Sunday, March 2, 2008

The Unbearable Awfulness of Being

Instead of pondering how short life is and how inconsequential (because we all know that on my darker days I can certainly go to that place) I instead offer you the truth of how easily we lose those things we value.

Friday I was on a field trip with the highschoolers in Santo Domingo. Although the day was quite nice, the museum was horrendously hot. I was carrying my bookbag, my camera and a bulletin I was using to fan myself with hopes of overcoming the nausea of stagnant air and second-rate displays. We were not allowed to tour the museum independently (though all we could have done was look since the Dominican distaste for reading extended to their displays so one probably would not have known what one was looking at anyway...except that the tour guide didn't really help answer that question either, but I digress) and the tourguide has gone down in my mind as the museum-nazi trying to enforce from her 5'4" 115 lbs stature the silence of 50 tremendously uncomfortable students who had just been cooped up on mini-vans for 3 hours. Museum-Nazi was rude if anyone even looked like they were going to make noise or move a step away (for a breath of air) from the person they were crammed next to. One of my students asked me to hold her notebook while she shifted some stuff around and in an effort to take her notebook and not drop what I was holding without awakening the dragon; I dropped my digital camera. The cord slipped right through my fingers and it his the floor with an obviously fatal smack - so far I have not been able to get it to turn on again.

Woe is me!!! I need a camera and my heart is broken into pieces inside because I can no longer send you picture and crappy videos via my blog. Please address all letters of sympathy and appropriate floral bouquets to my Dominican abode where I will be in deep mourning for at least a week (which will begin promptly as soon as Holly has taken her leave of me, for a hostess should not neglect her guest due to a loss; even one of such magnitude!)

Adios mi amor, mi cámara digital! I shall miss you!

1 comment:

Christine Luppino said...

I feel for you--i too have dropped a digital camera and i have not quite recovered. Oddly, I've also experienced nauseau at very hot museums in central america and then separately the museum nazi's who in russia looked like they'd be nice grandmotherly types-but it was just a charade....Feel better! cnl