, and engaged a deceptively tiny vehicle manned by a long-haired driver who introduced himself as Bruno.

And so I found myself racing along the Tuscan countryside in the company of two strangers: a casually handsome Italian driver and Laura, who was blond, sweet, and quickly getting on my nerves.

Bruno stared at me in the mirror. His dark eyes lingered along my cleavage and traced an invisible line up to where our eyes met. He saw that I was watching him and winked in an unabashed way that I instinctively understood to be very, very Italian. "Complimenti," he said, marking the first of several hundred times that I would hear the familiar bit of local flattery. I pulled my sweater up a bit and smiled as he shook his head in mock sadness.

My own eyes trailed out the window again, taking in this place that seemed familiar in a dreamlike way. " Che bello..." I murmured, savoring the roundness of these unfamiliar words in my mouth. "Mi piace tanto..." Bruno smiled again, "bell-a."

"Gum?" Laura asked, unaware of the cat and mouse game transpiring around her. I took a piece and turned to Bruno, who was still doing a magnificent job of navigating the cab while keeping his eyes off the road.

"Come se dice 'gum' in Italiano?" I asked him with the enthusiasm of a straight-A tourist.

"Scusi?"

"Gum," I said again, this time holding up the stick at chest level (where I was sure to grab his attention). "Come se dice?"

"Oh, oh, oh...," he said, suddenly understanding that I was asking for a translation.

"Choo-ing Gum."

"Chewing gum?!" I repeated, suddenly feeling a bit foolish. "But that's English!"

"Eh," he replied with a carefree shrug that all at once seemed to foreshadow the next several months of my life.

Kids and drunks never lie

BFF Matt (shown here at his most Patrick Dempsey-like) is a fourth grade teacher in Las Vegas for Teach for America. I'm constantly encouraging him to start his own blog as the stories he has to tell are hysterical.

Unfortunately, as teachers only get approximately 17 minutes of free time a week, he doesn't really have the luxury to start and keep a blog. For a while now he's been collecting and sharing completely true quotes said by his students.

These are a few of my recent favorites:

Girl: "Mr. O'Keefe, my mom told me that i shouldn't trust a man who doesn't match his belt and shoes, and I was thinking that you always match yours, except for when you wear that one thats kind of blue and white, but anyways, you know i am just glad to know i can trust you"

_____

(At the end of a lesson that he thought went really well)

Matt: "Ok, any questions about nonfiction text structure?"

Boy: "Mr. O'Keefe, why don't we have a class bunny?"

_____

Matt: "Seriously, you need to stop talking and get to work. I have already moved you down the behavior chart three times"

Girl: "I am sorry, Mr. O'Keefe, but I can't help it. My mom says that talking too much is genetic and that I am not lucky because I am my father's daughter."

_____

(Overheard)

Girl 1: "He has to be older than 65. Look how much gray hair he has!"

Girl 2: "That's not what he told me. Mr. O'Keefe told me he was 120 years old!"

Boy 1: "No way, my mom says he doesn't look a day over 35!"

[Editor's note: Matt is 23 and slightly prematurely gray.]

_____

Matt: "Ok class, we are going to illustrate similes related to weather today."

5 minutes later, while walking around the classroom -"Victor, why does that man in the middle of your drawing have such a red face and appear to be screaming?"

Boy: "Oh, well my simile is 'the thunder is as loud as when Mr. O'Keefe yells at me for being bad.' So, that's you."

_____

And my personal favorite:

Boy: "Mr. O'Keefe, was I a crack baby?"

Eavesdropping

Sometimes I like to listen in on other people's conversations and then post it on the Internet.