The last 32 hours.

Yesterday. 3:00 PM. I'm helping out with 6th grade homework club, in the 6th grade math room, with a kid named Liam David. Nice, simple kid. Thick southern accent, lazy and sleepy eyes. From time to time, as I read over his essay, he stares at me, mouth agape, with some sort of indescribable admiration at my age. We talk when we aren't working. Already thinking about going to college, where he wants to go. Down south, all my family's gone to college in Georgia. From time to time he uses the words 'crap' and 'suck' to express his maturity.

I peruse his essay. It sounds horribly well-written, like some prodigy had just sat down and wrote a very focused albeit random essay. Out of a hint of suspicion, I ask to see his Social Studies textbook. We walk to the Social Studies room and we bring it back to the math room. Sure enough.

His essay: "The Roman Catholic Church was still the most powerful religious force during the 16th century."

The textbook: "The Roman Catholic Church was still the most powerful religious force during the 16th century."

I realize that the rest of his essay is copied straight from the textbook and panic a little. I flick a glance to Sage, who's working with a girl. She's transcribing the girl's essay. She looks at peace and at calm. Her student knows how to reword things, so she has no problem. I have a problem.

I walk over to the woman running the club.
"Where you goin'?" Liam inquires.
"Just going to ask a question. I'll - I'll be right back."
I start to talk to the director, only to see Liam staring at me again. She asks if I want to move outside, I quickly say yes.

I'm in the hallway with her, and I'm sweating a little bit. I feel the beads forming. I explain that he's plagiarizing, I express my concern of me being liable for helping him plagiarize if not all of it's fixed, and ask what I can do. She responds by saying I should 'guide' him in rewording things, not take it upon myself. That I should warn him that if he plagiarizes, he could get in trouble. I think to myself "This is what the teachers should be doing, not some kid in high school," but return to Liam anyway. I feel his affixed gaze and he's visibly wondering what that was all about.

I tell him that he has to work on taking the main ideas from a passage and create his own opinions and conclusions on things from the text. I start my futile attempt to train him.

He insists time after time that the sentences can't be reworded, and I try to get him to start thinking of putting things in other terms. It ends up with me rewording things for him subconsciously, out of sheer desperation to keep the kid out of trouble. He gets bored and just tells me to print it out. He's tired of trying to think. I'm tired of trying to connect, so I hit 'print'. There were one and a half paragraphs that were reworded by me and the rest remained, untouched and plagiarized.

I walked home after an hour of that Hell. I felt guilty, responsible, defeated at the end of everything. I felt incapable of having any effect on his future, and it felt strangely and sadly symbolic.
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Yesterday. 10:00 PM. Finished talking to lady. Four pages in. At this point, you're just writing stream-of-conscious to get this essay done. It's probably shit. Women's rights, Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, democratic ideals. You say democratic ideals a little bit too much in this. No time to proofread. Just time to write and print. Three hours into this with no end in sight, like falling through a black void that has some invisible bottom that will be cushioned with pillows and a sense of completeness. Fiiiiiiiinally. 1500 words. An overly thorough essay with not enough facts. But it'll do. Now to read until your eyes burn out. Grapes of Wrath. All your fault.
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Sleep at 1:00 AM. Wake up at 5:30 AM.
A dazed and hazy day proceeds, that only comes into clarity when I realize: I don't have my wallet. I don't have my fucking wallet. At a movie theater, about to see an R-rated movie, I look like I'm 15, and I don't have my ID to prove that I'm 17.

I make a frantic call to my mom. On the third ring, she picks up. I explain that Bixby doesn't want to drive all the way home, and that I'm gonna be stranded if I don't get into the movie. Infuriated, she makes the drive up. We hang out in Barnes & Noble in the meantime, I look over some study books for the fast-approaching tests I'm taking, but my mind's preoccupied with guilt. My mom shouldn't do this, but it's her maternal love that gravitates her ever-forward towards the bookstore. Now I fully realize what my track coach said the other day. "She has that sort of typical 'loving mother' aura about her." I feel guilt, not just for making her drive 20 minutes just to give me my wallet, but for being such an ungrateful straight-up asshole to her sometimes, cold and uncaring about her ever-present love. She doesn't deserve the frustration I give her. She deserves a returned favor. And I'm working on providing that from here on out.

She shows up, gives me the wallet after a little lecture, and heads home. I follow the car with my eyes as she rears out of the fire lane, and I am close to tears.

At least Hot Tub Time Machine exceeded my expectations (A+ for being very weird and random), and I got talk to Bobina a little bit more today. Heading down to New York tomorrow, she is. We're meeting up Sunday to do some new and spontaneous things that I haven't told her about. She likes surprises and spontaneity. All she knows about Sunday is that it may or may not involve Finding Nemo.
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When all else feels weird and collapsing, she saves me from it. She brightens it. I could say a trillion romantic comments about her until the universe folds in on itself, but they'd feel incomplete. They're not enough to describe how I feel about her. Brightens everything with a smile or a laugh. And I like that she can turn my days from gloomy to happy in an instant like that. And I like her. And I miss her.

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