~Monday~ I took the #1 Avent Ferry Wolfline bus in and lo and behold there was another set of Doublemint Duplicates, also known as identical twins, although unlike the Doublemint Duplicates on the #9 Greek Village route, these are African-American instead of White and gals instead of guys. For the latter reason, I’m going to call them the Doublemint Duplikettes.
These ladies were tiny-framed, and like the boys (almost eerily so) the article of clothing distinguishing them from one another was about their necks. You might remember with the boys, the last two times it’s been one red t-shirt and one blue t-shirt sticking out at their collars under the coats. The girls both had on the same brand/style boots, black leotards, brown zipped up jackets with a little pink heart over the left breast, and both had spring-curled dreads, black-framed glasses, with one wearing a blue scarf and the other wearing a gray one.
They had a text book opened, with the left side of it resting on the one’s right lap and the right side of it resting on the other’s left lap. I wondered if they share all of their text books, essentially getting through college at half-price in terms of book expenses. At one point, the girl on the left turned the page, and the other one said, “Wait, I’m not done.”
“Ooops,” the other one said turning back the page.
A young girl, who uses a walker, sat to my left and she was on her cell phone, talking rather loudly. Every time the bus swerved or turned, her walker rolled out toward the twins across from her. After about the third time, the twins stopped reacting as by then they realized that she was going to catch it with her foot before it hit them.
Because she was speaking so loudly on her phone, I could hear that she had a speech impediment, too. She was evidently talking to someone in the Disability Services Office about issues she’s having in a particular class.
“I am not able to complete my assignments on time. It seems that I’m not understanding the instructions.”
Pause for conversation on the other end of the phone.
“No. He doesn’t seem to care. Aren’t I allowed more time?” she asked.
And indeed she does. Every course at NC State has this item in its syllabus:
| Students with Disabilities
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 mandate that the faculty provide reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities. These accommodations are based on the premise that students with disabilities need an equal opportunity to acquire information and demonstrate what they have learned; not have an advantage over others in the class. This does not mean lowering class standards, but it may mean having students learn and express knowledge in a different mode. All students registered with the NC State Office of Disability Services for Students (DSS) will provide the instructor with an accommodation letter. This letter verifies that appropriate medical documentation is on file and that the student has a substantiated disability requiring effective reasonable accommodations. Accommodations for which the student qualifies will also be included in the letter. If you have not registered with the DSS and have a learning disability, you should register in Suite 1900, Student Health Center. If you have a documented disability, please schedule an appointment with the course instructor to discuss academic accommodations. |
I had a decent workday with one morning meeting and one afternoon meeting.
I left at a little after 4:00, as I’d received a call during the day that my glasses were in, and I wanted to get them before heading to class and then dancing, as they would have been closed by the time dancing finished.
You may remember my glasses saga: originally $509 for just lenses at the optician in my eye doctor’s office, canceled that order and got a refund for those, ordered a pair that included new fames for $198.60 from LensCrafters. One of the things that made them cheaper was that I didn’t get the extra $50 charge to make them “featherweight.”
When I arrived, I watched the person helping me get my glasses out and before trying them on me, put them under this scope-type machine to presumably ensure they were the right prescription. As soon as I saw them, I thought, “Oh my god! Those things are like Coke bottles. My glasses have never been that thick before. I can’t believe taking the ‘featherweight’ option off them made such a difference in their thickness!”
“What’s your name again?” the lady asked me.
“John Martin,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve grabbed the wrong pair,” she said.
Whew.
Social Media and Technical Communication class was okay tonight. We discussed our two reading assignments and then Jessie did her presentation about User Profiles.
Jen and I took immediate leave of the class as is our M.O. now, since we have to be across town to shag lessons within 30 minutes of the end of class.
On the way, I listened to an incredibly interesting interview by Fresh Air’s Terry Gross of Melissa Febos, the author of a new memoir called “Whip Smart: Memoirs of a Dominatrix,” which “details the four years she spent working as a dominatrix. Febos enacted fantasy sequences, spanked grown men and verbally humiliated them for $75 an hour in a dungeon located somewhere in midtown Manhattan.”
During the time she did that, she worked on an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and she currently teaches writing at SUNY Purchase College. I would really like to read her book after hearing the interview. You can listen to it here.
The shag lessons tonight were a little frustrating, as we spent too much time learning and not enough time practicing what we’d been taught. With that said, it was a ton of fun dancing with Jen whenever we did dance. I do think if we were to continue with lessons, we’d be pretty darn good when it was all said and done.
Alas, though, this was the last class for me. Next week is the actual last class, but I’ll be in Thibodaux, so I’ll miss it. My overall reflection of the experience is that there is a lot more to shagging than I’d thought, and I’m not crazy about how the beat count changes for different moves in the dance. Every other kind of dancing I’ve done, the beat count stays the same, I mean that’s what makes the dance the dance. Two-stepping is: quick-quick slow-slow, the waltz is 1-2-3, and so on.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, and after a couple of moves in online Scrabble and a short instant message conversation with Robert, I had an incredibly delicious salad, which in part was so good because I was so hungry and it was so late.
At a little after 11:00, I hopped in my bed and wrote up Sunday’s blog entry, and most of this one. I’m running about a day-and-a-half behind on my blog entries, and I don’t like that. Oh well.