"Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself."
- George Carlin
I could have done a lot of interesting things on Saturday. I could have gone on the Gay Pride march and flirted outrageously with the crowd of onlookers. I could have gone to the Marxism 2008 conference and debated the collapse of the political left over the last few years. I could even have accompanied thirty EFL students to Brighton and pretended to be a tour guide.
But I was too busy doing deeply uninteresting things instead.
Sometimes you write something on impulse, then look at it and think "That's quite clever, and it's funny with a hint of pathos. But mostly it's just a bit horrid."
So, with apologies to Tiny Tim, Cher, and anyone else who's ever sung the original song in public, I present...Cammy Boy.
Come onto my screen cammy boy
You are seventeen with your toys
You've no way of knowing, just to whom you're showing
And what you've shown to me, bummy boy
When there are gay guys, I don't mind the fey lies
you make it blue, webcam boy
Friends they fail to date me, won't even masturbate me
I've still had you, my nancy boy
You cam from elsewhere, into my place
You squirt a puddle for me, onto your face
I'm an old and fat queer, but you don't care 'bout that dear
My sonny boy
And apologies to Camy too.
Moving swiftly on...Monday.
Yes Monday. Named for the Aztec deity Mund, god of fuckups. We still celebrate his weekly rebirth by fucking up everything we try to do on Monday morning.
I got to work in good time with an adequate plan of what and how to teach my six Spanish students for four hours. The plan was: Seeing as they have absolutely no need to go over the grammar points in the book yet again, but they could use some conversation and writing practice, make up some games that get them talking and writing. It was a good plan.
Then I found neither of my whiteboard markers worked, so I put them in the mysterious magical whiteboard marker refiller device. Which promptly exploded, showering me, the floor and bits of the office in blue ink.
Now, I don't know about you, but I would have thought that "easily erasable" board ink would wash out of clothes without trouble. But no, my nice new shirt is now permanently redesigned in big splashes in two tones of blue. The students rather liked it, thinking I'd gone all fashionable.
The secretary got a few spots on her skirt, and went into that insipid upper-middle class routine of shrugging and smiling and "Oh never mind"-ing, before demanding my immediate sacking as soon as she thought I was out of earshot.
So, I directed a few educational games for a few hours, inventing some as needed. Meanwhile outside the classroom there was a sudden noisy influx of new students arriving from all over the world - the usual mix of those who weren't supposed to arrive for another week, those with incomplete or inaccurate paperwork, and those labeled "advanced" who can't make a one word sentence in English.
There was therefore much frantic rearranging of timetables. I started the first lesson with six students, and finished it with eight, five of them the same.
Then during lunch some of them amused themselves drawing on my whiteboard - with what turned out to be a permanent markerpen.
Oh, and my final class bunked off. Seven new students I hadn't met yet collectively decided they'd prefer to lie on the beach instead.
Hmmmmm ....
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