Mlle Hazelwood (Home)

Sometimes I think I’m going to get fired from teaching…in college. That’s pretty hard to screw up, right? But today I told one class that I couldn’t think of an example for a connotation that wasn’t dirty. They said, “Tell us anyway.” I said, “He’s good with his hands.” Am I supposed to talk about sex with them? Or religion? Am I supposed to give them an example of writing in second person (because the author just needed that distance)—and use my own life? (E.g. The beginning of the brevity I’m working on about my aunt goes like this: “When your hands curl around the hard polymer handle of an unloaded .9mm Smith and Wesson, you notice how top-heavy it is. Like a deadly Dolly Parton.” Yeah, I used second-person again. And I’ll do it again.)

I find myself telling them stories, being intimate in that way with my classes. Sometimes I think I see those two classes of 24 students more often than I see anybody these days. My roommate is married and away on the weekends; my friends here are all busy teaching, too; I’m trying to finish my thesis so I can graduate. I’m not saying I don’t go out, and I’m not saying I don’t have anyone to tell these things to. But my best friends are all five or six or seven or eight hours away and sometimes I’m so very lonely living in Milledgeville, Georgia.

Anyway, I got 3.5 hours of sleep last night for a very long and complicated list of reasons and somehow I’m still smiling. Kind of like the town idiot.