Last week was my first time in a public school since I graduated from high school in 2001. Continually unhappy with my chosen line of work (read customer service, retail, office administration and paperwork), I have decided to pursue a job in the realm of education to see if I might fair better as a teacher. Frustrated with my work at the rock climbing gym, I completed my paperwork to be a substitute paraeducator and emergency substitute teacher, as well as apply to several paraeducator jobs around Bremerton School District.
I accepted my first sub position from my aunt at an elementary school located in Bremerton School District. Monday was my first day alone with my aunt's responsibilities. To prepare me for the duties paraeducators fulfill, I worked as a volunteer for a few days with my aunt before accepting the position. Laying in bed Sunday night, I was more than a little nervous thinking about my job the next morning.
I got to school early to mentally prepare myself for the day ahead. The first part of the day was filled up with kindergarten reading groups and work as a reading tutor. I had a break in the middle of the day as I worked with two special needs students, then I returned to the larger student population with the Learning Opportunity Room, or the place the bad students go when they hit other children. To make my duties a little harder, Halloween was five days away and the students had a four day weekend due to parent teacher conferences. When I arrived at my first reading group, the kids were bouncing in their very small chairs at their very small tables in eager anticipation of their approaching sugar highs.
My reading groups on Monday were a disaster. I didn't know what pages to read, the kids never really stopped bouncing (who knew such small wooden chairs make that loud of a noise when they hit the ground?), and several times during my first 20 mins of work I had to coerce students out from under the tables with stickers. The kindergartners were working on learning their alphabet and reading simple words like "I" "me" "see." At one point, I realized that my elementary school experience failed me where phonics were concerned. I can read anything, but ask me to speak it and I clam up. This week, we were teaching the kids the letter A. A says /a/, Ant on an Apple, /a/ /a/ /a/. Right from the beginning, I pronounced /a/ wrong and was lucky enough to be corrected by a group of five year olds. Soft /a/, Katie, like apple and ant. I continued to tell myself this for my remaining three days of reading groups. Also lucky for me, I had 20 years on my students and a bag full of stickers, so they quickly forgot my error.
A note about stickers: You can get children to do anything for you with the promise of a sticker. They are like crack. The children can be bouncing off the walls, throwing chairs, or crawling under tables. Speaking your displeasure at their behavior is not enough to change anything; you have to speak within the commerce of stickers. Size also does not matter. With my adult brain, I would think bigger is better and personally choose the stickers that have the most eye catching and colorful surface area to cover the back of my hand. This is not the case with children. More often than not, I would have them clamoring over the pencil eraser sized animal stickers. Content seems to please more than size. However, There is no consistency regarding desired sticker content from day to day, or at least none that my adult brain can understand. A girl that wants hearts and flowers one day referred to as "girl stickers"), demands cars the next day (considered "boy stickers").
The saviors of my Monday, very surprising to myself and co-workers at the gym, were my special needs kids. Since my childhood, I have been nervous around the special education kids. I couldn't understand the reasons behind their actions. I felt awkward and embarrassed at their learning disabilities. Many times, I didn't want them to feel like I was staring, but couldn't take my eyes away from their predicament. The two little boys I worked with this last week changed my approach to special needs children.
For privacy and confidentiality, I will refer to my first little boy as Kevin. My job was to relieve his one-on-one worker so she could go to lunch. During my half hour with him, I was suppose to sit in his class with him and do whatever the rest of the class was doing. Kevin is in a wheel chair with something that looks like cerebral palsy. When I sat next to him, the class was engaged in story time. Kevin's wheel chair had a computer screen with different phrases and words complete with pictures. When the different phrases are chosen, the computer speaks the words. Unable to control his limbs, Kevin moves his head from side to side in order to press buttons and navigate through the menu on the computer screen. By communicating in this method, I realized Kevin was extremely high functioning stuck in a body that would not cooperate.
My half hour was close to lunch time and Kevin was hungry. For the first several minutes of my time with him, he scrolled through the lunch menu telling me all the different things he wanted to eat. Peanut butter and jelly, pancakes, ice cream, yogurt, yogurt pancakes. I didn't quiet know where he would get the feast he seemed to be wanting. His available lunching option on Monday was a chicken burger or chili in a Styrofoam cup. I started joking with him about his desired food choices, in particular the yogurt pancakes. We had the following conversation, me speaking to Kevin and Kevin speaking back to me through the mechanical voice on his chair's computer.
"I would like to purchase yogurt pancakes."
"Really, Kevin! And how do you think you will purchase the pancakes?"
"I would like to pay with a check."
"You are in luck! We accept checks here."
(I grab his hand and act like he is signing and handing me the check. Kevin starts laughing)
"Please put my receipt in my wallet."
"Here you go" as I pull out his imaginary wallet and put the imaginary receipt inside.
"Can I help you with anything else?" I ask him.
"Please put my pancakes in the back of my wheel chair."
So I act like I'm putting the pancakes in the back of his wheel chair. Kevin is now beside himself with laughter, which produces a foamy drool on one side of his cheek. His eyes continuing to look at me all the while, his mouth a huge gaping smile.
The class starts coloring Halloween finger puppets. I get Kevin's paper and ask him with which color he would like to start. He mumbles something that sounds like red, so I pick out one of his red crayons and place it on his thumb. Kevin has special crayons that are very big with holes in the middle. By placing his thumb in the crayon, he can swing his arm from side to side and cover his paper in color. My job is to hold the paper on his desk and avoid getting hit by the crayon. I ask him if he would like to write his name on the top of the page and get an answer that sounds like "yes." We start writing K-E-V-I-N, but he stops me and lets me know that he would rather have me write Tyler on the paper. So we write Tyler instead and Kevin once again starts laughing and drooling. He moves the red crayon from side to side, looks at me and says something else that I don't understand. I think he is asking for another red crayon, so I dig out a different shade of red which appears to be in perfect condition, like the first shade of red. He colors a little bit, looks at me and says the same thing as before. I dig out yet a third perfect looking red crayon and put it on his hand. It wasn't until Tuesday that I realized his favorite color is black and all along he was asking for the black crayon. I should have figured this out sooner, as all the crayons in the bucket are in perfect condition except a very used and broken black crayon.
Tuesday we color pumpkins together... or I draw pumpkins on his paper and he covers the pumpkins completely with black. We successfully covered three pages, front and back, with black strokes. To give him more color time, I started folding the pages in half so he could color one at a time. However, the smaller pages meant I had less space to hold to paper down while avoiding a hit with his crayon. By midday Tuesday, I had black crayon embedded under my nails and along the tops of my fingers.
Wednesday was my last day coloring with Kevin. I tried to shake things up a little bit and got him to switch a few color strokes to blue, my favorite color, and green, his friend's favorite color. It took, for a few strokes, until he would ask once again for the black crayon and cover the green and blue thick with black. Just before my time with him ended, tragedy stuck. In his unfettered excitement while coloring, the black crayon stroked its last and broke in half. I showed it to Kevin and looked sad at his crayon breaking. Kevin started laughing uncontrollably when I told him he needed to choose a new favorite color. Right before I stood up to leave, he looked at me and told me his new favorite color: Red.
Harmony was restored in the world.
I'm a dreamer. Those who know me will attest to this fact. Give me a dull or unadventurous life and I will hatch some plan to inspire that life back into full color, perfectly tailored to that person's wants and needs. One dream is to walk around the world starting with Mexico. Rather than experience a country for a short week or two, the plan is to live and volunteer in a country until I learn the language and culture well enough to compose an anthology of local and personal works. Another is to work six months through the Antarctica summer and live the remaining six months on a sailboat, exploring the high seas and inner ports of countless continents. Still another is to minimize my daily expenses to a small enough amount so I can then hop on a bicycle to hike and ride around the United States for several years, riding north in the summer and south in the winter with all my possessions summarized into a small bike trailer. The list is inexhaustible or, if it does in fact dwindle, I begin researching new opportunities or hashing out the details to some of my classics.
Last week, I had an experience that brought my most classic of dreams a little close to fruition. The classic is my bakery in Hallstatt, Austria. When I was in seventh grade, I quite randomly stumbled upon a picture of Hallstatt and instantly fell in love. I was going to live there someday, somehow. The colors were so vivid, the town so quaint and the scenery such a gorgeous contrast to my current conditions of cloudy grey skies and suburban sprawl. My first plan was to visit as an exchange student, find a handsome local to marry and live the rest of my life in complete bliss lost in the Alps, running circles in large alpine meadows. This plan was later replaced as,
1. I graduated from high school and lost my opportunity as an exchange student (I wouldn't have been guaranteed placement in Hallstatt, anyway) and,
2. I lost confidence in my ability to attract a young Austrian chap by the name of Hans who would fall madly in love with me and beg me to stay with him in his mountainous paradise (what would I have to offer Hans over all the other young American girls clamoring for his affections?)
The dream, in its original state, was too fragile and dependent on external factors to ever be obtainable. Instead, I decided I would go to Austria as a business woman and baker. The bakery is going to be either lakeside or one street up. It will have a patio and hanging basket gardens where one can sit and read while sunning and enjoying a chocolate croissant and cafe. Travelers are very welcome, however most the tables will be occupied with retired Austrian locals. In between baking, I'll collect stories and write them into novels which will never be published. There will be book shelves and they will be selling my favorite works of literature, available only in the language of the author. I'll keep costs low enough to break even and sustain me. (Please read: if you want to visit me in my old age, plan a trip to Austria and I will stuff you with pastries). I will live in the studio/one/two bedroom apartment above the bakery. Again, the apartment size fluctuates as I find a person I think understands this dream only to return to my old age insane and unmarried, living with a cat in a studio apartment above my bakery.
My Hallstatt Classic has been a little further realized by a recent experience at a local bakery in Bremerton, WA. I woke up to a strange, gold filtered sunlight and knew that autumn would come knocking in the next day or so. To celebrate the last day of summer, Bryan and I decided breakfast was a must and headed down to my favorite breakfast restaurant, the Hi-Lo Cafe. However, our arrival was met with a closed Hi-Lo and a sign informing us the owners were on vacation and that we should have a "smiley and sunny day" regardless. No worries, we decided we would walk two store fronts down and purchase some pastries from Luigi's Bakery and have them with tea and sun.
We enter Luigi's Bakery and instantly wish we are no longer in Luigi's Bakery. The entrance is crowded with metal bread racks channeling customers to one pastry display window. Behind the metal racks, the room looks more like an office than a bakery. Stacks of papers line the walls, ovens and counters are somehow absent from the bakery decor, and one man sits surfing the Internet in a far corner cubby. A flustered looking woman greets us and traps us into making a purchase as neither Bryan or I are confrontational enough to turn around and leave. Following the metals racks, we allow ourselves to be channeled toward the pastry display window and gaze beyond the glare of the glass. Inside, our eyes are met with rows and rows of black pastries. My first thought is "wow, these things are terribly burnt" but then I back track and think perhaps this flustered couple knows something about rustic Italian baking that I do not. They do, after all, own a bakery. My gaze passes over crispy black croissants, toasted and brown cream cheese and blueberry pastries, brown scones with blackened fruit, and cinnamon brioches.
I can tell Bryan wants to leave but refuses to make the first move. Flustered woman asks us what we would like. I scan the window one last time to find the least burnt of the ensemble, deciding on an oat and walnut scone and the cinnamon brioche. The pastries are plopped in a bag and the woman rings us up, $4.00. Expensive for burnt pastries, yes, but I have experienced more expensive lessons. Besides, maybe once the burnt is scraped off, the pastries are quite wonderful underneath. After all, this couple does own a bakery.
False. We get the pastries home, make up some tea and sit down to explore the food before us. We start with the scone. First, I break off a crispy currant hanging on to its brown scone home. Rather than plucking, like a current on a scone should, the black circle shatters in my fingers and disintegrates into a pile of carbon. That's alright, I didn't want the current anyway. Bryan breaks off a corner to find beneath the brown and toasted surface, not the sconey goodness we were hoping for, but a doughy and undercooked inside. I'm puzzled. How can you own a bakery, charge $2.00 a pastry, still have your establishment running, and not know how to bake?
We move on to pastry number two, Cinnamon Brioche. Originally, I picked the brioche because it was the only unburnt pastry in the window. As it turns out, Cinnamon Brioche is fancy for World's Smallest Cinnamon Roll. We pull the truffle paper cup off of the pastry and look at the Brioche in all its glory. It's a little smaller than a golf ball. I wonder how the flustered woman and her husband, both rather large individuals, mastered the rolling of this delicate pastry with their clumsy fingers. Who knows, it's-a-Luigi and he owns a bakery. Magic rolls the cinnamon pastry. Bryan and I share a chewy golf ball and drink our tea, firmly decided to never visit Luigi's Bakery again.
So, how did this disappointing experience bring me one step closer to my bakery in Austria? As it turns out, you do not need to know how to bake to own a bakery! My smattering of successful cookies and scones recipes will be enough to secure a large base of patrons. And if my pastries do not pull in the customers, I'll awkwardly loom over the pastry window when customers come in until they purchase something. Then I'll over charge them for something I know they will not be able to eat. If this business strategy does not work in Austria, I know I can at least own a successful bakery in Bremerton, WA. Perhaps I'll name it Mario's Bakery and open it across the street from Luigi's. That way, on slow business days we can stand behind our screened doors and yell "i'm-a-mario" and "it's-a-luigi" across 15th Street until our voices give out and customers vow to never visit our neighborhood again.
Everything considered, I should be well into my rock climbing obsession.
I started climbing when I turned 18 and aside from a few years break for life and higher education, I have been climbing ever since. I have toured several rock climbing locations around the Northwest. I own all the necessary equipment to sport climb and have recently entertained a dangerous affair with traditional climbing. I own my first set of nuts and know how to build a multi-pitch anchor. All my friends are rock climbers. I work at a rock climbing gym. Everything considered, I should be an avid rock climber and yet, I never considered myself in love with the sport… until my first day at the Pearly Gates in Leavenworth.
The trip started out to a rough start. More often than I would like to admit, I find myself late and packing last minute Friday afternoons. This particular Friday afternoon was no exception. My friend sat watching me struggle against forgetting essentials like my harness and shoes, contact solution and toothbrush, and my breakfast of instant oatmeal. Sara is amazingly patient and sat instructing me on things I needed to contribute or items I could leave at home in an effort to pack light. Our goal was a four person carpool to Leavenworth in a rather smallish station wagon. The leave-non-essentials-behind-and-make-due-with-the-things-that-get-packed philosophy was in play. Ten minutes of throwing things into a bag and shuttling weekend possessions out to the car and we are on our way.
Or so we thought.
My house was rendezvous point number one. Rendezvous point made, trip running 30 minutes late. Point number two was the county office on Bainbridge Island to pick up the Don. Don’s car is present, the Don is not. Sara and I wander the building for several minutes before happen chance running into the Don in the parking lot. Rendezvous point two made, trip running 1 hour late, catch 
ferry to Seattle. Well… miss one ferry to Seattle, sit in the sun and talk about climbing while choking on exhaust, catch the next ferry 45 minutes later. Ferry caught, trip running 1.75 hours late. Drive fast to rendezvous point number three, Monroe Albertson’s. Pick up Kari, get food and head to Leavenworth. The sun has set, our car is packed, Kari and Sara are talking gibberish, and our trip toward Leavenworth continues, one and a half hours later than we originally planned.
Our group arrives in Leavenworth just before 10:00pm to find no available campsites. It is a screaming clear night and the stars are yelling down showers of sparkles. We unanimously decide to sleep illegally and tentless under the night sky, so we throw out our sleeping bags and dig into two six packs of Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blond beer and two bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies. By 11:30 we are all but passed out. As I fall into a slightly buzzed slumber, I notice strange flashing on the nearby hills but pass it off as the leagues of tourists taking pictures… of the whole valley… at night.
By 12:30, the flashing has revealed itself not as the aforementioned groups of tourist, but lightning, thunder, and rain. Should we get up and pitch the tent? Should we somehow safe guard ourselves and belongings against the falling water? Three beers yelled “NO!”, so I roll over and convince myself the rain will stop soon. It doesn’t and a half hour later, someone retrieves a tarp to throw over our crew, now fairly wet and smashed close together. Unfortunate for myself and the Don, who happen to be sleeping on the ends of our group, our tarp only covers three people. Unfortunate for Sara and Kari, who are located inside our group, our tarp is moldy and humid. Our night continues as a repeat of the following sequence of events: Rain starts, Kari pulls tarp over her head and Katie, Don gets wet, rain stops, Sara and Kari pull tarp down to breath, rain starts, Sara pulls tarp over her head and Don, Katie gets wet, rain stops, Sara and Kari pull tarp down to breath, repeat.
By 5:00am, Sara decides she has had enough and begins packing things away. This is an even better and earlier start than we had hoped. I’m wet and sticking to the nylon in my bag as well as sleeping in puddles of water, so I put off getting up until the Don and Kari find their way awake and moving. As the four of us look at each other, we realize that we are covered in blue specks and look, as Sara puts it in her trip report, like the observers of a brutal Smurf massacre. 
Apparently, our tarp was in the process of losing the battle to its mildew enemy. As the rain fell throughout the night, each droplet of water hit the tarp and sprinkled through smallish mildew holes, bringing with it flakes of blue. No exposed skin escaped the flecks and we, again unanimously, decide to eat waffles and clean up in bathrooms with warm running water and flush toilets. If the boy scouts had a merit badge for blue tarp camping, the four of us would have earned that badge hands down.<
The rest of the day is fairly uneventful. We get on some rock and climb a bit, we find an established campsite, we play with placing traditional 
gear and we go back into Leavenworth to eat some hamburgers. While we are waiting for a table, we flip through the guide book to decide where we would like to spend the next morning. At some point, Kari and Sara disappear, leaving Don and me waiting for a table. Don and I have a difficult time talking with each other. It’s not that we don’t like each other or that we are inherently boring people, but for some reason we can never talk about anything but climbing. After several awkward moments of silence, we default to talk about climbing and decide our tomorrow destination is an area known as the Pearly Gates.
Relatively new, the Pearly Gates were not discovered until a fire burned the surrounding forest and exposed the smooth granite faces of the climbing area. Now exposed, the walls stand out perfect white against an autumn colored hillside. I could pick the walls out of the scenery from the road and was a little stunned when faced with granite like I had never seen. The Pearly Gates awaited us as the end of a slightly rigorous, half-hour hike and I was excited to see how the climbing faired against their remarkable beauty.
Our crew decided to do a multi-pitch variation at the far end of the walls. 
From my first hold and foot placement, I was in heaven. The texture of the granite was such that any foot hold could support my weight, regardless of the size. For the first time in my climbing career, I didn’t worry about my feet cutting out from under me. As I climbed, I would gaze down at the pure white surfaces and wonder after the crystalline structures reflecting sparkles of light back at me. With every new move and hold, my hands fell increasingly in love. Their purpose of existence was realized in the flakes, bumps and cracks of this pristine surface. My body, from my hands to my feet, was created to climb white granite. Each breath of wind coming off the Pearly Gates intoxicated me and turned me into the climber girl that I didn’t know existed.
We did several climbs on the gates, including a second pitch 5.9 that now tops my list of favorite climbs ever. While I was leading, my hands caressed the rock looking for the next hold, anxious and giddy to discover if that hold was a flake, a crimp, a crack or a sloper. At no point was I afraid of falling as my hands and feet seemed to bond with the granite in ways I had never experienced. We ran several laps on the 5.9 and I decided that climbing areas like the Pearly Gates are the single reason that people train for climbing. I couldn’t stop smiling and Sara mentioned that she had never seen me so happy while climbing.
We climbed until the sun cast a golden hue on our pearly white granite before packing up and heading for the car. I continued smiling the whole car ride home. For days after my trip I could feel the granite in the calluses, blisters, scrapes and scratches of my hands and wrists. The inevitable had happened despite my attempts to keep climbing recreational. I was finally, heart, soul and body, a climbing girl.
I am:
5'4" 25 year old, straight Scot-Irish Female who climbs 5.10 outside (with 5.11 upgrade in gym). Lead ability, safe and reliable belay, willing to rope gun or project with appropriate partner. Although I have yet to lead my first traditional climb, I am interested and willing to learn (or follow anything). I work at the Bremerton Vertical World, so partner must have flexible schedule with either weekend or weekdays off. Will travel anywhere to climb. I also run, kayak, hike, mountaineer, and travel. I am gay friendly.
Looking for:
Female climbing partner around same ability (5.10 to 5.11) who also uses climbing as an escape from "real" life. Laid back and reliable personality, willing to talk about life but not make drama out of it and also gets along better with males rather than most females, but is tired of it and is looking for a change.
Please respond if interested. If we feel appropriately matched, I will climb with you for life.
In response to my most recent post, a friend sent me this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu
I understand the many benefits of weening cannibals off human flesh. By giving cannibals the alternatives they need, we are restoring the waning populations of humanity back to their healthy levels of existence. Soy products also give the cannibals nutritional elements not present in their former diet. With the help of HuFu, whole tribes of well nourished peoples can be re-socialized into the greater societies with which they belong.
My concern with this product, however, is the availability to the general, non-human eating populous. While cannibals use it to ween their unsavory habits, perhaps this product will also get people used to the idea and texture of a human flesh diet. Given the state of our society at this moment: war, economic inequality and environmental changes, do we need to add rampant cannibalism to an already long and discouraging list of cultural ailments?
Aside from the morality debate of Hufu on the greater society, I wonder after this product's authenticity. How does the founder of Hufu, Mark Nuckols, guarantee that his product has the taste and texture of human flesh? In the past, when a test kitchen is trying to reproduce one product with healthier alternatives, they have the high-fat, unhealthy original present as a control against the taste and texture of the healthier copy. How did Nuckols manage this part of product development? Perhaps he assumed human flesh tastes like chicken. Maybe he found a sample of cannibals willing to test his product. Or, perhaps Nuckols has other things invested in the development of a human alternative, like the desire to kick an socially unacceptable habit himself. Who can know, for sure, the motivations of the master mind?
I think much resides in the future of the Hufu industry. Hufu could be the answer to world peace and global hunger for which we have been searching. Of course, it could also end up becoming another novelty item available through a pluthera of joke sites on the internet, finding itself sold somewhere between fart-scented cologne and imitation barf. Only you, the consumer can determine the future of this promising product. So ask yourself this, is there room enough in your heart (and stomach) for a little Hufu?
(Edit) In New York City, approximately 1,600 people are bitten by other humans annually. (End Edit) Although not as daunting as the first few pages in a blank journal, filling this text box with relevant content is proving a difficult task. I am plagued with questions on how you, my audience, will interpret this new journey and myself, as well as how this first blog will shape the creation and tone of my new electronic space. Will I immediately share memories of past blogs? Will I obsessively lay out a mini-user manual to my archives only to break all the rules with my second post? Will I describe myself in such a way that you gain a hyper-realist, textual rendition of myself, down to my hair count and pore size? So many options and yet, I am given so little time to catch and keep your attention. English professors and their five paragraph essays have told me if I haven't captured your attention in the first sentence, I have already lost you as a reader. So, at this time, I would like to go back and edit my first sentence to aid you in your journey through this lengthening paragraph.
Now that I know a substantially larger number of people have made it to this second paragraph (with the help of my ever-so-interesting-yet-terribly-unrelated statistic), I would like to comment on those New Yorkers and their healthy teeth. Although 1600 people may seem like a very large number, this is only a fraction of the population of New York City, or exactly 0.019% of the residing population. Wikipedia (again with the cringing of my nearly dead English professors and my use of unreliable internet sources) lists the population of New York City as 8.2 million residents over 305 square miles. This gives each person over 1000 square feet in which to successfully eat their meals without a friendly nibble of their neighbor's left hand. Do not fear a visit to New York City, dear readers! The chances of becoming a victim to an unwanted dental attack are very small and if you do find yourself in such a conundrum, you can count yourself lucky to have experienced something strangely unique and yet very "New York" at the same time.
I, personally, am a reformed biter. My wonderful older brother will testify to this change of personality, as he was the victim of countless attacks throughout our childhood. I am not proud of those moments of weakness, when, driven to the end of my mental composure I frantically grabbed an arm or ear and chomped down. See, my brother could bite with his tongue. Even now in our adulthood, I would prefer to have him on my side of a heated debate. He has a way of controlling words and formulating arguments that I have admired and envied. Two years my greater, he had the vocabulary and developed reasoning with which my younger mind could not keep pace. In return for his verbal remarks, I would use my own mouth to counter within the best of my ability. More often than not, this included some form of physical abuse falling from one hot-tempered, red-headed child to another. It amazes me that we made it to adulthood with a strong friendship... or really that we made it to adulthood at all.
The more I think about it, humans biting humans is a growing problem for New York. Donald Barthelme explores the psychological construct of a New York biter in his interesting short story, "Jaws." In this story, the narrator argues that "Mutilation, actual or verbal, is usually taken as an earnest of sincere interest in another person." The heroine can no longer verbalize her discontent with the marriage or her husband's affair, so she bites him. The reader never finds out if the couple makes it through their problems, but he does shed light on the phenomenon of New York City biters. After an engaging two pages, the narrator concludes:
I don't believe we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are - an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.
I would like to go to New York, someday. I hear they have amazing pizza and bagels.
So, in concluding the previous paragraphs, my name is Katie and this is my blog. Thank you for reading and please feel free to comment on my posts, be you friend, family or a famous biter of New York.
