School was super boring, the more so because it is a class full of men who would rather be just about anywhere else on a Friday. I’m back home comfortable now with a pot of coffee wondering how I even show up, for it would never have happened even ten years ago. According to the records, my coffee consumption since school started has leapt right up to the same level as back in college. I don’t track the poundage as much as the usage of coffee drip filters. I am back up to buying them in the 200 packs again. School, study and coffee go together for me.
Okay, gang, we’ve gone over this before, but what is new each time are the details. I have a bit of a forceful personality, and it is always highly amusing when people who have recently met me start to act like me. They can go through the motions and often make fools of themselves because you can’t duplicate my spontaneous thinking. Guess who this time? The class instructor, Mike. Several weeks ago one of the guys in class was not paying attention when his turn came to answer a chapter question. I whispered to him, “Nueve”. (The number nine in Spanish.) Mike’s reaction was sort of like, “Wow, you can do that?” Seems to me it would be the ideal situation to do that. Well, since then he has been trying to talk Spanish. The joke is that he plainly must have learned Spanish from a book. I do not know if he has ever spoken Spanish while teaching before, but it certainly seems that he has not. It causes smiles behind his back because his Spanish is affected and does not have the same impact as that first time I did it spontaneously. He often spells out DOS commands to Juan, the teenage kid in the class. The laugh is that Juan’s difficulty is not spelling, but concentrating on the lessons. Mike has to think about the letters just a moment longer than natural and this halting manner grates on the class. Additionally, I had said a number where he is using letters (his favorites seem to be r, e, d and I.) (Sic. This word processor will not let me type a case letter I.) This ‘help’ can be condescending in Spanish, implying the listener does not know how to spell.
This Mike guy is a bit of a unique character as well. He is a qualified computer tech beyond doubt, but the way he teaches it opens plenty of questions about how he learned this trade. He has picked up that most of the questions I ask in class have a direct bearing on how the knowledge can be used to make money. You’d think this would not surprise anybody who lives in America. I take generous amounts of notes, and although it is probably not true, I keep thinking I find him standing where he can read them to see what I consider important. Nobody else in the class takes notes at all – he neither gives handouts or allows time to write anything. I’m told a black lady in the other class also takes notes. The rest of these guys seem to do absorption learning, a shallow and rarely effective method that wins battles but not wars.
He [Mike] pronounces escape as ‘eks-cape’ and exit as ‘eggs-zit’. I took that infinite horizon picture of my cell phone into class to show Don, a guy who is repeating the course. (Hmm, half the class is repeating the course.) [Author’s note: I took a picture of a salt shaker holding up an object to show an effective technique of photographing for eBay. The purpose was to reveal how the photo was taken, in this case a shot of my cell phone.]
Because I knew Don would ask, I also took a side picture including the salt shaker I had used to prop up the phone so he could see how it was done. Any other object that is heavy enough would have done the job just fine but the salt shaker was handy. Don wanted to know the technique, and this behind the scenes picture was the ideal way to show him. The topic was not the pictures, but how to get people to focus on what was for sale, in particular on e-Bay. Mike walks past and takes a glance while hearing the last part of the conversation. He walks away saying, “Who’d want to buy a salt shaker?”
Good night.
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