07.22.2003 - 1:00 p.m.

(I know, didn�t do the template yet. Stupid images, stupid work scanners, blah.)

My hair feels like a matted helmet, although it was perfectly brushed out this morning. My body is coated with the boiled-down essence of seven hours of sweat which, in turn, is plastered with several layers of soaked cotton. Bra, underwear, pants, and blouse. Today was freshman testing day, and also my first day of summer camp teaching. I ran between the two all morning. For the lunch hour I ran around without shoes, to ease the blisters on the top; after the lunch hour I was back in shoes, to ease the heat blisters on the bottom. Now I�ve kicked the damned things under my table at a campus services fair. I�m twenty minutes into the last hour of the day.

People move in glaze-eyed herds past my table and the tables around me, incoming freshmen and their parents, all with stick-on nametags, all stirring the air in hot, sweaty eddies. I am smiling at them with what I hope is a bright, welcoming smile. Come learn about the Writing Center at your child�s college. Take a brochure. Doubles as a fan.

My underarms smell terrible. I am trying to remember my own college orientation. I don�t remember how hot it was. In fact I don�t remember it at all; I only remember getting home afterwards, sitting down on my bed and trying to go through all the brochures and folders and colored flyers. I was the kind of person who would read those things, just in case they were actually useful. I expect most of the material these people are carrying to end up in recycling bins, untouched.

Just forty minutes left. The yellow paper tablecloth beneath my forearms has already disintegrated to the point that I am scared to move them when I talk, so my gestures are limited to my eyes and wrists.

A thin, wilted woman in a checkered sun dress leans against a door, propping it open even though the air outside is no better. Farther down the line, a father gripes at his son, who is rolling his eyes more than I would have done, had the father been mine. Heat affects people; it makes them zombies or harpies, or both. For me, there is something about thick, summer heat that makes me patient. I move like molasses, I lead the camp kids by incremental steps, I answer the same questions fourteen times, and then again. Frustration is a waste of effort. Effort is a waste of sweat, and I don�t have access to a fountain.

I missed writing this week. I was hoping that would happen.

-stonebridge

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