I swear, with a little work, maybe some meditation, a couple of brain teasers, some weird South American psychotropic herb, and I could be a psychic.
I was thinking about what I would discuss in the blog today, as I trudged down to the bus-stop, only to have inspiration jump up and bite me on my punk-rock booty.
There's a disabled woman, Down's syndrome I think, who is nearly always on the perpetually early #19 bus with me in the mornings. Generally, we hardly notice each other. But today, thanks in no small part to the newly trimmed and magnificent mohawk of me, she stood there gaping at me, chin down to the sidewalk, utterly baffled by my haircut.
It continued like this. I stopped to pick up smokes and a juice at the gas-station on my way to work. The cashier looked at me as if I was covered in freshly-skinned puppies, and the old guy who pumps the gas, washes the windows, and generally does all the grunt work, gave me a bewildered look that defies my skills at description.
Now, I don't find my mohawk all that shocking. It's rather short, is back to my natural mousy-brown hair-color, and is neatly trimmed and styled. Not at all hard-core, but enough to let me feel like myself. I just don't see it as any sort of big deal.
But apparently to some people it is. Like the Arts and Crafts teacher I share a room with when I'm helping the kids out in the computer lab.
As soon as she arrived, she very politely, with the sort of courtesy usually encountered when dealing with cops who know a supervisor is watching, informed me that she found my haircut "ugly" and that "people like us, who are role-models, should be more presentable". I proceeded to inform her that I thought I was being a role model, by showing kids that it's ok to be themselves, and also that people who don't look like typical "role-models" can still be a positive force in the lives of others.
Of course, that was the diplomatic, polite response.
This is what I was really thinking:
What the holy Jeebus fuck? Here I am, in a nice pair of black jeans, fitted T-shirt, nicely trimmed hair and beard, and YOU are giving me shit? You? In your seven layers of frumpy woolen old-lady clothing swathing your fat-assed complacent form? You with the crumbs of your breakfast still clustering around the corner of your mouth, with VISIBLE FUMES of your cheap-ass French hooker perfume rising from you in waves? You who seem to think it perfectly expectable to refer to another person as "ugly", when you yourself look a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West's fat older sister? You are a "role model"? You who cannot be assed to shut the fuck up but instead prattle on and on even once it becomes clear that NO ONE can be buggered to listen to you anymore? You who shove your face into other people's personal space, reeking of cheap scent and covered in crumbs with a mouthful of biscuit still half-masticated in your gullet? You who disrupt and interrupt classes so you can pull kids away from class for your pet projects? You who show considerably less "professional courtesy" towards others, constantly making snide comments about the other teachers and staff behind their backs, SOMETIMES TO THE KIDS, than my Anarchist ass? Just what the fuck are you thinking?
Of course, she wasn't thinking. Just like the grandmother of one of our after-school kiddies, who, when walking into the place for the first time and encountering Jason washing up in the kitchen and my mohawked self vacuuming exclaimed into her cell-phone that she couldn't be at the right place there was some kólsvartur rísí (coal-black giant) washing dishes and a dópistí (drug-addict, junky) cleaning the floors.
The nice thing about working these sorts of shit jobs is that generally, those with any say in the matter are just so thrilled with the fact that they have a competent employee that they could care less what said employee looks like. Now if only that enlightened self-interest would find its way into other corners of the sadly narrow-minded populace…
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