Why....Just, why?

Today was a typical day in the life. I got up early, went to school, spent more than a healthy dose of time with teenagers, did some planning after school, took the bus to the gym, worked out, went to the supermarket, and took the bus home.

A lot of times, I just sort of go through these motions as a matter of routine, without a lot of spinning of the old cerebral wheels, if you know what I mean!

Today, however, I was in a very contemplative mood, and I got to thinking about some stuff. I am not about to promise you that any of these issues are earth-shattering or life-altering. They are just little things that crossed my mind throughout the course of the day.

So, here are my issues (I'm in a list mood today..)

1. WHY do people who get tongue rings always have to play around with the rings so as to let everybody on the face of the earth know that the piercing is in place? Why does the tongue ring wearer constantly have to stick the tongue out and run the ring over the teeth, making all kinds of god forsaked noise and bruhaha? And this only leads me to the issue of the teeth. Why is it that people who have tongue piercings also have horrific teeth? I mean, Christ. These people invariably have green, fuzzy (yes, I said FUZZY) teeth! Maybe the correlation here is that tongue piercing is decidedly white trash and white trash people are likely not making routine visits to the dentist's office. Could this be the connection? Oh well, I'm at a loss. But I simply have to point out the thing with the constant playing with the tongue ring and the scuzzy teeth ring accoutrement and I have to ask WHY?

2. WHY is it that when I went online to investigate "Time Magazine for Kids" for my class, I could not get a price quoted? They got me to enter in my name, school address and how many copies of the magazine I wanted. I thought that, like with most online retailers, they would tally up the final price and give me a chance to accept or decline the final order before they went ahead and confirmed it. However, after I entered in the information about how many copies I'd like to order, I got a "Thanks for your order!" message, and a promise that my first issue would arrive within 4 weeks. I had to call up Time Magazine and cancel the order. Do you know that this transaction took over 20 minutes, while the customer service agent had to get authorization to cancel the thing. And I'm not joking when I say that I called within minutes of going online.

3. WHY is it that I ordered a self-install high-speed internet kid from Comcast in September, and it just arrived yesterday (February 7), even AFTER a technician came to my house and installed the kit himself when two weeks had passed from the order date. Is that awkwardly worded? Most likely. In other words, I ordered this thing, was promised its arrival within 5 days, and then had to complain when two weeks passed without any sign of the thing. They send a technician to install it (and claimed it would be free, but then billed me for it, forcing me to call and wait on hold for hours to dispute the charge...I won!) but then still send me the self-install kit SEVEN months after the order. Now, they are claiming that it is incumbent upon me to return the equipment to them. They want me to go to their offices and return it, and are threatening to charge me 150 dollars if I do not. Add to the fact that these boobs were billing me for a digital cable box for seven months after I got rid of it, and you can see what I'm dealing with here!!

4. WHY has David Lee Roth been given Howard Stern's former talk show time slot on the radio? I don't listen to the show. I never really listened to Howard, either. I liked Howard, but I don't have the time to listen to this stuff in the morning. Also, even if I did have a radio in my classroom, I could hardly listen to Howard Stern in the presence of my 7th graders. Not that they wouldn't know exactly what he was talking about, mind you. Half of them could be writers for his show. It goes back to that whole "appropriate thing." Anyway, David Lee Roth's mugg is now plastered on the side of every single MBTA bus in the greater Boston area, and frankly, the whole "eyes-follow-you-around-the-room" photograph of a now much older and more washed up looking Roth are disturbing.

5. WHY do I manage to lose every single pair of gloves and every hat I've ever owned? I was so bummed at the beginning of winter to not be able to locate this great black hat I bought last year. It was the perfect hat. I protected it with my life! I was devastated this year and thought that I must have lost it last year. But I could not remember losing it, which seemed strange because I know I would have been bummed. Anyway, I resigned myself to the fact that the hat was MIA. In a strange twist of fate, I was going through some summer items a few weeks ago and there, stashed between some shorts and t-shirts, was my fabulous hat!! I celebrated its recovery and was thrilled to have it back among the living. But fuck me if I didn't lose it on the bus two days after finding it! I'm so bummed out about that! I think that because I walk so much and take so many damn busses, the opportunity to lose stuff is so much greater. Whereas most people would forget to take their gloves from the car, or drop them in the car, if I drop my gloves on the bus, I'm screwed. Anyway, a strange peace about the hat has washed over me. When I thought it was missing but could not remember losing it, I always had that nagging feeling about it being somewhere in my place. Now, however, I know it is gone and I can let it go.

6. WHY is new years synonomous with get fit resolutions? Why is my gym so impossibly crowded at this point in time? Why are there obnoxious sign-up sheets for the cardio equipment and why do the powers that be attempt to limit me to 30 minutes on the cardio machines, even as I pay a whopping 93 dollars a month to belong to this gym? I get around it by signing my name for a 30 minute slot, and then signing a fake name for the next 30 minutes immediately following. I have gotten away with that pretty successfully. Today, my workout time was scheduled to end at 5:15. In all fairness, at 5:15, I still had 1 minute and 9 seconds on my workout clock, so I was overstepping somebody else's time slot. The woman whose time it was appeared in front of my treadmill and was really pissed off with her arms crossed over her chest. (Think of a petulant 3 year-old and you'll have a good mental image of this woman), and she screamed loudly (I head my headphones on), "You know, I am signed up for this treadmill at 5:15." To this I replied "I'm so sorry. My clock is down to 50 seconds." (Time was running out even as she had her temper tantrum, you see." She started going on about how this was "unacceptable" that she was going to "get the manager." I immediately pressed the stop button on the machine. It was not worth arguing, and, no matter how you slice it or dice it, I HAD gone over my time limit. But, as I was stepping down from the treadmill, I did feel the need to point out to the woman that it would have taken her more than the 50 seconds in qustion to find and drag the manager over to the scene of the "crime." Why are Cambridge people like this? Why oh why?

7. Why was a woman out today all bundeled up in the heaviest of winter gear, while her 2 year-old daughter wore only what my mother would call a "skiff" (a flimsy nylon jacket clearly intended for a warm spring day), and not a trace of a hat, mittens, scarf, etc?

8. Why do I live in Boston? Why does anybody live here? Humans are basically tropical animals. The first humans appeared in Equatorial Africa, thus pointing to the fact that this is the climate in which we were intended to live. We do not spout thick layers of wool or hair. We do not have a natural temperature adjustment system. We are cearly not meant to live like this.
Winter sucks!!

9. Why do I have sooooo much work to do to prepare for an absence from school? I wish I had the kind of job that waited for me when I was out sick. But, teaching is not like this. I have to leave a ton of stuff behind when I won't be there and it stinks!