Work Is Not Something I Can Take Home With Me

Work has been kicking my ass lately.  I've been driving up and back down from New York, northern New Jersey, southern New Jersey, and one day this week I'm down in Charles Co Maryland.  All of this driving is eating away at my sanity and it's hell on my lungs.

The other day I was at a job in Chester, PA.  If you're not familiar with Chester, it's pretty much the asshole of Pennsylvania.  It's run-down, it's ghetto, and my co-workers and I were joking about whether or not we should have just left our car doors unlocked so that we wouldn't have to worry about broken windows.

I was dreading work that day.  I had been to this school once before, a few years ago, and was gearing up to deal with asshole little kids who have no disregard for other human beings, chaos, it being so loud that I wouldn't be able to hear myself think, over all a giant clusterfuck.

And it was.  But I had the help of those handy little yellow pills my doctor gave me to take if I feel a panic attack coming on.  I popped one before we even started.  And I was even keel for the rest of the day.

"Okay, sit up straight for me?  Can you sit up straight?  Do you know how to sit up straight?  No, don't scoot forward, make your back straight.  Can you handle this?  Are you sure?"  The whole time in my head I'm thinking, "You fucking little asshole I cannot wait until you get out of my face and your picture is going to be bad no matter what because you are a sorry-looking motherfucker."  But I just put a sickeningly sweet smile on my face and do my job.

One particular thing about schools like this that sticks out in my head is that alot of these kids are poor.  Not just money-is-tight-right-now poor, their clothes are ratty and they're dirty.  Like one has to wonder when the last time some of these children were bathed.  And that breaks my heart.  Are mommy and daddy spending all their money on crack?  Or putting dubs on their piece of shit cars or getting their nails done instead of buying their child a decent pair of shoes and feeding them?  It makes me want to scoop them up and take them away from the hell they are living in.

I see this shit all the time, and there's not a Goddamn thing I can do about it.