putting the f in flyaways

One of my friends sent this pic of me yesterday. It’s almost 30 years old and he snapped it with his ipad out of a photo album. I don’t know where it was taken; it could be Stockholm, or Göteborg, or Brighton on the south coast of England. Maybe it’s Göteborg, in the fall of 1985. We shared an apartment for six months and spent a lot of time together. Plus it’s windy, and Göteborg is always windy.

I don’t remember those shades, but I can see I’m wearing something black, with shoulder pads. (It’s the 1980s, after all.) Whatever I’m wearing it’s likely I made it myself out of army surplus linen, dyed black. I remember the earrings. Geometrical, plastic, black.

Apart from the shoulder pads I see my own students. Big shades, long hair, fresh face.

not even joking

A friend of mine in Sweden said that at the end of the school year, if she saw a person in their early 20s anywhere (in the supermarket, in the street) she’d turn around and walk in the other direction. Not every 20-year-old was a student of hers, of course, but she felt as if every 20-year-old wanted something from her. And she had had enough.

I feel the same way right now. I’m not so sensitive to age, tho. And I can deal with people in short spells. But beyond that, 20 years old or 60, I will have had enough of you pretty fast.

(You know I’m joking, I love people!)

skirt is long, to my ankles

Every time I walk down the long and winding staircase at work I’m afraid I’ll fall and break my neck. I wasn’t really close to having that happen today, but as I descended the stairs the hem of my skirt got caught on my clog and a seam split open. The downstairs lobby was full of what looked like prospective students and their parents, but I didn’t see that until I had already let out a fully audible F***! So I went upstairs again, stapled my skirt together, and took the little back staircase down to class.