Rio Serenidad’s Weblog

*I’m observing from some distance, can’t tell how far… there is a woman (Asian) standing on the street corner… she looks… angry or upset. She is wearing a suit – charcoal grey… shoes with a slight heel. She appears to be waiting for a bus, but is standing far too close to the street and is almost hit by a car.

*I’m in what looks like a rec room, or basement of a house possibly. I’m sitting at a table with a girl, about mid-teens. There are a lot of younger kids running around, they have name tags on. There are at least 3 separate groups, they are mingling at the moment, but we are in charge of them somehow. The girl across from me at the table is working (on homework?) smiling about something. She has darker skin, looks like she might be half African American… her hair is in slightly relaxed ringlets, looks like she may have had light brown highlights put in them at some point. As the younger students mill around, a teacher approaches our table. She has an accent I can’t place (Bahamas maybe?) and is quizzing the girl across from me about how she remembers the names of the students she is here to mentor. I watch, thinking the exercise is good… I don’t need it because I’m an adult. The teacher turns to me and asks me a couple of questions… she is testing my ability to observe? She asks me to point out the student who has the same hair as the girl sitting in front of me. I look over the crowd and find a young girl that could be her sister, and point her out. The teacher says “very good!” and walks on. I wonder why she is treating me as though I was a student as well.

*I’m in a classroom… there are two classrooms joined together by a dividing wall… the wall is partially opened and the classes are together in the other room for some kind of event. There are 3 or 4 students in here, hiding in the closet. It is a large walk-in supply closet… lined with shelves each with boxes of supplies clearly labeled. The door is made of wooden slats, like miniblinds that are permanently pulled down. The students are in here with a small plate of cookies… look like milanos? vanilla cookies – rectangular but with rounded corners – with chocolate on the bottoms and a small dot of chocolate right in the center on the top. For a second I think I can’t have them, then I decide it’s OK to eat. I hear movement outside the closet and the kids hush… I lean next to the closet door, trying to hold it closed with my shoe, and I try to peek through the slats. I can see the teacher, though her face is shadowed. We aren’t supposed to be in the closet, and a tingling of fear hits my stomach. I bump my foot against the door by accident and my heart races a bit, but I hold steady and see that she didn’t hear the noise. She is talking to another student… the teacher had been on her way to the closet for supplies, but the student (to cover for us) was claiming to be sick and wanted the teacher to walk her to the health office or bathroom. The teacher thinks there is something in the closet that will help. I try to hold the door closed, but she manages to swing it open. I shrug… telling her we ate some of the cookies. She doesn’t seem mad at me, but she does say “Well, you just need to replace them” and tells me what kind to buy. I have a package in my hand now, and as I look down they are not the kind we had been eating… these are pinwheels (round cookies, chocolate frosting on the bottom, stripes of frosting across the top) She is telling me to buy a different kind all together, but I can’t recall the name she called them.
I walk out the front doors of the school. It is located in the downtown area of a city… it is a bright sunny day, the sunlight reflects off the taller buildings surrounding the school. The teacher is sitting in a red chair outside the front doors of the school, looking up the street.  She looks… wistful. The area is rather crowded, a lot of people milling around, walking up and down the street… lots of cars. The air feels a little gritty. Walking out of the school and turning left, the street goes sharply uphill. On the right side about a block or two up is a restaurant, I can’t read the name of it, but the sign is very brightly colored (red, some orange) On the left side is a kitchen supply store. They have displays out on the sidewalk just outside the doors, which are open to allow for a breeze. The air feels nice… the temperature is pleasant. The teacher tells me she wanted something from the kitchen store… I look and see there is something that looks like a string of trivets welded together, it ends up standing about 4 feet tall, but there are only 4 trivets used so they are individually too large to use as trivets anyway. They are in the shape of mouse ears (Mickey) and are hanging on what looks like a drying rack for clothes. I mention that I once made a fence out of something like that. She asks me a question about a fellow teacher, I say that he wanted me to make him a quilt, but asked me if I would deliver it wrapped around me. She asks me “what did you say to him?” and I said “Well, I told him before I give it to him I’ll throw it over my head and make sure he won’t choke to death when he uses it, but that’s the best I can do.” The teacher laughs and says “You always have a response, don’t you?”
I walk back into the empty classroom, I need to get something or fix something. There is someone here investigating… (police? or school board official?) I reach in my right pocket and find my swiss army knife, but it feels weird… there is a sharp point where there shouldn’t be one. I pull it out and see the corkscrew has somehow managed to break off the knife.
“Damn,” I say… “my knife is busted.”
The official wants to look at it, but I say that it’s broken anyway, there is no need to inspect it. I look down at the knife and wonder how much it will cost to replace it, I’ve had this for at least a decade.