Your Unofficial Guide To Home Tutoring (4)

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Get used to using the phone. A lot. None of these home tutored kids will ever call you if they are not going to be there. Ever. You have to call. Every day. Several times. Leaving messages. I have one now that I have to call, leave a message, and if he doesn't call back, I now have to call his Mom, who will call him. Then she'll call me back to let me know she got him up. Then I have to call him and leave a message and wait for him to call me back....and it goes on and on and on and on.

This same student recently introduced me to the wonderful concept of the Hillbilly Alarm Clock/Burglar Alarm. All of these people have a mangy assortment of canine/rodent mix companion animals inside, and may have one or more murderous pitbull/rotties outside. When I arrive at this student's house, I am to knock on the door and keep knocking harder and harder until the dogs get barking, then keep up a continuous knocking so they go nuts and run through the house barking at the top of their lungs. This wakes up my student, who gets up, moseys to the bathroom, and much later stumbles through the house to the door, which he eventually opens after peeking through the curtains at least twice. If I hear "SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!", a loud thump and a yelp, that's the Hillbilly Snooze Alarm, patent pending, meaning a remote, sneaker or cellphone was thrown at the dogs to shut them up. Then I have to go back to my car for ten minutes and try again.

No. I am not kidding. I know you are sitting there laughing, thinking what a wonderful, imaginative treatise this is. I am dead serious.

On, and if you have a wicked sense of humor, do not try what I did one time. I had a notoriously hard to awaken student, a gang kid from downstate. One day, I pounded on the door hard enough to rattle the windows, and in a deep, loud voice, I bellowed, "Narcotics officers! Open up immediately! We have a warrant to search and seize!" He was NOT amused. I did it again with another kid, not my student, but a friend of one, and I thought HE was going to kill me. I personally think it gets funnier every time I do it. Sheesh! Kids!

Bring a seat cushion of your choice. Something comfortable, because why should EVERY part of your body crawl with revulsion. Well, you remember the table, right? Tables are a bargain compared to the chairs. Wooden chair seats REEK of gases past/passed, having permeated the wood. Any upholstered seat cushion will be just...unthinkable to sit on. (That stain...could it be...??? Yes!!! OMG!!! YUUUUCK!!!). I would sooner EAT off a barstool in Jellies than dream of sitting my ass in one of their chairs. Never, ever it in an upholstered chair or sofa in the living room, even with your seat cushion. There is dampness in addition to the odor, and since it can usually not be identified, just best to play it safe. You are better off on the floor. Like placemats, place a mark of some kind to let you know which side is down, you do not want to get them mixed up as you go from place to place.

As you try to find a seat at the table, if a sperm donor or incubator is there, they will apologize, saying things like, "Oh, I'm sorry, the place is such a mess..."

Mess? MESS??? I've seen messes lady, THIS is like saying Hiroshima got a little warm at the end of WWII! THIS does for messes what Stonehenge did for ROCKS!!! Japan was a bit of a MESS after this year's earthquake and tsunami! No one could EVER find the bodies HERE! Jesus Christ, lady, get a dictionary and look up 'mess' and 'disaster'! Sound out any of the big words in the definition, you'll get the point sooner or later!...'Mess' is THIS place's gay love child!

But I digress...

They will tell you to just move anything you need to and put it anywhere.

Choices, choices.

Where WOULD you put...put...THIS? A Biohazard bag? The toilet? The litter box? A Hazmat Containment Vehicle? They will never clean and jerk their 4 foot wide asses out of the brokespring couch where they sit watching Jerry Springer or the Game Show Network, waddle through the garbage strewn floor five feet and clear a place FOR a guest in their house. This provides a nice homey atmosphere for you, like you're one of the family. You will feel depression and despondency overcome you in moments, half your IQ will drop out a pants leg (oh, another important point, later), and in thirty seconds you will resemble Pigpen from Charlie Brown. Long term exposure may make this effect permanent.

(c) 2011 by Dean Davis of Living World Ecology Center. Reprinted with permission given by Dean Davis.