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Just the day before, Chicago Public Schools held Report Card Pick-Up Day. Each teacher gets about 30 or so students in their "division" and hands out those report cards. I had my division's report cards in one hand and a stack of star-shaped Post-Its in the other, so I could stick them on the report cards of the honor roll students. I flipped through, flipped through, looking for a report card worthy of a star-shaped Post-It. Out of 35 students, only one of my students got two As. Everyone else had a slew of Ds, Fs and the occasional C -- with maybe a B in gym. I've been spending more and more time in Improv World, and I've been getting more and more attached to some (some!) of the kids in The Other World. And I know it's not so simple, that there's only two worlds, but humor me. I sat there in 7th period looking out over the beautiful wreck that was that loud, bubbling classroom, and could not help but wonder why Improv World and The Other World only collided over a mugging, an intrusion from one reality to the next. I feel like I'm seeing everything with cracked glasses on, and everything's refracting weirdly because the pieces of the lens just don't match up. 4/21/2006 02:57:00 PM
Cracked
Today my friend Bryan told me he got mugged. Bryan is a white 24 year-old who works at Starbucks and does improv. I hold Bryan dear to my heart, and he represents Improv World in this tale. Bryan's mugger? When he told me about the mugging, I got an instant picture in my head of the destitute and perhaps drugged-up black man looking pretty shabby and hassling him with a gun on the El platform. This man resides in The Other World. I found out about this mugging whilst sitting in Dr. C's 7th period class, checking my email and Google-chatting. I was looking out over his class, all seniors about to graduate or not graduate from high school, all furrowing their brows and griping their way through Fast Food Nation: "So there's a UNIVERSITY to go be a MCDONALD'S MANAGER?" "That chicken that they put in that taco was RAW?" "This book's too LONG. Everytime he starts on one topic, he switches to another one!" "This book's too SLOW!" They were engaged and distracted all at once.