Zemblan Grammar

We’ve just finished the first week of classes here at Wordsmith College, and on this lovely Friday night I am sitting home, snuggled up with the dog, sipping a glass of cheap Pinot Noir and relaxifying myself. I may be wearing sweat pants. Or “yoga pants,” if that sounds less disgusting. I had planned on going over to a friend’s house where her momma was gonna fix us up some grits, because you know I would love to shovel piles of grits into my face (as it has been years since I’ve had any), but after a long day in the office working on the last chunk of dissertation, I was ready to call it a day. It’s almost like I am working for a living or something.

On the one hand, I feel like a bona fide professorial adult-type person, what with the people politely (and as of now erroneously) calling me Doctor and everything, but on the other hand I start obsessively thinking about the dissertation and how I am this close to being done and how Now Is The Time When I Had Best Not Fuck Things Up, Good Glaven. I think this time next week the balance will tip slightly in favor of adult-type personhood, because that is when my first official Real Job Check will come rolling in.

Oh, Money! how I think about it constantly. I have mentally spent that first check five times over what with the fantasies of new sleek Modern furniture, faintsy shoes, haircuts, pedicures, and slightly less cheap Pinot Noir. Never fear, though, I shall not be spending the hard-earned cash on print sundresses, fake pearls, and Topsiders. After all, these kids spend their hard-earned? parents’ cash to be taught writing and literature by bona fide professorial intellectual-type adults, and we all know that those types of people are bound by law to wear jeans, Chucks, and some combination of tee shirts, cardigans, and blazers (elbow patches optional). It would merely confuse the little whippersnappers if I came in looking like some random Muffy from the country club, wouldn’t it?

In teaching news, I have three classes, which is more than a bit exhausting, especially in comparison to the Graduate Fellowship schedule I am used to. In addition, I teach all three classes on the same days, almost right in a row. By the time I am in the afternoon writing class I am generally so tired and parched that I’m more than a little tempted to just shoo them away after fifteen minutes and head for the bar. It is, though — and will remain — much less bad than I thought it would be, all the teaching. Once I have 47 frillion papers to grade all at once, however, I warn you that I will officially commence the bitching. It could get ugly.

For the most part I like my students. They are on balance less interesting than the Zemblan whippersnappers — here, approximately 99% of them spent the summer on “mission trips” in poor countries, ostensibly easing the people’s hunger and lack of decent health care by filling their hearts with Godslove. “Godslove will cure your AIDS epidemic, don’t worry! All that genocide your people suffered? Part of Godsplan! Just accept Jeebus into your hearts!” Oh, I digress. My point is that they’re all Christian-values types, insofar as they can be (binge drinking on Game Day, church services with a hangover?), and thus somewhat boring.

On the plus side, they actually do what they are asked. Ask them to divide into small groups? They do. Ask them to go to a certain page in the reading? They do that, too. When I am the first person to enter the classroom and am busy setting up the projector, say, they ask me if it’s all right to come in. They ask me if it’s all right to leave to use the restroom. The wouldn’t dare address me by my first name. I mean, I am all for questioning authority, and everything. I might have even had some such message emblazoned on a bumper sticker on my high-school hoopty-ass car. It’s just that, well, when the authority in question is me…. Shit, I am getting old.

It’s a general phenomenon, though, the politeness — I have had more casual conversations with strangers on the elevators in my building than I had the entire time I lived in Zembla. Back when I was doing my freshman orientation oh-so-many years ago, I had to go to a session for out-of-state students. The gist of the whole thing was “Welcome to the South, and Good Luck” (wasted on me, as I grew up in the South, but some of the Yankees did look a mite worried at the whole prospect). One of the things they told us was that we could expect strangers on the sidewalks and in elevators to greet us — “Here, we just smile and say ‘hey.’ That’s what we do. So when you see someone you don’t know starting to talk to you, don’t freak out, just smile back and say ‘hey.’” This little speech replays itself in my head every day now, when I am stuck in the elevator with some stranger insistent on making pleasant chat with me. I just smile back, and say “hey.” At this point, what with my three classes full of identical sundress debs, the supposed stranger on the elevator might just be one of my own whippersnappers trying to butter me up.