Later I'll pee in your coffee.

Today I had to pretend to like people. It's the first day of a new semester and I have a new senior English class. In it is a boy we'll call Jose because there's always a Jose. Jose used to date Mayra. They had a baby together, they were voted cutest couple in the school, they were never apart and always held hands in the hallway. Right after Jose lovingly supported the birth of his first child, he dumped Mayra for a little bottle blonde chippie. Mayra was in my class last semester, so I've grown to hate this boy.

Then today the boy and his chippie show up in my class and struggle to keep their hands off each other. And I have to pretend this doesn't bother me because I'm not supposed to take sides. Half of teaching is acting.

The teacher who was leaving my classroom wanted to take my books. I offered her a deal to trade one set of books for another and she didn't want to make that deal so I didn't let her have my books. We had to have this fight in front of two classes worth of students so it was a polite, smiley argument where we worded everything as if we were really just looking out for everybody's best interest when really we were punching each other in the face psychically.

I wonder how often in a given day people do that. Fake niceness. They don't do it enough in scripts. People say what they mean far too often in stories, when it's what we don't say that both tells the story and provides better conflict. The whole class knew that other teacher and I didn't like each other. I think they were disappointed that we didn't get into a fist fight, but that would have made it a different story. My day is usually a comedy, not an action pic.