Day 34

February 2, 2010

 

Day 34:

 

            The kids actually did work today, that was nice. Third period was great as usual. In fact, Jewel one of the girls that pretends to be the most shy, drew a picture of me which I HAD to keep. It’s supposed to make fun of me I think which I guess it kind of does but it’s hilarious. I asked her to come up and sign it but she didn’t understand. Next thing I know she crumbled it up and started to throw it away. I told her I wanted it and so she gave it to me. I had to un-crumble it though. Some of the stories are starting to look nice. The only problem I foresee though, is that they’re such perfectionists by culture that they could easily spend all week on one drawing. So I had to explain to them that they don’t have to draw every character on every page. Just the first so we know who they are and what they look like. If they want to just draw a heart on the page where they talk about love, that’s fine. Fourth period was better today for the most part. The girls did work after I began the class by demanding that they do or they’re going to end up failing the project. Benjamin K, one of my better, more obedient students is an amazing artist. His story is about Batman and Hoger and he free-handed a Batman that was amazing and the villain is damn good too. For class today I googled Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck for some of the kids to use when drawing their pictures. It ended up being all the boys crowding around my computer to see a picture of Batman. The girls couldn’t have cared less. Not even the girls with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

            I did have three boys in fourth period walk into class 35 minutes late for a 50 minute class. Bolta tried to walk past me as if I wouldn’t notice him. He was dripping with sweat and gave me that innocent look that they all seem to have mastered.

            “Bolta! Where have you been?” I asked him. He just looked at me and didn’t say anything. “Come here! Etok!” When he got to my desk I asked, “What are you doing? You either come to my class on time or you don’t come.” Just then Barren and Branty walk in in the same condition. “What are yall doing? Just go to the office.” They all looked at me like I had three heads. “I’m serious. You’re not going to walk into my class a half hour late and just sit here. Go to the office.” So I had to escort them to the office. And then I was back in the class working with the kids, and I see Branty outside my class just talking. So I go out and ask him what he’s doing, he doesn’t say anything. So I’m like either you get in my class until its over or you go back to the office for skipping twice in the same day. That’s gotta be a record. So once I get in his vision to the point where he cant act like he doesn’t hear me. He came into the room. For some reason he ended up crying until the bell rang but he wouldn’t tell me why. I’m pretty sure Bescy said something to him.

            After class I did some more research for Spring Fling and some stuff for ProCamps. For those of you who don’t know, Spring Fling is a charity carnival and raffle that I am organizing for the spring at Dartmouth. The proceeds will go to the National Downs Syndrome Society or branches thereof. My people on the ground at Dartmouth are busy with their own stuff which I completely understand so I’m doing a lot of work with that from here.

            Tony never showed up to take me to the coaches meeting. So after waiting for about a half hour, I went to watch middle school basketball tryouts. After that I went back to see the end of play rehearsal and then to the trailer where Eric was baking pizzas. Right when the first pizza finished John was outside to take me to our basketball game.

I scarfed down a piece of the bacon pizza and left.            

            We played the defending tournament champions, a team from Uliga. They were hyped up to be good by some of our players who looked sort of scared. I wasn’t. I didn’t know anything about those guys. And they didn’t know anything about me. I missed every shot in warm-ups which is traditionally a good sign for me. Got all my misses out of the way.

            The other team had some pretty quick guards. They were shifty and played pretty good defense. They also had a big man, about 6’3” who was pretty athletic and crashed the boards hard. He also had nice touch on 10’-12’ shots. I made it a point to be assertive this game because I knew the other guys were sort of intimidated for some reason. Early on I crossed one dude and tried a floater that I got fouled on, I missed. Next time down I drove baseline hard directly at the big man. He jumped with me fouled me and the ball went out of bounds. They said off on me, no foul. Next time down I faced big man up at the elbow and hit a jumper in his face. First make of the day. Next time down I tried to mix one of their guards. It worked and I got a shot off at the end that banked in but the ref called a foul on the floor. It was looking like I could play well against these guys.

            We ended up winning 54-52. I had either 17-19 of those points, 3 blocks – blocked a three pointer once, one was a fast break that was the easiest block I’ve ever had, the guy just didn’t see me, and the other one was when a guy tried to float one on me and I sent it into “the stands”. I played pretty well and hit the free throws at the end to seal the game. Now we’re 2-0 and beat the defending champs. If I can make my shots, and John keeps crashing the boards, there’s no reason we lose a game.

            When I got back to the trailer I finally succumbed to cold showers and heated up the last piece of pizza. After that I worked on some more letters and watched about 20 minutes of Tropic Thunder before passing out.