A memory of my mother's.

Back when my mom and dad were first married and living in the Detroit area, this guy they knew's girlfriend who was Israeli and used to live in a kibbutz put on a dinner party for them and another couple.

Dinner was shrimp cocktail, a bottle of wine, and jellybeans.

A regret of my mother's.

The other day she said that she now regrets not being "more radical" when she raised me and my brother.

Addendum.

I forgot -

On the day when the prof asked me to take over teaching on a novel from the 1940s, I did this very quick mini-presentation on how the unconscious was at peak popular knowledge in the 1950s, ultimately asking students if they saw the novel that we were reading on that same trajectory, why or why not.

And, as one of the quick reasons I gave for why the unconscious was at peak popular knowledge in the 1950s, I mentioned how Scientology was a reactionary movement against that, premised on the idea of locating in your past lives the reasons you did mysterious things now, in order to free yourself from those unneeded and counterproductive compulsions.

"So you probably hate it here," I was like.  "Why am I here?  It's so tough.  There's so much work, and everyone's so miserable.  I hate it here.  So," I was like, "you go to a Scientologist, and then you discover that you were a monk a thousand years ago, and you used to self-flagellate a lot, and so you became addicted to pain."

At that, the room went into uproar.  The kids really liked that joke!

Classroom tidbits: 2 pretentious phrases.

I had done a lot of talking about comparisons with the students in my writing class, since their next 2 papers involved comparisons.

For a big part of my one lesson plan, I discussed focusing on a "tertium quid" ("a third something") as a way to make an interesting comparison.

In one section, I was like, "Yes it's pretentious, but can anyone guess what it means?".

"Um, third, something," one freshman was like.

"Exactly right!", I was like, "a third something."

Then, she was like, "What?!", and I did a whole routine about how this was like situation comedy, and she lucked into the right answer and everyone else was whispering behind their hands how smart she was.

In another section, one kid recognized the word "third" from Spanish, and the whole rest of the section, instead of saying "tertium quid", I said "el tertio que".

Also, when I used the word "sublimated hostility" when discussing a text and someone went "ahhhhh", I paused and repeated myself more gravely and was like, "sublimated hostility", and then I wrote in big letters on the board -

SUBLIMATED HOSTILITY 

- and finally I pointed to the phrase very seriously and was like, "That's why you go to college."

Two anecdotes from my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend:

1) When he first began to study in the U.S., he emailed a professor that he'd left something in his "pigeonhole", and the professor emailed back asking if he meant "faculty mailbox".

2) During this intro adult ed course he's teaching on Islam, he makes sure to teach early on about this English guy who attempted to bomb mosques.

"Can you imagine that," he told his students, "You go to the mosque with your family to pray peacefully, and then someone goes and tries something like this.  Can you ever feel safe again?".

Then, he added, "I wonder if all Christians are like that.  And whites."

Then, the people in his class started bending over backwards to explain that no, not all Christians are like that, and no, not all whites are like that.

"After that, they never mentioned September 11th again," he was like.

Another dream of death and decay...

I was looking at an open gray paper carton of eggs on which a couple were cracked and laying over the other eggs and sliding out over the edge, and I knew that the eggs were rotten.

Affirming friend comment: Tanning.

Since the other weekend was the first nice day of the year, I went out to suntan out by the lake, and texted several friends that I'd be out in this certain area, and to look for "the beached albino whale".

My one friend who teaches Czech modern literature texted back to find out where I was in relation to the whale.