kinds of trash in yourself.
French was great. There were all kinds of rules, but in between the rules there were all sorts of little spots where you could make a choice and make your own way, places where nobody else would react like you do. I saw it. Most of the kids in the class were smarties, must have been because it was a small class, half the size of normal, and everybody clicked right into French and kept the pace speeding along. Usually in any class you get some duds. No duds in French, though. Those white kids were something else. I had been in accelerated black classes but the black kids always knew they were out ahead and acted it. These white kids learned like they didnât pay attention but picked it up like eating breakfast. They came to school every day just KNOWING they were going to get it. The word that kept coming to me was, PRECISE. They were precise from when they took off their coats, but they didnât even try, many of them sloppy in dress or the way they talked at least in English. Listen, when blacks learned they KNEW they were learning.
That was the class that gave me hints of what some of the best things about white people were. The class that showed me some of the worst things was one called Communications.
Communications was a class full of nothing but useless trash. The teacher was this flashy dude named Egglestobbs. He was about twenty-five, with wavy brown hair and big oldblue eyes flirting around under his low eyelids. The girls giggled when he looked away after glancing at them. What kind of charge he got out of them, I donât know. He was ridiculous to me. He always made big gestures when he was talking, paying as much attention to his hands as his words and sometimes even stopping in the middle of a sentence to watch his fingers flutter or his arm wave, forgetting he was talking and just digging his appendages. Other times it would be the opposite. He would look at you and fix on you and then after a second he would say something like Well, do you agree? even though he never said anything to agree with. If you said you had no idea, he would laugh and say you were not hip to body language and the girls would sigh and giggle at you and at the word body.
You see, body language was this guyâs big deal. He was an official body language professor, with an official degree in it and all like that. Where they give such a thing I canât imagine, but I never want to go to such a school. It is like getting a degree in water sculpture or writing with air.
Egglestobbs said people all communicated much deeper and more sincerely without the words but by what they did besides. The way you hung your leg over the chair didnât mean anything about trying to be comfy, what it meant was I hate your guts if it was at one angle or let me kiss you on the lips if it was another angle. The shake you gave to your hand when you make a point in arguing is not just to show youâre excited about being right, but it is a precise expression of hostility or envy or friendly disagreement depending on which way you shake and how much. Man, we spent two whole days shaking our pointed finger and writing down ninety different ways the shook finger said things. Did you wiggle or did you tremble? Aha, thereâs a difference. Is yourback straight or crooked? Better check because it says two different things. Do your toes go in or out? Is your hair combed wet or dry? How many ways can you wrinkle your beezer? Do you show your teeth when you say the letter s? All very critical stuff.
It was not so bad just hearing this junk. I mean, I could tell it was eyewash and I just goofed on how silly Egglestobbs and his girls were. The bad thing was, it caused everybody around to start getting very worried about what they were saying when they didnât know what their ear or ankle was doing, and then why they were saying it and whether anyone was getting it and so on. Youâd be talking to somebody and
French was great. There were all kinds of rules, but in between the rules there were all sorts of little spots where you could make a choice and make your own way, places where nobody else would react like you do. I saw it. Most of the kids in the class were smarties, must have been because it was a small class, half the size of normal, and everybody clicked right into French and kept the pace speeding along. Usually in any class you get some duds. No duds in French, though. Those white kids were something else. I had been in accelerated black classes but the black kids always knew they were out ahead and acted it. These white kids learned like they didnât pay attention but picked it up like eating breakfast. They came to school every day just KNOWING they were going to get it. The word that kept coming to me was, PRECISE. They were precise from when they took off their coats, but they didnât even try, many of them sloppy in dress or the way they talked at least in English. Listen, when blacks learned they KNEW they were learning.
That was the class that gave me hints of what some of the best things about white people were. The class that showed me some of the worst things was one called Communications.
Communications was a class full of nothing but useless trash. The teacher was this flashy dude named Egglestobbs. He was about twenty-five, with wavy brown hair and big oldblue eyes flirting around under his low eyelids. The girls giggled when he looked away after glancing at them. What kind of charge he got out of them, I donât know. He was ridiculous to me. He always made big gestures when he was talking, paying as much attention to his hands as his words and sometimes even stopping in the middle of a sentence to watch his fingers flutter or his arm wave, forgetting he was talking and just digging his appendages. Other times it would be the opposite. He would look at you and fix on you and then after a second he would say something like Well, do you agree? even though he never said anything to agree with. If you said you had no idea, he would laugh and say you were not hip to body language and the girls would sigh and giggle at you and at the word body.
You see, body language was this guyâs big deal. He was an official body language professor, with an official degree in it and all like that. Where they give such a thing I canât imagine, but I never want to go to such a school. It is like getting a degree in water sculpture or writing with air.
Egglestobbs said people all communicated much deeper and more sincerely without the words but by what they did besides. The way you hung your leg over the chair didnât mean anything about trying to be comfy, what it meant was I hate your guts if it was at one angle or let me kiss you on the lips if it was another angle. The shake you gave to your hand when you make a point in arguing is not just to show youâre excited about being right, but it is a precise expression of hostility or envy or friendly disagreement depending on which way you shake and how much. Man, we spent two whole days shaking our pointed finger and writing down ninety different ways the shook finger said things. Did you wiggle or did you tremble? Aha, thereâs a difference. Is yourback straight or crooked? Better check because it says two different things. Do your toes go in or out? Is your hair combed wet or dry? How many ways can you wrinkle your beezer? Do you show your teeth when you say the letter s? All very critical stuff.
It was not so bad just hearing this junk. I mean, I could tell it was eyewash and I just goofed on how silly Egglestobbs and his girls were. The bad thing was, it caused everybody around to start getting very worried about what they were saying when they didnât know what their ear or ankle was doing, and then why they were saying it and whether anyone was getting it and so on. Youâd be talking to somebody and
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