If I Had That Job

You go to the gym on a Wednesday and all the teachers are there early for a 6:00AM bike class.  They play their music really loudly and the music generally really awful.  I walk passed the young security guard who seems oblivious to having to listen this thundering nonsense.  If I had that job boy, I would be finding me some head phones or an assignment transfer. 

Mine are in my ears and I head up the stairs, with these new earbuds from Apple turned up as loud as they go.  They aren’t loud enough.  What are these things called,  iBuds?  No.  I had to look that up.  They are properly referred to as . . . Airpods.  Now I know.  Someone was paid a lot of money to make that decision.   My Airpods can’t block out the noise of the bad eighties rock and roll they’re playing.  But the noise fades as I get myself from the hall and into the actual gym. 

I had my mid set on getting all my grading done before I headed across town for a meeting.  I didn’t even come close.  I had to read and re-read this group’s work and wound up spending hours with only the slightest amount of progress before it was time to pack up and head out.  Call the Di Di now, before it’s too late.

The meeting is at the Microsoft Tower over in Haidian.  They have us in a first-floor room with a large tinted window that looks outside at the Haidian pedestrian traffic and it has now begun to rain.  We never have rain in Beijing and it is evocative and moody to see rather than it being anything damp or annoying.  A primal memory of rain and childhood nags at me throughout the meeting.  I can’t place.  It’s just beyond reach though I know it was in Harrison, New York before I was ten.

Wednesday, 4/24/19