Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

With My Finger On The Pulse Of “Hip”

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Lately I’ve seen this blogging meme making the rounds where you Google “your name+needs” and then list the first five or so things that come up. Being nothing if not a Shamless Troller For Stuff I Can Write About On My Blog I googled, and I came up with these results:

-Jenny needs a job. (No thanks, I’m good.)
-Jenny needs to find herself a baller. (First, Jenny needs to know what the heck that even means.)
-Jenny needs a cold shower. (Yes, but only because of the fever that’s accompanying this damn strep throat!)
-Jenny needs a smack daddy. (This scares me.)
-Jenny needs attention (Hm, truer words were never spoken.)
-Jenny needs to see herself as a good reader. (Not a problem.)

I had no idea what a baller was (and I’m kind of afraid to know what a smack daddy is), but I wasn’t worried because today I was tutoring the high school student who is my source of knowledge for all things “hip” and current.

“So, what’s a ‘baller’ “, I asked her when she got here.

“Is that a serious question?” she asked in disbelief.(Sarcasm: the price I pay for knowledge.)

When I assured her that it was, she informed me that it had multiple meanings. On the one hand it can apparently mean that “you have pimps and ho’s around you”, or it can mean that you’re really good at something.

“So, you could say that you’re a baller at Spanish. And I? Well I could say that I’m a baller at life.”

(Gee, thanks.)

We went on with the lesson until we got to a tricky problem involving a certain verb conjugation.

“Why is that the answer?” she demanded, when I corrected her mistake.

“Because [involved grammar explanation that you probably don’t really care about].”

“That really pisses me off!”

“I know. It’s because Spanish is out to get you.”

“Jenny, the whole world is out to get me. I’m a baller at life. That’s just the price I pay.”

Teaching Spanish To Engineers

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Yesterday in class I taught the Spanish words for the days of the week and the months of the year. Then, in order to give the students a chance to use the new vocabulary, I did some oral drills.

Me (in Spanish): “What are the months of the summer?”

The answer I was looking for: “June, July, and August.”

The Answer I Got From An Engineer: “Well, summer doesn’t officially start until June 21st, when the month is almost over. So in order to get 3 full months included in the season you will need to apply the ANSI Standard Of Rounding Up. So the answer would be July, August, and September.”

Spanish Meets The Real World

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Recently I began teaching a Beginning Spanish class to a group of businessmen. This week’s lesson introduced the numbers from 0-20, and in order to help them practice this new vocabulary I had them do some math problems. I thought this would be very helpful, practical information for them since many of the students work as purchasing agents.

“+ is más, and – is menos,” I explained.

Immediately one of the students, who was also the Chief Financial Officer, piped up:

“You don’t need to know más,” he informed the other students, many of whom report directly to him. “You only need to worry about menos.”

I’m So Glad I’m 34

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Yesterday I had the privilege of going out to dinner with a former student of mine who is now in college. He was telling me about a discussion he’d had with some of his friends on the pros and cons of getting body piercings.

Some people were all for it, and some people were very much against it. Apparently the strongest reason against getting piercings was this: “If you get your eyebrow pierced and then it gets infected, it will look like you have face herpes.”

“Wow. I’m so glad I’m 34,” I said.

“Yeah,” replied my friend (who is 19). “Because when you’re 34, you probably don’t use ‘herpes’ as any kind of measuring standard.

Thank You For Sharing-Not!

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Yesterday I saw one of my students for their final Spanish tutoring session ever. It’s good for both of us; for him, because he HATES Spanish; for me, because I am no longer responsible for shepherding him through academia now that he has discovered the magical sugary-caffeinated elixir that is a Tall Vanilla Latte.

As he was pacing around my office and working off his coffee high he began closely inspecting everything on my shelves, including my collection of cat figurines.

“Oh, don’t look at those,” I said. “I don’t want you to think that I’m a crazy cat lady.”
“Oh I already KNOW you are!” he replied. “Three’s the magic number!”

He is very lucky that I am not the person in charge of grading his final Spanish exam.

Who Knew?

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Today has been a mixture of tutoring some students in Spanish and getting ready to go out of town for a conference.

I guess getting ready for my trip has put me a little on edge, because by my last tutoring session my answers to the student’s questions had become a bit flippant and sarcastic.

This caused him to stop, put down his pen, look at me, and say, “Hm, apparently smart ass is catching. Who knew?”

Super Something

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Lately I have been thinking a lot about super powers.

It all started last weekend when I borrowed one of my technologically astute guy friends to help me purchase my husband’s Christmas present. My friend is an avid video gamer, and so as we were walking out of the store, I with my husband’s gift and he with a new stack of games for himself, we got to talking about super heroes.

My Friend: “I should never be given the power of invincibility, because if I were invincible I would go around hurting everyone else just because I could.”
Me: ” Hm, interesting.”
Me: (silently) OK, Universe, are you listening here?
Me: “So, you’d really be more of a super villain than a super hero.”
My Friend: “Exactly.”
Me: “And then you’d need a super hero to come against you.”
My Friend: “But no one could, because I’d be invincible.”
Me: “Ah, but everyone has a weakness. There’s Superman and kryptonite..”.
My Friend:  (interrupting)”Well, I guess you could bore me to death.”

(I still haven’t figured out if he just meant people in general, or if he was talking to me specifically at that moment. So I haven’t yet  decided whether or not I’m offended.)

So then I started to think about myself, and what super powers I could have. I would love to be able to fly, but that one’s probably a ways off yet. So then I started to make a list of everything I could think of about myself that could possibly be considered as some kind of super power. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. My hair is absolutely irresistible to cats. Scarily enough this is actually true. But try as I might, I really couldn’t think of any kind of situation where this ability would actually come in handy.

2. Apparently I am able to contain amazing amounts of tension in the muscles of my neck and shoulders. All the medical health professionals I’ve seen for this problem are just stunned when they examine me. I’m like the antithesis of “Elastigirl” from “The Incredibles”. But, once again, I really can’t imagine that the public would have much need for the services of “Really, Really Tense Girl”.

3. When people meet me they are frequently compelled to create a new nickname for me on sight. Now, I think this one could actually be useful. What this says to me is that I apparently have the ability to shape-shift, and to adapt myself to each situation and person that present themselves in my experience. So I could be “Chameleon Girl”, or even better, “The Confounder”. I can see a lot of potential uses for this ability.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and see about a costume. (But no capes!)

He Who Laughs Last…

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

…gives me a headache.

Usually I am pretty good at getting in the last word. Words are what I was trained in, and now words are my business. But yesterday I met my match.

I was working with a tutoring client and trying to elicit some information from him in a process which, incidentally, has given me entirely new insights into the phrase, “squeezing blood from a stone.”

I asked him if he was this difficult in all of his conversations with others, and he said that he liked to present people with a challenge.

Me: “Well, that’s just like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I love a good challenge.”
Him: “Yes, but then it’s just like in the cartoons when I pull the flag away, and there’s an anvil there instead.”

He won.

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: v.2.0

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

As hard as it is to believe, school will be starting here again in the next 3 or 4 weeks, and it will be time for me to start tutoring again. In honor of my imminent return to work, I offer these “What?!” moments gathered from my own past work experiences.

From my work as a tutor…

Student: “Will you take me to get my belly button pierced?”
Me: “No.”
Student: “Why not? I really thought you would.”
Me: “What?! Why?!”
Me: Performing a frantic mental review of every interaction I’d previously had with this student, wondering how I’d possibly given out the message that I was someone who would accompany teenagers as they voluntarily allowed others to drive very sharp needles through various parts of their body.

From my work as a bookseller…

9:00 am: The store opens.
9:01 am: An outrageously incensed gentleman approaches the info desk, where I, of course, am on duty.
Customer: “Hey! Last night I was reading a book, and I left it on that table over there. Now it’s gone. What happened to it?!”
Me: (assuming my Kindergarten Teacher tone): ” Well, at night, after we close, we put all the books back on the shelves.”
Me: looking slowly around the store to convey the subtle message that we, in fact, keep all our books on shelves and not in piles on the furniture.

December, in the middle of the holiday shopping madness
A customer corners me in the back of the store where I am unsuccessfully trying to blend into the romance section.
Customer: “Excuse me, ma’am, but where is your display of luggage ?”
Me: stunned into silence
Me: (certain I’d misheard somehow) “Um, excuse me?”
Customer: “Your luggage. My son was just up at your other store, and he told me all about the great luggage he saw there.”
Me: struggling so hard to keep a straight face that I’m sure my eyeballs are going to pop right out of my head and drop onto the floor
Me: searching desperately for a tone that does not at all suggest that I am in any way mocking the customer
Me: “I’m sorry. We don’t sell any luggage.”

There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I could say to convince her that we, the BOOKsellers, working in the BOOKstore, were not secretly hiding a cache of incredible luggage in the back, selfishly hoarding it for our own present-giving needs. But luckily for me, her poor, embarrassed husband could take the humiliation no longer and eventually pulled her away.

And to close I leave you with this statement, which I was told actually formed part of a company’s “Visions and Values”.  According to this document they were actively seeking employees with, “the ability to make quick decisions in the absence of facts and information.”