I have faith (that I will understand someday)

For some reason this week I am less exhausted. Sometimes I wake up before my alarm. Take time to drink a cup of coffee, to sometimes (& accidentally) catch the bus on time, to meander into school early and wait outside the doorway of my first class – papers and flyswatters in hand – before the bell rings, instead of scrambling things together at the last minute.

Maybe there's just something about the sea air.

Somewhere below my feet (or below my skin) I can feel the slow almost perceptible shifts – things connecting. Getting It Together.

In school I am hearing a lot more Hellos and less Holas.

Nodding heads and ah, vale vale vale or even okay, of cooooouuuuurrrrse are replacing panicked blank faces.

We are drawing superheroes using comparatives and superlatives, who can throw hotdogs from his eyes or transform into a chocolate.

Occasionally my name is morphing from the familiar SAH-rah into a more deliberate SAWR-AH. (Not really phonetically closer to my native pronunciation, but paso a paso, eh?)

In classrooms and hallways students stop to ask me questions about the United States. (I haven’t had anyone ask me about England in weeks.)

Somewhere the 6th graders learned oh my god (I don’t think it was me) and like to use it with gusto.

(One learned asshole and used that with gusto, too – again, I swear it wasn’t me.)

And slowly we begin to move forward.

More than anything, I notice that when I am speaking to individuals or classes in English, students listen to me with trust instead of apprehension. Trust is big in language classes. I didn’t realize this at first, but it is. Trust and confidence are both far more integral to language production than boatloads of grammar. Similar to my first days in front of my American students years ago, during my first lessons here in Spain I was met with a sea of furrowed brows and many glassy stares. Even if I was repeating instructions that the teacher gave in Spanish or Valencian, these kiddos were totally at sea.

Write your name and the date at the top of the paper using pencil.

At first, despite wild gestures, brandishing utensils, and pointing to the date on the board, I imagine I sounded a lot like the adults in Charlie Brown. Bwah bwah BWAH bwah bwah BWAH bwah BWAH.

With some time, individual words began to emerge – thanks to some cognates, some basic vocabulary, and the fact that English is a stress-timed language. Bwah bwah NAME bwah bwah DATE (exaggerated indication of the date on the board) bwah bwah PAPER (waving around a paper) bwah bwah PENCIL (by now a few kids are on board and assist me in my wild pencil waving.)

Now, students watch me closely, perhaps trusting that somewhere in the sea of seasick vowel sounds there will be a life raft – a gesture, a cognate, or – even better – a word that now connects firmly to some image or idea in their heads.

Today in English a 4th grader made a joke.

Me: That looks like my cat. I have a black and white cat, with green eyes.
Kiddo: Pues, tu cat is old.
Me: Old? What?
Kiddo: Black and white photos? Old?

I am so proud.

So as the calendar Marches on (get it?) and with a date set for my return home (July 30th) I am hanging onto hope, and reigning in my building anxiety about returning home. I am going to trust that clarity will arrive when I need it.

Abstract Interpretation of a Wednesday

One of many interpretations of Las Meninas by Picasso

In sixth grade plásticas we are looking at Picasso’s works from across the wide swathe of his career – pale blue faces, Guernica’s newsprint cartoon horror, smug mustachioed smiles against a backdrop of sensual curves. The kids worked on their own interpretations, where Picasso went blonde or Las Meninas became Una Menina, with vague features and very detailed shoes. One boy worked on a robot, built of solid geometric shapes, including a little rectangular wang, square balls… and a rectangular tie. (Que profesional – pero, ¿dónde están sus pantalones?)

Blank papers, lips bitten, tapping pencils, ideas waiting to happen. I listen to the teacher’s instructions in Valencian, to kids questions in Spanish, and answer in English. They meticulously outline reproductions, or trace jagged lines across the page.

 

In third grade we learn the meaning of silly along with the parts of the body. We collaborate on very silly drawings using the parts of the body. One small boy doesn’t understand the directions, and almost falls over with laughter when he finds that the torso of his drawing has become part of the (very long) neck. ¡Ese hombre tiene tetas en su cuello! Other kids are concerned because these are not quite careful enough, and how will they take their work home or receive a grade if there have been four (often sloppy) artists involved with each portrait? I remind them of the meaning of silly, and we decide that we have met our objective.

 

 

In fourth grade there are cross-curricular connections – lessons about the parts of a flower and classification of leaves – leaves carried in backpacks, strewn across the table and floor, and finally splayed out onto posterboard in neat categories. I do some quick internet research to brush up on my botanical terms, and explain them English. We find the faint blue lines on our wrists, and the green raised veins on the leaves.

 

Abstract pieces of language litter our mouths. Fingers on throats to find the voice of vowels. Feeling the puff of air of the bilabial stops.

 

At lunch time I sink down inside myself again. Concentrate on peeling an orange into a citrus spiral, submerged in an oasis of silence between loud Valencian and more jokes I can’t understand. I understand only the most simple and physical humor – the principal yelling ¡joder! as he races for the last ice cream, or the cross-culturally unintelligible yelp of surprise as water is tipped across the table. But words are surfacing from the trainwreck of my comprehension.

 

Fulles.

Tardor.

Llapis.

Tot el mon. 

Menjador.

Xiquets i xiquetas.

 

After lunch two other teachers and I intend to find “un poquito de relax.” In the music classroom, with the door locked against the students doing homework in the hallway, we lay out yoga mats, turn on quiet music, and nos tumbamos.

Tumbarse - If you tumbar someone else, this is violent. You knock them down. If you do it yourself, you lie down – generally for a nap. Positive connotations. But inanimate objects can knock you down, too - me tumbaron en matemáticas. (I failed math. Math knocked me down.)

 

So on Wednesday afternoons we knock ourselves down for a while. Slip out of the vertical world of speech and sight. Let the classroom rearrange itself – cool tile, vertical silver of table legs, yellow window frames filled with squares of blue from a Mediterranean November. I am reminded of my three o’clock exhaustions, where I locked the door, hid in an invisible corner, and slept with my face on a table for a while, before beginning the long drive home under a sky spitting snow.

 

 

After school I have a language exchange. We are making our way through the museums of Alicante – free contemporary art galleries. Submissions of comics by local youth. A distressingly extensive history of postage. A room full of silver geometric sculptures that wink and glitter as they are set in motion by an employee – whose job is to sit in the gallery reading a novel, and set the sculptures in motion every few minutes. We talk – in English and in Spanish – but we also stand in silence, looking at broad brush strokes, earth and bricks jumbled onto canvas, and the dizzying movement of stationary canvasses.

Tierra de Campos - Juana Francés (an artist from Alicante)

Oceans Away

Oh boy! Another long pause followed by another long post!

Two months of living in Spain, and I am beginning to find my stride. I have several students for clases particulares (private classes), several intercambios (language exchanges), and have just signed up for a yoga class offered by the community center next to my school. I’ve made a few American friends and a few Spanish friends, so that I have some relationships to neglect now that my schedule is getting busier. I’ve had the opportunity to go on two field trips with various classes: one to a nearby park where the 2nd graders learned about traffic laws (including the chance to practice on a bike course complete with signs and traffic lights), and another to Jijona to visit a turrón factory and some caves up in the mountains.

On the bus with the entire Secundo Ciclo (3rd & 4th grade)

We could see Alicante from the mountain! (The kids were curious... ¿Dónde está tu casa en Michigan?)

Las cuevas...

Field trip finish early? Don't want to go back to school yet? Let your students run around in the park for approximately three hours!

In between, during the normal school day, I think I am finding my place here. (The next step? Learning to be content with that place.) I have four English classes a week with the teacher, with the fifth and sixth graders, and the rest of my sixteen weekly hours are in plásticas (art) classes. The English classes are wonderful – I feel like I am learning a lot about teaching ESL, and even though I only have one hour a week with each class, I can see progress. This week I am starting my Fulbright side project – a pen pal exchange with elementary classrooms in the United States. I’m excited about this project – the Fulbright side projects are meant to be aligned with Fulbright’s goals of intercultural exchange, in a way that is challenging and educational for both the auxiliar (me) and the students, and I think this will be all of those things.

I feel less excited about the plásticas classes. With the older grades, I sometimes am able to plan my own activities that combine art with language – or at least I am given ten or fifteen minutes to teach some vocabulary related to what they are working on. The teachers let me do Halloween activities with the kids, and most have agreed to let me bring in other holiday activities and lessons. The rest of the time I am circulating around the room trying to find things to say in English. Particularly with the first and second graders, whose plásticas activities are primarily coloring, cutting, and occasionally gluing, I am finding it hard to impart more language than “Oh, great job! That looks good! I like his red hat! What a nice blue house! Do you know where your scissors are?” They’re experts at colors, because it’s difficult to talk about much else, when I don’t have time for songs, activities, or more direct lessons… so often when I say anything to them in English, they just start holding up their crayons and saying proudly: “Green! Yellow! Rrrrred!” I think they see me as a weekly visitor whose sole purpose is to check that they know their colors in English. (It’s understandable. That’s a pretty fair assessment of the role I am currently given.)

After spending three years teaching in Detroit, building a language program from scratch, and preparing six or seven lessons a day at different grade levels, and letting my teaching job devour nearly all my free time, it feels foreign and increasingly frustrating to spend so much time hovering around at the back of classrooms. You would think that being this useless would be less tiring – but between the extra strain of speaking two (or three!) languages and the long days, I am just as exhausted by the time I go home.

It might sound like I am whining, but I’m not. (At least, I shouldn’t be.) It is easy to whine. It is easy to compare the current situation to others and to some imaginary ideal in your head, where you have boundless time, materials, support, and the rapt attention of (no more than a reasonable number of) bright, clean little faces. Teaching is never going to occur in an ideal situation, because it is a job working with the most young and chaotic members of our already-unpredictable human race. Especially as a teacher in ESL and/or foreign languages – which are not on the big standardized tests and often less funded or organized – I can expect a career full of unreasonable expectations, meager resources, and creative solutions.

So here I am – teaching English, learning more Spanish, and most importantly, trying to foster intercultural exchange. I think the only thing more eye-opening than teaching itself is teaching in a foreign country. There are so many confusing, revealing, and thought-provoking reminders that I am oceans away from my comfort zone.

Por ejemplo…

• The loud THWACK of a plastic folder on the head of an overly talkative student, when an irritated teacher smacked him with it hard enough to send a bit of plastic flying across the room. Back home this event might have been followed by a lawsuit – here it was followed by a collective gasp, a brief tirade in Valencian, and restored order in the classroom.
• The birthday celebration for some teachers during el recreo last week, where the teacher’s lounge erupted into activity: snacks materializing from somewhere, a few liters of beer circulating in little plastic cups, regional pastries unfolding themselves from paper cartons brought from someone’s pueblo, congratulatory dos besos for the birthday folk, and a loud jumble of laughter/Valencian/Castellano/Spanglish. I sipped beer self-consciously (with the noise of the students on the playground outside) while the primary school teachers tried to refill my cup whenever they noticed it was empty.
• The very, very young students in the building – although I don’t work with infantil, it is bizarre to see the tiny three year olds in the hallways, in their little gingham smocks called babis, hanging onto each other to create very slow-moving and haphazard trains, or occasionally carried by their teachers (also dressed in babis, which is pretty genius if you are going to be hugged by so many grubby little people.)
• A distinctly European level of comfort with the human body, with anatomically correct posters to teach all the bits and pieces, a detailed discussion of childbirth in the kindergarten class, a student changing into his karate uniform in the fourth grade hallway, the discussion about the Birth of Venus (and a student’s commentary: We have that picture in my house – but my dad cut out the face and replaced it with a picture of my mom…) Let’s not even talk about the fair where I stumbled upon a father helping his small son pee on a wall at the side of a crowded street…
• A general lack of anxiety that has been hard for me to assimilate, as approximately a hundred 3rd and 4th graders ran amok on a field trip – wrestling, piling on top of each other, hanging off railings over a very scenic and very high cliff. The other teachers must have noticed the panicky look in my eyes, because they just shrugged and said - “eh… es normal para los niños.” There isn’t the paranoia that I am used to in lawsuit-happy America – the paranoia that manifests itself in safety railings, warning signs, first aid kits, fire escapes. Then again, maybe there is something to be said for a lack of paranoia. I haven’t noticed an inordinate amount of children falling off of castles or down into caves.
• Further nonchalance in the area of sanitation. I am used to certain things in American schools – the vats of hand sanitizer, availability of tissues, and reminders to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze – that simply are not here. (Terrifyingly enough.)

Niños in high places.

Note the welding that is going on while we are below in the caves. Not only is this very loud during the tour, but there is also a lot of sparks and a half-constructed railing as we all file past on the wet steps...

On the other hand, there are some things that have been comfortingly consistant from one continent to another:

• Students are excited to see me anywhere outside of the classroom: at the store, on the bus, in the city center, in a nearby pueblo at a fair… just like my students in the United States, they are fascinated to discover that teachers do things outside of the school.
• Being a teacher is a like being a rockstar. People are always screaming your name in the hallway or in the street.
• In drawings, if there are people dancing there will always, always be a disco ball present.
• Tattling and whining are both phenomena that easily cross the language barrier.
• First graders will always be a little bit insane.
• No matter how strictly or tightly controlled the lines are, the creativity of children will always, always spill through the cracks in some way.

(I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.)

Halloween Jack-o-Lanterns

We talked about the difference between scary and fun when it comes to Halloween. Most people chose scary. The sweet little third graders were particularly bloodthirsty.

Appropriate Focal Range (for my Third Year of Teaching)

A few weeks into summer vacation, I think I am still close enough for detail and far enough for perspective – perspective that was hard to have while shoveling snow off my car at 6am, or during the ten thousand things fit into lunch break (none of which included lunch – maybe I’ll figure out how to eat lunch next year.) I have been teaching for three years now. Three years is not very long in the scheme of things. I have two more years before the state of Michigan might even trust that I’m in this for the long haul (the kind of trust where they take a few grand off my debt) and seven more years before they say: okay, you have taught for a while, and have racked up even more loans with graduate credits, and we’ll forgive the rest of your debt since you are probably broke and/or totally insane.

However, three years make me feel a little bit old and respectable, because of the unbelievable expanse between my first year, and the surprisingly fast pace of my second.

I learned a lot this year. For example:

Lessons Unlearned

I am learning lessons about being prepared, the hard way. One kind of prepared is the funeral clothes in my car because I am waiting to find out when the memorial is for a student who committed suicide last week. Another kind of prepared I am still trying to sort out – prepared to be in my students’ lives and to be a positive influence on them and walking the line between being a strong teacher and a loving teacher. I’m not talking about the little ones- that’s easy. They are sunny afternoons dotted with scattered showers. They hug me and tell me they love me and get super excited for even the most mundane, idiotic form of language learning that I can dream up. It’s my mornings that I am thinking about – the adolescents who shuffle and lumber and slink their way into my room, thunderclouds in their faces. And it’s late May, so every morning is torrential: an eye-rolling, lip-smacking, supply-vandalizing, smart-talking, quiz-failing, grumble-faced tidal wave.

The eighth grade girl who killed herself last week was at my school for sixth and seventh grade. In sixth grade, my first year of teaching, I got to know her well. That is to say, I said her name a lot, and pulled her aside after class a lot, and wrote her up a lot, and spoke with her mother a lot. In the haze that was my first year of teaching, I don’t know if I was being a bad teacher, or if she was just being a pill. (Experience and grief make me believe the former.) But even past our strained rapport I could see that she was smart, witty, and popular. She had scholarships waiting for her and a mother who was obviously involved and loving. Just before the beginning of this school year I ran into her in the school office, coming to pick up paperwork to transfer to a new school that she seemed excited about.

On Friday, as word trickled around the school, my middle school classes did not roll their eyes or smack their lips or talk back at me, and I did not yell or lecture or count to ten in my head. We were all subdued and quiet. I still feel unhinged. It’s a cop out to say that this is something separate from me and my role as a teacher. It’s a cop out to try and tie things up into something neat and poignant. I need to walk back into my classroom tomorrow morning, and I am still unprepared.

Small Spaces Unfolded

Happy Accidents.

I haven’ t been any less busy, but of late I have been better at making spaces for some things I want in between the things I need. Small steps for mankind, but giant leaps for my sanity:

• getting to school on time (instead of early)
• leaving school on time (instead of late)
• accidentally going to bed early (instead of various social or productive intentions)
• cooking real meals (instead of miscellaneous breakfast items eaten while standing at the kitchen counter or driving)
• impromptu Nice Dates where we eat leisurely dinners and take walks in the softening evenings (instead of brief moments of overlapping exhaustion where I am working on grading or falling asleep on the couch)
• 15-minute desknaps during my prep time (instead of actually prepping, or – worse – reading the news)
• hot chocolate and journal writing at a coffeeshop (instead of hours of powerpoints, lesson plans, and coffee consumption until my eyeballs  vibrate out of my skull)

The most memorable bits of oasis have been quality time with my family, a solo trip to the DIA for a few blissful hours, and an excursion to watch the full moon with a friend.

Maybe it’s just the advent of Spring. (Sort of. Thanks a lot, Michigan.) I have heard birdsong, I have woken up to thunderstorms, I have driven with the windows down, I have felt the earth squish beneath my feet now that the snow is gone.

It’s hard to be hopeful, but it’s harder not to.

*That is a dress I found at a thrift store for ten bucks, which I am hopefully getting altered for a wedding I am in this Spring. I’ve left it hanging on the outside of my closet door longer than necessary, because the color is so bright and so necessary.

Oh, Comely

Yesterday during our prep hour my coteacher and I were distracted by photos and footage trickling over from Japan. The tragedy hasn’t hit close enough to be personal – the Japanese student I worked with last year emailed me back right away to reassure me – but even secondhand the destruction is beyond comprehension.

At the end of the school day I left the apocalyptic news stories and went to a staff meeting where we were informed of a pay cut for all teachers at my school. We lost all retirement benefits a few months ago, and two staff members were laid off abruptly, and along with the current pay cut we were given a dire picture of what might happen next year, if the state-wide funding gets slashed as promised.

Things are looking dire here in the ol Dirty Glove.

I’ve certainly toyed with the idea of moving away from my home state, but I always thought it would be by choice and not by necessity. As rough as things have been for years, this is the first time I have felt despair for my state. Even if I can make a living here, I am not sure if I’d want to stay and raise a family here. There is still a good chance I’ll be teaching in Spain for the coming school year (keep yer fingers crossed!) but I’m apprehensive about what I’ll be coming home to.

The uncertainty and anxiety of current events at home and abroad has made me cranky at times, and this week my students have been the (mostly) innocent victims. I apologized to my middle schoolers for snapping at them yesterday. More than anything I want to be strong and loving to my kids, because lord knows it’s hard enough for us adults to remain hopeful and feeling secure.

When you come down to it, I am alive and well – I can still pay rent and pay my bills, and no amount of pay cuts can devalue my good fortune. My family is alive, my home is intact, my city is not on fire or submerged or steeped in radiation. I am forging on into my (underpaid/overworked) career that I care deeply about.

So on a much happier note, some of the things that have been making me smile – and things which will have to make up for where my pay check is lacking:

Señorita es bonita, muy baja, y muy muy vieja. (8th grader)

I’m sorry I was on the floor in soup. (Apology from a penitent 2nd grader)

Kindness = Vulture letting hyena share carrion. (Definition from a 4th grader)

On Ash Wednesday they celebrate Thanks-Giving-Up! (Clever 4th grader)

Llamas are stronger than people, and the police. (Concerned Kindergartner)

You mean Mexicans’ booty holes don’t be on fire?? (A 7th grader’s musings on tolerance for spicy foods – more hilarious because it was such a genuine inquiry)

Um, I think this music is too funky for school. (4th grade music critic)

I like smelling his hair because it smells like cupcakes. (Kindergartner with major friend-crush on a classmate)

Kindergartner: Why do so many things have patterns?
Me: Like what?
Kid: Like bees… and giraffes… and zebras…
Other kid: And black ‘n’ yellow, black ‘n’ yellow!

Closing Chapter Two

My second year of teaching is officially over.

Capsize / Catalyst

New Beginnings (daily, weekly, hourly)

A few weeks ago for several silly reasons I took a weekend kayak class, which as it turns out took place in the university pool. I love kayaking and canoeing, but felt like an idiot paddling around the pool wearing a bright yellow helmet. However, in the end I did pick up a few skills, after some anxiety about being underwater strapped into my kayak. Strangely enough, the solution to flipping has nothing to do with panicking or trying to get to the surface as quickly as possible – forget the kayak, forget the paddle, just get me out! Alternately, while still upside down under water, you should reach up and thump the hull three times – thump, thump, thump. I – need – help. Then you should wait – just wait, don’t panic! – run hands along the hull, looking for the bow of someone else’s kayak. Grab it, push with arms, but don’t right yourself so fast that you go rolling over on the other side, back underwater. Head on hands on bow. Flip hips to right the kayak. Hurray. You are a kayaking rockstar.

My day-to-day life doesn’t include a lot of capsized kayaks, but it does include being tipped over, head hit on rocks, submerged. Metaphorically.

First week back from break was brutal. It was a combination of middle school profanity, fifth grade bullying, 2nd grade violence, stomach flu making the rounds (with disgusting results) and just miscellaneous craziness… oh, and final quarter grades due. Oh, and write a huge unit for grad school. That’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, I guess.

Yesterday (Friday) I turned down the chance for beers with coworkers to stay at school late to finish the last of the grades and to talk to parents, and then the next thing I knew I was in rush hour traffic heading home, and the grades were done, and the please-call-me-your-son-threatened-somebody messages were left, and the week was over. I always am surprised when I get things done. Most of the time I operate under the feeling that it is all never going to be done. (It’s not, of course. I still have to finish that grad school project, and plan for the coming week, and… and… and…)

Then there is the bow of another kayak, and my palms pushing me upright again.

The thing is that every time I surface from the chaos, I still want to dive back into it. Better prepared, better at managing things, maybe after a breather and maybe some bourbon, but I still want to go back into my classroom and hold out for the minuscule victories. My craziest classes (5th grade, this year) have made the good days in those classes – even just the good 10 minute intervals – feel practically miraculous, where they aren’t griping or threatening each other, they are being creative and joyful and LEARNING SOMETHING. Sometimes it feels like that only happens every few weeks. But I can appreciate it when it does. And I have never been so thrilled as I was yesterday to see a certain first grader walk (not run! walk!) into my room, put up his backpack (not hit another kid with it!), and sit in his seat (not run around his room!). I was so proud. He’s been in my class for 10 weeks now and this has never happened! Progress!

(Then he leaned over and threw up into the garbage can. Maybe more stomach flu than progress.)

Still. For a moment I felt as though I had witnessed a miracle. So I’m going to dive back in on Monday. 9 more weeks; I can take it.

Empathy adjustments.

This week is a little less defeating so far. I took tomorrow off so I would have enough time to finish this big assignment I’m working on. That’s what sick days are for, right? Doing homework for grad school? I putzed around for too long at school, typing intricate directions, locking away anything moveable/breakable/mess-upable. I can tell my spirit is not completely broken because of the needling anxiety that still comes before taking a day off. Are they going to behave themselves? Is my dwindling supply of viable pencils going to be completely depleted?

Ms. K, last time you had a sub she was mean. She didn’t know how to say the words in Spanish, and when we tried to tell her she told us to shut up and put our heads down. She said to put our back on the back of our chair and still put our heads down, but that doesn’t even work.

I was tempted to just suck it up and work anyway, partially because it takes forever to explain to someone else the details of what I do for 8 hours a day, but partially because I really do miss the kids when I’m gone. Last week was hell. This week the chaos is tempered with some miniature breakthroughs in fluency and even more so in classroom routines. It’s funny how much of my classroom stress can be eliminated by well-executed classroom job assignments. My haphazard attendance process was solved this week – I simply assigned kids to do it. The kids vie for the coveted job in a frenzied competition of who can be the most quiet and attentive. God, what a peaceful game.

Most of the 1st grade class today was spent doing damage control, because two kids had total weeping meltdowns after they got their names moved to yellow for talking. Oh, the horror. I demonstrated my newfound immunity to small children’s tears and looked right into those big teary brown eyes. (This is the emotional equivalent of standing in front of a speeding train, if horsepower is to be measured by adorable distress.) “Did your leg fall off? Are you bleeding? Did your dog die?” I said. (Head-shake, sniffle sniffle snot.) “Moving your name to yellow is not a good reason to be crying for 20 minutes. If your leg falls off, you feel free to cry like that.”

Another tiny girl got up, hand on hip, and said in a purportedly comforting tone “And if your dog dies, you just feel free to cry!”

I’m sorry kiddos. I am still learning these lessons, too. I think after difficult mornings with the middle schoolers or on crushing Sunday nights staring at the ceiling I need a stern voice and a raised eyebrow.

Did your dog die? Did your arm fall off? Did you lose your job? Okay then, do you really need to get this worked up about things?