The touted reason for budget cuts across the ken is the low birth rate, which means the pile of solid gold the school keeps in the locked and barred safe in the office will not be enough to burn the furnaces all winter long. When I first got to K-town’s high school in August 2006 the air conditioner ran all day, even on the 2 days when there were only three teachers at school. We all sucked on popsicles and rested on our laurels and the stacks of papers on our desks fluttered from the breeze of the fans. Then this last summer the edict came down that we would only turn on the AC in the afternoon. And so, after arriving at school on my bike huffing and glistening with sweat, I’d pull my shirt off my sticky skin and flutter it back and forth myself. There just wasn’t enough in the coffers to properly cool the Sensei, and everyone was very sorry and asked each other creatively if they were hot and the answer was always yes. In the sweaty words of my students:
Bathing in the sun
The sun bead down violently
My body turn golden brown
Very hot all day
Fish enjoy swimming every day
If I were a fish…
Then, suddenly, we were into the fiery reds of falls and DEBATE SEASON, and the episode of crying in my car.
I feel well in fall
Fall of reading, fall of eat
Wow! I must exercise
And now December has roared in like a frost-breathing forest vixen and our trees, our arena, our skin has been coated with a thin bubbled coating of cold.
Winter is very cold
So I can’t get up early
And I don’t want to move
As of December 1st, we’re officially allowed to turn on the heaters, but so far all we’ve had is two kerosene heaters hauled in on dollies and they make the air wavery and gaseous; the four industrial over-head heaters are cold to the touch and permanently retired. Finally, around 11 this morning, after chattering my way through a tupperware of leftover spaghetti, I pulled on my coat and filled my mug with hot water and cupped my hands around it while the kerosene went to my head. In this cold, creaky state I ate my lunch and curled my feet under my knees, and the Sensei wandered over to say, “are you okay?” for which I can’t blame them since the combination of liquid kerosene, my computer-red eyes and my smoking cup of hot water make me look a little off my rocker; a little drugged up.
But that’s nothing compared to the fact that I’m wearing my new puffy black coat indoors, and if the students want to be fish in summer they should come and see me now, in my winterized version of a puffer fish costume. I’m round and have white blotches in all the right places, and if I was hanging as a lit-up paper lantern outside a restaurant, you would assume I was an advertisement for the deadly fugu; the delicacy that is poisonous blowfish.
