Yes, Mike?, and: Blood and Tofu, and: Twin Cities

Abstract

Yes, Mike?, and: Blood and Tofu, and: Twin Cities Jonathan Cardew (bio) Yes, Mike? I was supposed to be giving a talk on dinosaurs to my kid's K-5 class, but I wasn't feeling it. Their supple, eager faces stared at me, expecting pterodactyls. I groaned not expecting to groan—actually expecting to say something funny and engaging. But, like I said, I wasn't feeling it. I picked up my leather purse and walked to the back of class. The teacher swooped her arms and clicked her fingers, and the class settled down. You could hear a pin drop. She had a way with kids—and she was beautiful, too. Barely twenty-five. Gorgeous, in fact. "Does anybody know anything about dinosaurs?" she said, smiling widely. My kid, of course, shot her hand up first. "Yes, Tina?" "They're dead," she said, looking straight into the teacher's eyes. "Why isn't my Mom doing it?" The gorgeous K-5 teacher glanced at me. I saw in that look a super-quick summary of her years in teacher education—a yearning for acceptance, a need to nurture. For some reason, in my mind, she looked twelve throughout her undergraduate studies. "Your mom, Tina," she started, not hesitating, "wants to know what you guys know. She wants to hear about your feelings…in regards to dinosaurs." A boy two rows in front of me waved his hand like he'd had an epiphany. He was the kind of boy you ignored because he was constantly putting his hand up and butting into other people's conversations. "Yes, Mike?" Mike, for some reason, rolled his hands over the patch of carpet in front of him. "Ermmm, ermmm" he began, long-windedly. "Ermmm, ermmm. I think, ermmmm, ermmmm, that…" … Juice boxes were devoured, crushed and strewn across tables, the sticky apple juice bubbling from gnawed straws. I was sinking into my own juice box—a spare. It was the end of the presentation, and I felt small. Of course I felt small; I was in a tiny seat. [End Page 116] I watched as the K-5 teacher skewered straws efficiently into each kid's box. The way she did it was from the elbow, or from the heart. One girl, without any teeth, tugged at my sleeve with her wet fingers. "I like your hair," she said, smiling with all her gums. "Why, thank you," I said, smiling back at her—or at least trying to because I still wasn't feeling it at all. "I like the way it," she did a hand movement in the air, "flops down." I assisted in the clean up. The gorgeous, young, perfectly squeaky clean and professional K-5 teacher busied herself in the classroom as any gorgeous K-5 teacher would. She told me how the class was preparing for a unit on rivers, and their role in rural, semi-rural, and urban landscapes. "It's exciting," she said—looking excited. "We're going to wade out into the river and investigate the kinds of invertebrates that make up this eco-system. Do samples. Chart it up. That kind of thing." She looked like she wanted to say something else to me. I fully expected her to say something else. "That's great," I said, suddenly feeling like we were standing too close. All around us, kids were shoveling their shit into backpacks: water bottles and gloves and papers with badly drawn dinosaurs, scrawled in inappropriately colored crayons. They were a ramshackle bunch--a mess of limbs and loud noises. I watched as Tina chatted to Mike—except, I think, it was more that she was trying to ignore him. That was my girl. "You should come," said the K-5 teacher—almost too quietly, almost as a whisper into my ear. I wanted to touch her knitted sweater sleeve; I wanted to feel the warmth of her nurturing, the kindness in her toned arms. [End Page 117] Blood and Tofu "Could you pass the hot sauce?" "Sure," I said, handing it to him. We had become people who ate tofu scramblers. "I'm going to try it," he said, narrating...