Slam Books, Scattergories, and Sad Interns

Yesterday was a double whammy kind of day: it was the last day for after school tutoring, AND the release party for our very own 826LA West Slam Book, entitled “This Is What it Was in the 80’s” (believe me, the rest of the book is just as intriguing as the title). Because of the “whamminess”, it was an overall jovial afternoon here at our office, with many interns traipsing around and helping out (traipsing- what an excellent word that is). Let me walk you through some of the more fascinating moments we had by making a list, for your own enjoyment.

1)      I will start with the least important fact of the day, although the importance of all these facts may or may not be debatable. I discovered Lemonade. No, not regular lemonade, which I drink daily at my humble abode here in LA, but lemonade from the store lemonade! Yes, I DID just use the word lemonade 4 times in the last two sentences… impressive! Intern Lauren made the lemonade run for us during the lunchtime hour and she brought back all different kinds, which as an Iowa girl I am not used to, and was frankly quite shocked and awed by. Her own flavor of choice: Watermelon rosemary. Weird, yet so delicious. Like I said, this particular fact is not necessarily that important.

2)      Intern Karin made Easymac in our microwave, and then proceeded to eat it three feet away from me! What a mean trick! That macaroni and cheese smell, I swear to god, it is just unbeatable. I would like to bottle it up and wear it as a perfume. No, I would never do that; I would hate to smell like Easymac 24/7, so let’s just call it a very appetizing smell. So here we sat, her eating and me looking menacingly at her from my seat, and she proceeds to tell us a terrible story involving ticks. One time, in her native Virginia, she awoke in her own bed to find 13 ticks stuck on her body! First, 13 is an unlucky number of ticks to have on you, and second, really, ANY number of ticks is an unlucky kind of thing.  I found this a mysterious tale that made this little fact just a little more important than the Lemonade aforementioned.

3)      My last point will concern the supermarket sector of Venice. A) Costco here is HUGE!! It is like a cavern, or maybe an oasis, of incredibly cheap, buy-in-bulk EVERYTHING! It was also a madhouse- intern Nina and I went to get celebration food for our book release- and it was packed as can be. Not only that, but the fruit plates were nowhere to be found. A Costco that doesn’t carry fruit plates? How can it be that huge and not have fruit plates!! B) Albertsons is AMAZING!! We abandoned our Costco trip since we were reluctant to stand in the long lines when we didn’t even have a fruit plate, so we went to Albertsons and oh my god, it was beautiful! We got fruit plates, veggie plates, cookies, juice boxes (Capri sun, of course), diet cola, and diet ORANGE (do not get the Albertsons brand – it turns your teeth the same color as the soda). We left feeling triumphant and I left feeling particularly delighted at my newfound passion for Albertsons stores. This is the most important fact because it deals with: fruit plates, cookies, AND our book release party, all at the same time.

So that was the beginning of the day, in the office. As 2:30 rolled around, it was time for the tutoring session/party to start! Kids worked on homework, interns helped kids, and after a couple hours passed and all their reading and writing was done, we found ourselves in a HUGE game of Scattergories. Somehow, we revolved many of our answers around Oprah, for example, for the “Cold” category; an answer starting with O was… “Oprah to Stedman”. Enough said.

Now today, we interns find ourselves in a lonely, Kid-less 826LA, and intern Larissa made quite a good point – she said that it was weird how much you start rooting for a kid after only knowing him or her for less than a month. Most of us summer interns came here in late May, and have only tutored these kids for 3 weeks or so, but now that they’re all gone, for now, we all kind of miss the humor! Most of our kids are characters- from the little girl who inserts the word “beautiful” in every single one of her sentences because she is so proud she can spell it, to the kids in the 5^th grade who have their very own “Yo Mamma” blog on WordPress…. They gave us all some great memories while we had them here! Now that the school year is over, I think we are all looking forward to our summer workshops and ELL classes when we will see some of our familiar faces again, as well as meet new characters to learn with and from.

Now I cannot end this blog commemorating our wonderful 826LA kids without posting just a few Slam Book excerpts to all of you who read this – these quotes, all written by our very own students during their downtime in the tutoring lab, are pretty priceless…

“I have come to 826LA for two years. I like it here. My friends Lizette and Edwin always come here. When I have homework I work with LiLi. I’ve gotten better at doing my homework. I play games and I draw picture. I read a book and write a story. When I am done with all those things I go home. The end.” (By Monserat Trinidad, signed with a <3)

“Someone went somewhere to do something. Someone sometime asked someone else, “who’s someone?” (By Mia Eisendorf)

“Well why is this world so weird? Like the girls – some are pretty and some are ugly. But there is gonna be the one. SO I think I found her. She has curly hair. She has a very nice smile. How I met her: PE. When I first saw her I fell for her smile. I told my friend, “who’s that?” My first conversation with her was very nice. I told her, “why is your smile so pretty?” she told me, “Why is your hair so pretty?” I told her I don’t know. Every time I see her she puts a smile on my face and butterflies. Her name- you’ll have to find out, nosy!!” (By Josh Camucho)

“Danny is weird. I am going to jack his hat. And he is going to be like, “Where’s my hat?” I am going to be like, “I jacked it homie.” That is nice.” (By Robert Rodriguez)

“On Monday I wrote a story about a number. A true story.” (By Margarito Garcia)

Pretty good kids, huh?

Until next time…

Kat.

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