Ms. Dahlke if ur nasty.

I really love my new job at Tech, but in this post I am going to tell you the thing that I don't like about it.

The adults call each other Ms. or Mr. Whatever. Like, I'm not a kid, and I think it's weird and almost... teacher-fetishy to call each other Ms. or Mr. Whoever when we're the only people in the room.

Also, a teacher that I called her first name in an email then introduced herself to me in a meeting (where everyone was going around saying their name for my benefit) as Ms. Whatever. 

Don't care for it.

still lifes (lives?)

On the captain's porch, there's an office divided by clear walls into many offices, and I was in one of those sub-offices.  On the wall, there's taped a file folder with clip art of an adorable little cat and a dainty little butterfly, and in between the two, "CONFIRMED PRE-PAROLE LIST."  On the window-wall, one of those clingie sticker things is a fun little cartoon bulky white guy in stripes breaking apart rocks with a pick.  Cute little drops of sweat coming off his face.

--

Above the door of one the offices in the administration building hangs a wooden sign, like the kind you'd get at Cracker Barrel, welcoming, "Come On In!"  Just inside the office, there's an old-school pencil sharpener still attached to the wall.  Just outside, a sign on the wall reminds, "Understanding Disability is an ATTITUDE."

strange dream

I dreamt last night that J at the prison gave me a book that was a compilation of fourteen narratives of crimes committed by men from this particular prison, past and present.

I sat down and read the whole thing that afternoon, and just a few minutes after I'd closed it up, I got a phone call from someone saying his name was Kelle [pronounced Kelly] Jackson and that he had served ten to fifteen years at this particular prison.  He said that when he'd been there, conditions had been horrible and that he'd heard that it had since become an easy place to do time.  He wondered if the state was going to give him some money to compensate for the time he had to do at this prison before it got better.

As I listened, my heart and mind raced because his name was really familiar.  I flipped the book open to the table of contents, dragged my finger down the whole first page, flipped to the second, and there was his name at the top: John "Kelle" Jackson.  (Later in the dream, I kept confusing Jackson with Johnson when I was telling the story to a few different people -- J and M from the prison, a few people who were at the party going on in the backyard of the house I grew up in while I sat reading in the front room [pronounced frunchroom].  I had to keep correcting myself.)

I said to Kelle Jackson, into the receiver of the non-cordless house phone, "Are you kidding me?  The violent crimes you committed, and you think you deserve compensation from the state?"  He corrected me.  He hadn't committed crimes plural, just one crime.  Later in the dream when I told the story to J and M, they confirmed what he's said, reminding me of the key points of the Kelle Johnson chapter I'd read earlier that day.