The Day I Tutored Robert And Randall

Me and my Toms head out for the bus stop around 2:30 and I wait across the street from the Sandwich Spot until #38 arrives and I pay my $2.50 for a 17-block ride toward Oak Park. I'm running a little late because we have to switch buses at the light rail station. When I get off at my stop, I turn the corner under the highway overpass and see the results of a two-car accident and tow trucks and cops on bikes and smashed-up engines and detached bumpers and spilt fluids and shattered glass and plastic. I'm guessing someone ran a red light. I nonchalantly walk between the totaled vehicles and the officers and tow-truck drivers, just minding my own business, hurrying toward the high school at the end of the block. The side gate is open, thankfully, so I don't have to walk all the way around the parking lot, and it's only another minute before I'm stepping into Mrs. Coates' class and she's telling me about another teacher who might need a tutor today. I end up in a class where I recognize Robert and the teacher, C.T., pairs me up with him to work on English homework. We read parts of the chapter and he has to make corrections on a test he scored 14% on and I do my best to make sure he figures out the answers on his own, guiding him to the proper paragraphs where the answers can be found, and then evaluate if he's absorbed the information at all. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't--you can really only cross your fingers and hope--and we get almost all the way done with his corrections before the hour ends and it's time to move. Next I meet up with the other tutors and it's an hour with Randall, with whom I feel a comradery forming and he quickly finishes a math assignment while I check over his scribbled answers on an English assignment. I probe a little deeper into his grades, his comfort with the subjects, and we end up going over the math assignment again and catching an error or two with his quadratic equations. For his science project he's remaking the Periodic Table of the Elements by using videogames. In history he's nearing the Civil War. I think we're making progress and I'm glad that the program's designed to give the kids a consistent tutor and I wish I could be there every day, but I can't, and at least I left the school today feeling confident that good things were still happening. It's a quick walk back to the bus stop and along the way I see a hole in the wall from the earlier accident and it's a long wait on the grass while I let my iPhone battery die and think calmly about things and feel the weather change for the brisk as the clouds crawl over the sun. At some point I always wonder, Maybe I should just start walking home, but then the bus arrives and that 17-block walk is erased with just a few moments' use of internal combustion. I'm home by six o'clock and terribly hungry and broke and know I shouldn't but I have enough tips to afford a trip to Crepeville after I don't feel too stoned for human interaction and I bring a book to read while I wait for the grilled chicken sandwich to cook and it's delicious. 

Jenny comes by after she visits with her dad and it's hard for me to leave my room once I'm comfortable and settled, but she convinces me otherwise and I spend the night at her place with a bag of mint Milanos and a bowl of ramen. We think about Santa Cruz and how we just want to do what makes us happy and have the world react accordingly around us. If it weren't for my pending application to Sac State, perhaps I'd be more inclined to follow the Santa Cruz dream. Jenny belongs there. I love the beach. Plus, I think UCSC has the same TESOL Masters International program as Sac State, albeit with a harder enrollment process, I'm sure. But since I barely made the deadline for Sac State, I know it'd have to be another few months before I could apply to UCSC, and I'd really just rather get it all done with ASAP because the Peace Corps is still my main goal, after all, and I don't really want to put that off any longer than I have to. That said, Santa Cruz is definitely my back-up choice, and come August, when my lease is up, I may just end up there after all.

You know, until the Peace Corps happens. 

Also finally finished "Rules of Attraction," by Bret Easton Ellis, and yes I loved every word of it. And it feels good to be writing fiction again.

Jenny says I've got a mullet growing. Better get that looked at.

- Left to Fry