I wore a dress today……….. and I liked it.

13 Nov

from October 25, 2007

Mr. Social went to lunch today.

“Who is Mr. Social?” you’re wondering, “and why do I give a fuck if he went to lunch?”

Mr. Social is me, so watch you language. And you care because the odds are you went to lunch with me. (This reflects very poorly on the size of my friends list. Especially since one of my friends is a fake-news organization and another of my friends is a fake me, which I will continue to deny even though we all know otherwise. So don’t shatter my illusion, OK)

STATISTICS- Length of time working at the HS- 7 ½ years. Percentage of coworkers whose name I know- 12% or less.  Times I have gone to lunch with them- oh, three or four. (Tell me about the rabbits, George!)

I like my coworkers, at least those I bother with. I really do, especially this group. (At the risk of ripping off Sally Field at the Oscars, “I like them, I really like them!”) So it only took 7 ½  years to find a bunch of people I’d eat a meal with. (And I am neither Kosher nor too picky about my food.)

So I went to lunch with a group of very nice and attractive female coworkers, four of them and me. So what did we talk about? Gossip, silly! We talked girl talk! All the latest dish about Mr. X, the trash-collecting man­slut, and Ms. Y, who is under the delusion that she looks like a movie star, and we talked all  about what Z, D, E and did behind closed office doors and in what positions. We especially talked about whose closed and shuttered doors hid secret orgy rooms. This just brings up the point- why am I so oblivious to all of this? And why am I not invited to the fun? (And this brings up another point. Do people gossip about me? I sat back and pondered this, as well as why I did not start a new paragraph right here. Well, at the risk of making this paragraph long and unmanageable, like that ever stopped me, I had to figure that if anyone did gossip about me it would be pretty boring. As I said to someone or sometwo today, I don’t shit where I eat. Over the years I have been here I have gone one exactly one date with a colleague. And since it was while we doing summer school it doesn’t count. And she left the following semester and got married too- I drove her to marriage, ha ha- and that was as far as that went. Maybe people wondered if I was gay, that was about all I came up with. Ah well, I’m boring. There was a mini-flurry of tepid speculation last year, and that was it.)

But all of this isn’t to say that I wouldn’t [CENSORED FOR MR. BLOG’S OWN GOOD, AND CENSORED SOME MORE, JUST TO BE SURE THAT NO ONE GETS THE WRONG IDEA.] but I work with them.

Anyway, I fit right in with the girls. And that says a lot about me. I’m not sure what, but maybe I’m just the non-threatening brother type.

Well, ignoring that can of worms, there is the fact that when I am at work, I am Work Mr. B. Work Mr. B. is more serious than Not At Work Mr. B. NAWMB might not be the brightest star of the entertainment sky, but he gets to say what WBarry might think but not say. Too bad NAWMB was with work friends. But I have to say that it is rare that I get to spend time with four women and not worry about who brought the condoms. Just kidding! I am always a gentleman. (And I don’t kiss and tell. Remember that, my friends. I carry on only discreet affairs.)

But to get back on track and away from some dangerous territory, I liked hanging out with the girls. I am already planning our next lunch; a trip to Macy’s, some Hagen Das ice cream, and maybe a kicky new hairdo and getting our nails done at the place with the purple awning, or was it the blue awning, or was it the one that had the name on it? I don’t know, someone figure that out. All I know is I want the guy near the sink, right?

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Mr. Orcini

13 Nov

from October 20, 2007

As teachers, we have a great responsibility. We have been given a sacred trust, the handling of young minds. We have been charged with the education of future generations. It is truly an awesome task. We have a great opportunity to enlighten and mold the youth of America, but many teachers also have great capacity to instill fear and loathing in their charges. Teachers also have the ability to instill fear.

One man who tried, but failed, to instill fear was the swaggering buffoon named Mr. Orcini of Mark Twain Junior high School.

Ah, Mark Twain, my old alma mater. Home to science teachers with colorful nicknames like “Rocky Slabhead” and social studies teachers who taught ancient Babylonian on the side and had rabbinical aspirations. They were an odd bunch. But as anyone who spent any time in a school knows, the oddest teachers are usually gym teachers. I once had a gym teacher who dropped his pants and walked around in his boxers on the first day to show us that there was no shame in the human body. You should have seen him run behind the bleachers when a female student walked in. (I wonder if he managed to keep his job?) And then there was ORCINI.

Mr. Orcini was quite a sight. He usually dressed in shiny and very tight Mafia suits, like the ones you see on Henry and Jimmy in Goodfellas. His shirt was usually unbuttoned to his fly and he had enough gold chains around his neck to kill a lesser man. He had slick black hair and a thin mustache. Ever see The Adventures of Robin Hood? Think of him as what Errol Flynn would look like if he took elephant steroids and strode around like Mussolini. This guy had muscles and he wanted everyone to know it. He looked like he had gone to the gas station and used the air hose to inflate himself. All he needed was “bad Italian stereotype” stamped on his forehead.

(My favorite Orcini story actually took place years after I graduated. I was on a bus and it couldn’t pull out of a stop because of a double parked car. The bus driver honked and the car’s driver came out of a store- it was Mr. Orcini. I didn’t hear his words, but he yelled at the driver and shook his fist at the bus. Not the driver, the bus. He actually threatened to punch the bus!)

He was a figure of , well, not fear, not exactly. I think if anything, we harbored a secret desire to see him fly off into a steroid rage. But on someone else. No one wanted to be the one he unloaded on. One time me and my friends were fooling around in the gym. This included chasing around Peter Bosco with a basketball. Orcini of course yelled at us in a deep phony voice, but I claimed that we were just playing basketball. The only thing that kept Orcini from lumbering over and bellowing some more was the fact that I took the basketball and made the shot from across the court. (It may have been the only basket I made in high school.)

On another occasion (or maybe the same one) he bellowed in disbelief about how we, with all the gym equipment around us, were playing with a door. And Bosco had to explain to him why he tied his shoes to the balance beam. (Orcini, in  a deep deliberate voice- “You tied your shoes to a balance beam?”) For some reason, I can’t imagine why, Bosco had the totally outrageous and implausible idea that me and Marc just might, you know, might possibly take his shoes and, I don’t know, throw them out the window or something. Really, me?

As a teacher now, I reflect back on Mr. Orcini and wonder, what the fuck was his problem? He walked around like he owned the world, and acted like a third rate Mafia leg-breaker, which he might have been. He seemed to get off on intimidating junior high school kids and I wonder how he felt about junior high school girls, if you know what I mean. He was mean and cruel and he knew it.

I may have been a little nasty to certain people in my life, but at least I never had a nasty life. I just wonder where he is now. I bet either in jail or dead.

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NOTE TO MR. ORCINI.

First off, I have to be honest- I’m not sure if your name is spelled “Orcini” or “Orsini” and I really don’t care. I went with the former because it begins with “Orc” and both sums up your personality and makes a nice Lord of the Rings reference.

Secondly, everything I have written here is true. If you try to sue me, send your goons after me, or lumber over and bellow at me, I’ll start making up some even worse stuff.

And thirdly, if you still insist on being a pain in my ass, I’ll simply claim that “Mr. Orcini” is a fictional creation, like Santa Claus and moderate Iranians. After all, who would believe any of this is true?

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NOTE TO MY READERS.

All of this is true.

I know that I claim that a lot of stuff I write is true, but this is truly true. (What, you really thought that one of my ancestors was “that sailing Scottish Jew?”)

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