2.

I'm going to give you a little run down of my day first. It may be slow going at first, but you'll understand why I did it when we get to the crazy part.

So, my first class was Arizona History and Government because you have to pass this ridiculous test on that before you're allowed to graduate and I obviously hadn't done that yet. I don't even remember her name anymore, but she had the kids watching Dances With Wolves, which aside from being pretty long past its prime wasn't even about the kind of Indians that live in Arizona. But the teacher was this sour faced old white woman---kinda doughy and sluggish looking--who clearly wished the day was over.

She didn't have long to wait. The days before holidays are almost always half days. They shave off a few minutes from each class to get the day over with as quickly as is legally possible. You have to have a certain number of hours to get state and federal funding for that day, and with their budgets in such dire straits most schools weren't taking any chances. And most teachers kinda slack off on those days-it's like a classic films festival in most schools.

But I could tell she was like that every day, that one. Just plain tired of teaching. Counting down to retirement. And you know, I wasn't mad at her. She was old enough to remember when kids and parents sort of still liked teachers. Today, they get no respect at all--there's not enough money in the world to reward them for all the shit they eat every day.

I was just more mouthful as far as she was concerned, probably. So after the initial "startle" when her eyes followed my extended arm up to my face, the eyes hardened again.

"Whose idea was it to have you come today of all days?" she asked as I handed her my schedule. I needed it signed, because of the probation thing. To prove I'd been there.

"Well, my P.O. thought it would give me just enough time to find where all my classes were and introduce myself," I said. "That way I can hit the ground running when we come back."

She studied the schedule like she was hoping it would magically change before her eyes or something-she even pulled her glasses back up higher on the bridge of her pudgy nose so she could look through instead of up over them.

And as she finally signed it, she frowned even deeper and said, "Lee Ann?"

"Yup."

"Well, I'm going to have to have a talk with that woman," she said.

And then she turned to check on the class and saw that nobody was even facing the Smartboard anymore. Big surprise, right? I mean, they'd probably seen the beginnings of two or three films already-half day schedule. So you couldn't even get into the movie all that much before the bell rang.

But she frowned up like someone had farted or something and yelled, "I'd pay attention if I were you!"

It woke up a few of them. Most only turned to look vaguely in her direction. Which made that Pillsbury dough boy face go all red.

"Your ticket out question is going to be on this," she said. "And believe me you will rue the day if I have to hold you here 'til the end of that damned dance when I have grades to do!"

A few more students turned around to stare at the screen so they wouldn't have to find out what it meant to "rue" a day. And she handed me my schedule back and said, "You're back there," nodding toward a desk over by the windows. It was the last seat in the row, so the kids would have to turn to see me. Which meant she'd catch them at it. She had tricks, this one. Old ones, but they still work most of the time.

The girls were ready for that one, though. They got out mirrors and makeup compacts or put their heads down on their desks in ways that let them look back at me and wink and smile. I smiled back, but I wasn't about to give them any real play.

I have to be cool about girls even outside of school. I mean, most girls my age are nothing like ready for someone like me. But in this situation, I knew the guys were going to hate me just for being me. Messin' with their women would only throw gas on the fire.

It's always a delicate dance. If I don't give them any play at all, they think I'm stuck up or something. So I finesse it by being a "nice guy." No really--girls love it when guys are nice to them without any ulterior motives. I've got women. Women, you feelin' me? We'll get into the particulars later, but trust me, the last thing I need is a little teenage girlfriend.

So I talk to them the way you'd talk to a friend. And I pick up some amazing info-if you're a guy, you really outta take a lesson from me on this. It's good stuff, woman wisdom. And they give it to us for free all the time. We just don't know how to work it.

When I wasn't smiling at girls, I was answering a lot of my business emails and texts and whatnot on my IPhone. Which was supposed to be off during class, but the teacher was so busy trying to get her grades done early that she never looked up from that computer again, except to yell, "Keep it down to a dull roar, wouldja?" if someone got too loud.

When the bell hooted she grimaced a little and started hitting this one key over and over again-I figured the bell had made her mess something up. She didn't say anything to the kids, let alone to have a nice vacation or something.

So as I passed by her desk, I gave her, "Have a good one," because I couldn't bring myself to do the whole "Merry Christmas" thing.

You should've seen her face. She looked up at me like I'd said it in Chinese or something. Like she had to translate it, I mean. I didn't wait to see if she'd answer, I just looked back and saw her sitting there looking all gobsmacked. Poor thing.

My next stop was Advanced Remedial Math. Which sounds like an oxymoron but it was for people who'd finally mastered the basics and could start tackling a little bit of algebra and geometry with a lot of extra help and support. And since it was done almost entirely by computer I noticed right away that I could pick the right answers by intuition or just plain elimination tactics.

Which is something that got me in trouble all through elementary school, by the way. I have always intuited the answers to math problems without doing the computation-Einstein did that, too, right? Dreamt the answer before he even knew how to write out the whole equation or whatever. I'm not saying I'm that smart, but I understand how that works.

You just "feel" it-the answer pops into your head, and you can't explain how it got there. But you have to "show your work"--you remember that, right? They wouldn't give me any points because I didn't have a fuckin' clue how I got the answer. But the answer was always right. In fact, if I did it their way, I'd get the wrong answer most of the time. And only one teacher put it all together and started letting me work backwards with her, so I could see how the pieces fit together.

She quit teaching, though, someone told me. That's what happens. I was glad for her, though-she develops curriculum or something, at least. Most of 'em don't go anywhere near education ever again. Not that I blame them.

This math class wasn't even really taught by a teacher, though. Mr. Johnson-him I remember for some reason-gave me a packet and a computer "station," and a little, "Nice havin' you with us."

Which was more than any of the others had said. He was cool in general, Johnson. Amiable black jock type who'd probably been recruited mostly to be a coach or something. I mean, he was dressed like he was going running or to shoot some hoop right after school. And when I went up to get the guest passcode the computer said I needed, he gave me a fist bump and asked me about the Humvee that "got everybody trippin'."

"You got these girls goin' out they minds, playa," he told me, in that way that some guys do when they sincerely envy you. No attitude, just props.

He was showing Freedom Writers, which was at least marginally current at the time. And while we watched, he was on the phone talking to girlfriend for a few minutes, leaning 'way back in his chair behind the desk.

He didn't give a shit that all the girls were mostly watching me and not the movie. There wasn't going to be any "ticket out" quiz in his class. But that's why they were all so chill. Kids are nice to teachers like him usually. I mean, if the principal or someone had come in, they woulda snapped to attention like good little girls and boys for his protection. Sucks a little, because they probably weren't learning much even on full days. But at least it was an honest arrangement. And everybody was cool with that.

After his class I had a couple of media department electives that I could tell they tried to match to what I did in my real world. The first one was an introduction to multimedia programs most 10-year-olds have mastered or not even bothered with now that you can damned near make a feature film with your cell phone. It was taught by this guy with what I thought was a German accent and who spent most of his time in the back of the room fiddling with a couple of computers that I gathered had broken down.

When we were shuffling in, he said something like, "It is a shorter class period today, so we will not be able to complete the project we began on Monday. However, this is a good opportunity to review what you have done and improve upon it in the time we have."

That was reasonable, except that he said it while the kids were scooting chairs and calling each other faggots and throwing Christmas ornaments and candy at each other. But he said it like he didn't expect anyone to hear him, and just headed over to his desk computer where brought up this YouTube page to teach the class how to use a PowerPoint presentation to make a Photostory movie. That was the assignment sort of haphazardly written on one of the white boards-I read it to see what all he had asked them to do.

It wasn't much. Their movie had to be at least 3 minutes long and have at least 10 pictures and other graphic elements in it. He didn't care where we found them or give us any other guidelines except that we had to have either background music, narration we recorded ourselves, or both.

So I entitled mine, "My First Day at DeGrazia," and did a quick Garageband "score" to run in the background. Just some snippets of music and sounds I found on a free loops site and downloaded through a browser that got me past their district security firewall pretty easily. I just took shots of kids sleeping and doing stupid things in class-didn't matter that it was all his class, really. He wouldn't even recognize his own kids probably. And it only took me about fifteen minutes to do just about the whole thing. I was the only one in the whole class who actually did anything, of course.

The other course taught you how to use a DAW-Digital Audio Workstation. Garageband was the one they used because it came with the Macs they bought-I use Ableton at home. Pro level. So I put together this Christmas techno thing out of samples. But it was hard to keep busy with all the craziness going on around me. The teacher was this young, nerdy guy right out of college who did not have a clue. I'm not even sure how he got the job. He wound up sitting by me and asking me a lot of questions about what I was doing.

Meanwhile, there were kids throwing shit around and walking on desks to get to other kids. I'm not kidding. It was bedlam the whole time, but the teacher had trained himself not to notice, I guess. He knew computers-I could tell he probably played World of Warcraft nonstop after school. Or maybe was be a Second Life type, who only dropped in on the real world to earn a living. That's how I was able to finally communicate with him.

See, we develop virtual worlds-my company, I mean. So I showed him all this sick stuff that the "JCrewe" had sent me via my IPhone. They're these Japanese geniuses who do all of our media stuff. And that week, I was on the Jumbotron at One Times Square dancing around in some of the clothes from the line I didn't even want to create 'til somebody showed me some ideas I really didn't like and got me to start telling them about some things I might like-the girls taught everyone how to do that. If they want me to stop saying, "No," they tell me an idea they have that's so wrong I can't help trying to make it right. And then from there I always cave and say, "Oh, fuck it, let's do this!"

The gimmick for the ad campaign in Times Square was that people who stopped by the van set up by one of the local radio stations underneath the big screen could get a pair of 3D glasses that made me leap out of the screen at them at just the right moment. I'm dancing to this song called When I Come Back Around, a Jamie Liddell joint I love. And when he goes "When I come back around," I pop out and do a 360 that gives you a look at whichever outfit I'm wearing at the time from all sides. And there are several versions of the ad, so you don't see the same stuff all the time, either.

So they'd sent me some hilarious videos of people freaking out when I jumped out at them-it was so funny that I had to really rein in to keep from laughing out loud in class. But then some of the kids started leaning so they could watch it. And one of the girls got this wistful little look on her face, and said, "How did you do that?"

And when I said, "How do you mean?" she said, "I mean, that's not really you, right? Up on the screen thing?"

At first, I didn't know how to handle that-how much I wanted to get into my real life, I mean. But I decided it was probably best to be as honest but also as simple as possible.

So I said, "I model sometimes." Which as the simplest I could make it. And her brows went up.

"That's really you?"

She reached over and turned my hand so she could take another good look, and all her BFFs crowded in to ogle along with her. And you know what? It was so far out of the realm of possibility for them that when the bell hooted...they just kinda stood there looking blank faced for a few seconds...and left. Looking back at me a few times like they just couldn't put two and two together to save their lives.

It was right about then that I almost literally bumped into my probation officer, LeeAnn Wozniak. I walked out of the classroom and there she was, all smiles as usual. Loves her job. I have no idea why given all the wacko kids she has to deal with all day-I include myself in that description, believe me. I'm no picnic. And I come with drama she'd never seen before.

But she'd dropped by to walk me to my last class and debrief me a little bit. And that class deserves its own chapter, believe me.

***Thank you so much for stopping by. If you liked the read, don't forget to vote!