However, there was one thing awry. As I drove by the door to the building and parked, I noticed a flyer on the door. Usually flyers are stuffed around the knob and the jamb, but this was taped onto the window of the door. My initial thought was condemnation. Homelessness. It wouldn’t surprise me. These apartments just look nice.

I walked up to the door with a dog on one arm while the other was hugging a dirty bag of laundry. It was a note from ConEd - actually it was more like a bill for $1,189.00 for the gas for the apartment. The landlord neglected to pay this bill - not the first time according to the other tennants - and ConEd was going to have to turn off the gas which heats the hot water. No hot water.

It’s a lovely little hole this apartment 

The super told me to ask for Johnny, and tell him these were extra keys for the apartment upstairs.

Me: "Hey, I’m looking for Johnny. I got some keys for him."
Johnny: "There’s no Johnny here. There’s a Jonathan."
Me: "Oh, sorry man. The Super told me to ask for Johnny. Here’s the keys for upstairs. He had me make an extra set…"

He seemed okay to me. Obviously confrontational, but perhaps that’s just his Albanianess. (I’ve known two Albanians and they’re both the same way - yes I’m drawing a stereotype, sorry if your Albanian.) I had no idea how confrontational Johnathan really was. One afternoon as I was stripping ancient paint off the floor, I heard some banging and shouting coming from the pizza place below. I paused, listened and heard the noise move out onto the street. Sure enough it was some half-Asian guy fighting with Johnathan, and a handful of people trying to break it up. The Asian guy was yelling, cursing, and spitting blood while Johnathan - who some how managed to get his shirt off - was telling him to never come back.

This is not the only instance. I was walking my dogs around eleven - right when the pizza place opens up - and I see a Hispanic guy come out of the pizza place rather quickly, obviously in a huff. Not far behind him comes Johnathan - cursing at him in Spanish. The guy tries to just walk away and Johnathan runs back into the shop and shouts in the door "Take that pie fuckin’ out of the oven." He follows the Spanish guy down the sidewalk, calls him a queer in Spanish and then spits on the other guys neck. A big gross one. The Hispanic guy swears at Johnathan, and starts walking away again. Jonathan runs back into the pizza shop, asks the guy working if "He’s got it," and then takes off running down the sidewalk most likely to fight the Hispanic guy.

Who knew a pie could be so confrontational?

The man who lived here before, lived here for ten years - until he was evicted. According to the other tenants in the building, he was a sketchy little Arab cab driver with a big old beard. More often than not he would sit in the kitchen with the lights off, watching his mini black-and-white television that he left on the table, with the door open eye-ball-fucking people as they would go up and down the stairs. He never spoke to anyone, just eye-ball-fucked.

It is doubtful he owned a vaccuum, or if he even owned one, that he knew how to use it. There was dirt everywhere, and we spent a day or two running a small file between the cracks in the floorboards bringing up years of black dirt and lint. The cupboards were full of not dishes, or food, but cans of coffee and unpaid bills to ConEdison, as well as a 1,800 dollar bill to Verizon. (Why Verizon would continue to give the man phone service after he hadn’t paid 500 dollars is beyond me, but apparently collections was trying to sort it out.)

To top off his highclass shittastic dirtiness, he left the bathroom in total disarray. The drawers were empty except for some rusty disposable razors that hadn’t seen use in five years, and there was a tube of black hair dye on top of the mirror - apparently he had given up on trying to keep back the grays. The thing that really got me about the bathroom is the yellow stains on the wall. At first I thought it was piss; maybe he missed the toilet a few times (which had no seat mind you - did he take it with him?), but then I realized that this yellow stain was all over the walls. No way in hell this guy shot the cieling. But I have no clue what it was.

Things are clean now, and the crack-den-that-was is finally habitable. Just hoping that Crazy Cabbi stays away.

Also, if anyone comes here, leave a comment. I’m trying to get them to work. Fucking Haloscan moved to this stupid JS Kit shit and now comments are all funky. Seriously, what’s wrong with just a comment. I don’t want a poll, or stars, just a fucking comment.

"Mister, are you a hippie?"
"Mister, do you surf?"
"Mister, do you ride a skateboard?"

So when I was called a gangster I was a bit taken. It was the class directly after lunch, and with mice falling through the ceiling, and the general school rule of no food in the classroom, I was really on my students not to be eating this period. Of course, some fat-ass mommy’s-princess bitch think she’s special. She is exempt from my rules, the schools rules, and probably anyone’s rules. As I said, she is special.

On her desk she had a bag of cookies. I told her to put them away. She said no. I took them. She looked at me in disbelief. Suddenly she was awed that some one enforced a rule and took her cookies. She was left struggling for words momentarily, and then she comes out with this wonderful bit:

Fat-Ass: "Mistah, you think you a gee or sometin’?  Cause I know you didn’t just steal my cookies."
Me: "No, I didn’t steal your cookies. I asked you to put them away, you couldn’t do that, and so now I’m taking them."
Fat-Ass: "Can I get ‘em back at the end?"
Me: "No. You should have eaten them in the cafeteria. You can’t eat them anywhere else. That’s why we have mice and rats."
Fat-Ass Friend 1: "Oh mistah, you a fuckin’ Starvin Marvin. Stealin’ students food."

At this point I’d had enough and so, walked away. Cookies in hand and I have to admit, they were pretty tasty.

So when my students were in an uproar about a mouse today, I could not seem to grasp their anxiety. All their lives they’ve seen big nasty rats playing on train tracks and rummaging through their garbage. Why then was a small mouse in the classroom something that put them all in an uproar. I understand that a mouse falling from a crack in the ceiling and landing on your assignment would be a bit frightening - it’d scare the shit out of me real quick for sure - but the students just could not seem to get over it. The best part about it is that the mouse was probably poisoned and tracked poison and nastiness all over my students papers that are now sitting on my table. Fucking awesome little mice.

I moved, far away, and told her I really wanted nothing to do with her. Blah, blah, I’m sorry, I need to find a job, and it’s not here. No you can’t move with me. Blah blah.

Occasionally she calls, and I don’t pick up, but yesterday she sent me a text message.

"U know I don’t know if u understand how much u have ruined my life! I’m going to be losing my son bc of u. U might think I’m some crazy girl but you have a son wh"

 Nothing else, just that. I don’t have a son with her, and to be quite honest, if she’s losing her son to it’s stoner father, it’s her own damn fault - I just don’t have the heart to tell her.

The real reason I am writing this letter to you - parents, grandparents, pimps, legal guardians, whomever you may be - is to remind you of the schools no tolerance policy toward cellular telephones and other electronic devices (this includes any type of mp3 player, iPod, discman, walkman, radio, any electronic device. If you are unsure, look and see if it uses a battery of some sort, if it does, it is almost certainly an electronic device.) 

No, I do not have a personal vendetta against VeriZon or  Apple or Sony. The problem is that these devices cause children to lose focus in school. To be honest, there is little need for your twelve year old to have a cellular telephone in the school, let alone the classroom. Now I know that you may have an emergency from time to time - the police arrested Baby’s Daddy, or Grandpa cracked his head on the way to the bodega - but I assure you, if you call the main office, you will speak to your child sooner than if you call your child while they are in class.

And this, is my main point. Please, parents, I am asking you to refrain from calling/texting your child during school hours. It is rude, inappropriate, and immature. At the beginning of the year, every year, your child is sent home with a list of phone numbers. The phone numbers for the main office, as well as mine, are listed on this sheet of paper. Use these numbers.

If your child is caught with a phone, it will be confiscated. Detentions will be served and the phone will eventually be given back to students. I know that taking a phone from a student can cause separation anxiety and cause students to break into tears and fits of uncontrollable convulsions. I do not want this to happen, but if your child breaks the rules, there are consequences.

Lastly, please do not come into the school to retrieve your child’s phone. You are undermining everyone when you do this. You are not your child’s friend, you are their parent. If you want them to succeed they need some education, as well as the knowledge that when rules are broken, punishments are served and sometimes, believe it or not, no one’s going to save your ass. So if you really want to help your child survive in the world, support the schools decision. Do not come in and retrieve the phone like a trained puppy. Do not worry, teachers may not be paid well at all, but they will not steal your child’s phone. It will be returned to them.

Remember, this behavior can be stopped with a few simple rules to both parents and students:

1.) Do not allow students to bring their phone to school.
2.) Do not call your child’s cell phone while they are in school.
3.) When a phone is confiscated, allow the school to handle it. The phone will be returned.

I thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Sincerely,

Principal C.Bob

You see, I had good reason to tell them to hold on and leave my car where it was. While driving, my car was struck by someone trying to parallel park - apparently she could not see the five feet down to the top of my car from her throne high above the pavement. Our two front quarter panels bumped and scraped and we got briefly stuck together. Finally, we broke apart and we both double parked. I got out of my car and started to walk back to her car to see what the damage was. I figured the cops behind me would just pull in front of me and park. Instead, they parked next to me, blocking traffic and rolled down their window.

"Sir you need to move your car."

"Yeah, hold on."

I left and went back to her beast of a vehicle to check what it looked like. She was incredibly apologetic and we both walked towards my car to see what the damage was. This took about thirty-seconds and the whole time the She-Beast Police Officer is sitting next to my car in her car with the window down allowing traffic to build up behind her. I half expected her to get out and start looking things over, but then I saw that there was not enough space for her to open the door and squeeze her fat ass out of the car. (Stop wasting gas, tanky.)

"Sir, ya need to move yuh car. Yer not allowed ta double park."

"We just bumped. We’re looking at the damage."

"Why don’t ya pull ’round the corner."

"I’m looking at my car."

"Well, do ‘ah need to get out and write up a repor’?"

"I’m not sure yet. Let me get a grip on things."

I am not sure what caused my indignance - perhaps it is my anger with Rita - but it felt good to give a police officer a little bit of shit. I think I felt pretty safe with all the witnesses she had blocked up behind her, and the one beside me, and the fact that the She-Beast Police Officer could not get out of her car.

There was really no damage, and I told the officer things were fine. She drove away to look for more skateboarding teenagers to heckle, and we all parted ways. Although, now that I look back, I realize I should have probably made her write a report just to make her do something useful with her life. Not to mention that it would have probably been the smarter thing to do, but being hustled by the police I was not thinking rationally. Fucking cops.

I - along with many - hold no love for the police force. For some reason I feel that they just do more harm than anything else - tasering naked crazy men on awnings (YouTube), shooting people with wallets, tackling bike riders. Consequently, I hold an even smaller love for fake cops: Lovely Rita Meter Maid. You see, Rita is a bitch. She knows she has no real power and so goes around writing tickets to poor starving individuals like myself.

I will share the two most recent.

We have alternate side parking twice a week, and no one really cares if you double park for the two hours while they "clean" the street. I decided to take this option up and double parked. I went out to move my car at 1:05 and there was a ticket on it. For double parking. I was five minutes late. My phone number was on the dashboard in big three inch numbers with black sharpie. My address and buzzer were there. But that was too much effort. Rita had to give me a $115 dollar ticket.

My second ticket I am still trying to figure out. All along this area there are no parking signs, that list the day you cannot park and the hours in which you cannot park there. So as I pulled up to the grocery store I noticed a parking spot and parked. I then looked at the no parking sign. "No Parking Sunday 7-7 am. One hour parking only." I figured I was in the clear. It was Thursday. I was wrong. You see, I missed the key word except. The sign really read "No Parking Except Sunday 7-7 am." I suppose it is my fault for not reading the sign completely, but we have been conditioned to read the sign as I mentioned above - a list of the day and hours you are not allowed to park. Surely the sign could have been clearer.

So fuck you Rita. Get a real job. Stop giving out parking tickets no one pays. You are useless. Your sweater is ugly. Stop wasting our tax dollars on gas and get your fat ass out of the car and walk. Cunt.