How to be friends with your schizophrenic neighbor:

You've just moved into your apartment, and all is well. The hiss of the radiators only keeps you up for half of the night now, and you've grown accustomed to banging on the window to ensure that the pigeons don't nest there. (Bird babies are as ugly as all get out.) All that is left to do is a load of laundry.

You venture downstairs. You pass a new neighbor smoking on the steps. In the spirit of friendship you glance up. Smile. Say "hello."

"Fucking, shitty-assed watermelons!"

Don't be alarmed. Your neighbor is merely schizophrenic. You can spend the next three years making mad dashes to the laundry room when he appears to have returned to his cave, or you can follow these simple rules and become his friend.

1) Do not shy away when, passing your neighbor, he begins yelling about that "fucking Texan whore." Assume that he is referring to another female Texan, and resolve to show him that you are not ALL whores.

2) Make a note of your neighbor's clothing when you pass him on the steps. If he is wearing trendy clothes, you can safely assume that his relatives have been to visit and he is on his meds. It would be appropriate to greet him at this point. If he is wearing his old Hawaiian shirt and a dirty jacket, it is best to pass by under the assumption that any attempt to start a conversation will be greeted with some particularly spicy expletives.

3) Try to become comfortable with having the word “fuck” yelled at you, or at least in your general direction. If you happen to live with a significant other, they can help you with this task. The more desensitized you are, the easier it will be to keep a straight face whenever your neighbor verbally attacks the invisible mob lurking right behind you.

4) Bake him cookies for Christmas, and don’t be surprised if he refuses to answer his door, even though you will be able to hear him shuffling around inside. Just wait until the next time he emerges for a smoke break to present him with your gift. This will not make him like you any more, but it will make you feel better about yourself.

5) Use your super sleuth skills and the mailbox area to find out his first name. Make a point of greeting him daily. This will, again, make little difference to your neighbor, but you’re in it for yourself anyway, right?

6) Don’t be hurt if, after months of work, your neighbor still doesn’t seem to like or even recognize you. It is always possible that he does, but if he doesn’t, at least the thought of doing the laundry doesn’t give you nightmares quite as often as those baby pigeons do.

Everybody's Doing It

Before I had my own classroom, I knew that teaching was hard, and that I wouldn’t make a lot of money. I had heard of violent students, students who could make their nose bleed on command, and students who knew and shouted words that I hadn’t even heard of until college. And when I was hired as a 1^st grade teacher, I braced myself for a year filled with all kind of bodily fluids—blood, spit, snot, vomit, urine. But the thing that no one ever mentioned or prepared me for was how often I would have to deal with, well, poop.

Yes, I have poop on the brain. The following conversation is one that I had with a student yesterday, after he returned from the little boy’s room.

“Are you feeling better?”

“No. My tummy still really hurts. And it had red in it.”

“What had red in it?”

“It.”

“What it? Did you go number one or number two?”

“What?”

“Number one or number two?”

“Huh?”

“Did you go pee or poop?”

“Oh. Poop. I had diarrhea.”

So as you can see, trying to gloss over bodily functions with juvenile euphemisms doesn’t really work when having a conversation with a juvenile. Eventually we got the problem sorted out, and he went home early. Unfortunately it led to a follow up conversation today in which he informed me that it hurts whenever he has diarrhea, and that he gets diarrhea when he doesn’t eat good foods.

As you may have guessed from reading that heartwarming scenario, working with first graders has really redefined my opinion of what qualifies as too much information. One of my favorite stories from my second year of teaching also deals with an unabashed willingness to talk about the need to defecate. One of my students, who a colleague so aptly described as looking rather like Suffleupagus, was notorious for being a little light on the marbles. He would wander about my room during lessons with a dreamy look on his face and cartwheel down the hall to the cafeteria. He was cute, but flighty. Once he came back from the bathroom during rug time, sat down, and immediately raised his hand to go to the bathroom again. Thinking that it was a ploy to get out of working, I denied his request. Without a trace of shame and in a voice clear enough for everyone to hear he announced, quite factually, “But I have to go poop.”

While some first graders seem very open about their bowel movements, others seem to trend the other way. While my poop story from last year was hilarious, a fellow first grade teacher encountered a much more distressing scenario. Her room had been smelling odd for several days, so while the children were out at recess, she took the opportunity to search their desks for a spoiled snack or something of the kind. Unfortunately, what rolled out of one child’s desk was human excrement. Upon questioning the culprit, it was discovered that he had had an accident on the playground. The poop had rolled out of his pants and, choosing not to simply walk away or kick it into the bushes, he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and carried it back into the school. Then, in lieu of flushing it down a toilet or throwing it in a trashcan, he decided to hide it in his desk. Isn’t that what you would do?

Now you might be arguing that these were all stories of normal bodily functions that were linked to a lack of social awareness. However, I have also known a child who purposefully used fecal matter as a way to manipulate me. After an accident that involved wetting his pants and going home early, a student decided that wetting his pants was actually a good thing. When grandma found out that he had started deliberately wetting his pants to go home, she threatened punishment. Undaunted, he stopped wetting his pants, but would come back from the bathroom telling me that he had missed the toilet. Because I am a very savvy teacher, I could deduce from a quick glance that he was lying. Unwilling to give up so easily, the child decided that it would be best to deliberately defecate in his pants. Unable to easily ascertain whether or not his claims were true, the office had to call grandma. I don’t know what the punishment at home turned out to be, but it must have been stringent. He didn’t have bathroom problems for the rest of the year.

Yes, it is true. Everybody poops. But first graders take it to a whole new level.

The Gauntlet

I have to take a test this weekend to update my teaching license, and it happens to be standardized. I haven’t taken a standardized test in ages. In fact, the last time I took a standardized test I couldn’t drink alcohol or rent a van, and I was only just old enough to vote. So maybe you can see why, eight years later, I am feeling just a bit apprehensive about this shindig.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t forgotten how to bubble in answers, and I guess college prepared me well enough to take timed essay tests, but even that was three years ago. Besides, one of the perks of attending a liberal arts college is also a drawback. Whereas my professors often rewarded me for thinking creatively and, to be frank, fudging my way through essays, standardized tests have . . . standards. Points are only awarded if I mention such and such theory and its corresponding theorist. I’m not prepared for this.

Which leads my rambling mind to another thought. I may never be able to go to grad school. This simple little, not-so-very-frightening test is keeping me up at nights and, I suspect, giving me an ulcer. Now, the GRE—which I previously thought a reasonable task—seems like a medieval gauntlet.

I’d blame all of this on my natural anxiety, but I have it under control. Really. Those little pills I take nightly are miraculous. It’s been months since I checked the oven ten times to make sure it was off before leaving the house, and I can’t remember the last time I drove back down a street just to make sure the speed bump I hit wasn’t really a person. So if it’s not ludicrous anxiety, what is it? An old fashioned fear of failure? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just too used to giving tests instead of taking them. I did become a teacher in order to transfer my residual worry to others, don’t you know. Karma sure does stink.

Priorities

I hate Charlie Sheen. He’s a chauvinistic, arrogant, vile little . . . oh wait. I COULD CARE LESS.

Charlie Sheen is one of the millions of people in the world who have made some really, really terrible choices. Yes, he’s a movie star and has therefore has given people permission to scrutinize his life. That doesn’t mean he deserves our scrutiny.

Let me be clear. I am not arguing that Charlie Sheen deserves privacy. I am arguing that in the entire span of world history, he’s not even a blip. Yes, I believe everyone has value as a person, but not everyone is newsworthy. The fact that almost every major news network including CNN has resorted to tabloid-style exclusive interviews and gossip is low, even for news networks.

True, our system of receiving news has been broken for a long time. Newscasters who have no qualifications other than a loud voice and—if they’re a woman—a pretty face, research teams who cut and paste from a single source, and editors who trim and splice to meet their agenda are among the most egregious of transgressions.

But when protests and violence are raging in Africa and the Middle East, when the rights of civil servants are being threatened in our own country, when Congress is on the brink of a standstill due to partisan arrogance, why is our populace worried about the personal life of a man who, though admittedly gross, pales in comparison to some of the drugged-out, child abusers that I have personally met?

Priorities, people.

Dear Wisconsin Republicans

Dear Wisconsin Republicans,

What are the chances that you could visit the wizard this weekend and ask for a couple dozen hearts? Even split between the lot of you, I’m sure they could improve the chances of your being able to pass as human. Then again, maybe the health and retirement security of your public servants will never be important to you. Nonetheless, surely, SURELY, the same people who would never stand for big businesses to be censored or limited in any way can understand that to include provisions in your jewel of a governor’s bill that would silence your state’s workers is unjust. Oh, wait, I forgot. Corporations consider unions to be their arch nemesis under the glory banner we call capitalism. And what is more American than to squelch the needs and rights of a vulnerable demographic in favor of a few rich bastards? Especially when those rich bastards have you in their pockets. I guess you’re just doing your patriotic duty.

Without a shred of affection,

Jessica Stovall

PS: Rush Limbaugh, you just outstripped Glenn Beck as the fool of the week. Trying to claim that the civil servants of Wisconsin are greedy? When you just benefited from the extension of a tax cut for the nation’s wealthiest two percent? I know your horse is high and your waist is too wide to make walking comfortable, but maybe you should get off it. You can get back on when I find a teacher who is compensated fairly.

PPS: Fox News Correspondents—though I really cannot see how you earned that title—REPUBLICANS HAVE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE. Stop using incendiary propaganda to make conservative Americans seems like victims.

My Babies

Even during my first year of teaching I called my students my babies. It always came up casually, like when informing Josh that I needed to buy Halloween treats or new dry erase markers for my babies. I’ve never thought all that much about what I call my students, but I do believe that nicknames can be rooted in our true feelings about a person.

The word my is in fact very indicative of the way that I feel about the group of 25 nose-picking hellions that I am assigned every year. I can’t be their family, but I can be a safe and caring adult in their lives, and for the 35 hours a week that they spend with me, they are my responsibility. As Saint-Exupery so eloquently explained, when we care for someone and make that person our responsibility, he or she tames us. Those children are not my job, they become a part of who I am, and I will always see them as mine. When other teachers make comments about my students—good or bad—I almost always tense up. How could they understand the needs, successes, and shortcomings of my students? Has that teacher listened to every wiggly-tooth story, sharpened 4,000 prize box pencils, or put Band-aids on the knees of my students? Does that teacher know what my students have to deal with in their homes or how much they’ve grown since I met them? And when my babies move on to second grade, it is months before I stop feeling jealous of their new teachers, the grown-ups who have supplanted me as their “favrit teechr,” the new receiver of hugs and smiles, the person who now gets to celebrate their successes.

The other word, babies, can seem demeaning, even if I do work with first graders, and I know that people could interpret it to be a desire to have babies of my own. I think, however, that it is more reflective of the way that I care for them. Don’t get me wrong. Not one of the students in my room is coddled. I dismiss complaints of headaches and paper cuts more easily than I ever thought I could. Stomach aches are usually cured after I cavalierly suggest a trip to the bathroom or a drink of water. But I do care for the students in my classroom, and it is easier to understand their behavior when I consider that, in many ways, they are still babies. It is much easier to forgive a first grader who tells another first grader that they look like a freak when you consider that their ability to appropriately manage their emotions is still developing. It is easier to be patient with a child who cries because they miss their mom when you realize that they are, still, quite young. And when does a child ever seem more like a baby in need of care than when they are proud of their accomplishments and you realize that—despite your honest wishes—they won’t remain your baby forever?

Our Lady of Grace and Mercy

My grandmother recently lent me the copy of "The Secret Life of Bees" that I bought her for Christmas, and I find myself reading again about the mercy and the love and the hope provided by Mary, mother of Christ. While neither the characters of this book nor Anne Lamott are Catholic, they seem--if possible--to find more comfort in the arms of this woman than is normally talked about in the arms of Jesus. Perhaps because she was declared a saint, ready to petition God for the lowly, she seems more accessible than the son of God. Perhaps her complete humanity makes it seem that she in turn understands our failings, our joys, and our suffering, even more so than Christ.

Or perhaps it is because she is a woman and a mother. I know several people who refer to God as a "she," and while I used to think that this was a feminist statement of sorts, I now believe that perhaps these people want to think of a warm and loving God who will enfold them in peace and rock them softly into a state of grace. I think that is why I like to equate God with Mother Nature, because a mother who tends and blesses and brings beauty into the whole world is such a joyful idea.

And thinking about God as a mother is a comfort, but surely God fulfills the role of a father as well; and as it is a stretch to imagine God in any human form, I can see why these women gravitate toward Mary, the mother of thousands. She is tangible in a way that a heavenly being is not. She is the female embodiment of spiritual love. Her hands did good work, her heart experienced great suffering, and her arms are ready for the weary to fall into until they are strong enough to get up and walk again.