I have never, believe me, ever been one to litter. I don’t like it. I find it tacky, low-class, and uneducated of people to throw trash along streets, highways, and front yards. I’m sure some of this has to do with the near religious obsession U.L. and I had with his own front yard, when I was growing up. The first beer can I ever saw was face-down in his bed of calla lilies, the ones that sat out near the end of the driveway.

People threw trash in the yard, all the time. It wears on you. It reeks, of refuse and disrespect.

So, I grew up hating the idea of natural beauty being marred by discarded McDonald’s bags and the occasional Budweiser can.

But, sometimes though the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, a strong wind can come along and blow it a few feet further down the orchard.

That has happened to me, recently, I’m afraid. And ever since, karma hasn’t left me alone.

Six days ago, to be exact, in some terrible lapse of personal judgment, I rolled down my window and threw my gum out of it. Just like that. Like I didn’t know any better.

Five days ago, as I was walking to my afternoon class, I stepped in a fat, fresh wad of pink-hued Bubble Yum. I am still regretting it, even though I reasoned, as you probably will, that it was no less than I deserved.

It’s gotten worse, though.

Chewing gum has now given way to my cell phone. Which I have come to hate with the burning passion of a thousand flaming suns…and not just for its proclivity for butt-dialing.

Further, I’m afraid it’s warranted.

You see, this past weekend I flat-out told my phone, to its interface, that I hated its guts. (And I do; we’ve had a torrid past as of late).

It rebelled by shutting off. Turning back on. Freezing up. Shutting off, again. Rebooting itself, and so forth.  I reached such a pinnacle of absolute disgust that I did the unthinkable: I went to the Verizon store and waited my turn.

Just me and my Blackberry Storm.

For over an hour. In the Verizon store, have I said that part?

This is the second thing I hate. Not just waiting, mind you, that’s bad enough, but waiting in the Verizon store, and let me tell you why. I have come to the conclusion that the majority of people who are Verizon customers are a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Myself included.

When my turn to speak finally came, I’d been standing behind the woman with a hundred children, thirty-two of which she brought inside with her, I believe the other sixty-eight were in the Chevy Caprice Classic with the illegally tinted windows (something a student of mine was ticketed for, I learned, earlier this semester).  Oh, how they enjoyed the store!  I can only assume she held the largest number of private shares of stock in Verizon as her children, her little loud kiddies, were given free run of the floor. They picked up every item from car chargers to silicone phone covers and hid them elsewhere in the store, pretending they were Easter eggs (what is this residual obsession with Easter, this year?), or my favorite, as every toddler is a turncoat-in-waiting, where one child decides, suddenly, that what every other child is holding is what he/she was supposed to hold.

Thus, tears are shed. Yanked. Pulled. Slapped. Dropped. Yelled. Hollered.

And, of course, most importantly. Ignored.

I was, I swear, an inch away from scolding them, myself. But I feared that, as in most families, maternal tolerance has a threshold that only runs blood deep. Should I have intervened, they would have formed a pack mentality, and attacked me. Even though I know she had to feel the same as I did. She would punish them, accordingly, though; not me.

I could respect that, but just barely. (I’ve been with my nephews before when they were out of control, and I’m not sure I would have stopped a stranger from jerking a knot in them, personally).

After she and her mighty clan exited, I stepped up to the counter and explained my problem. Below is a transcript of this exchange.

HIM: “So, what’s the problem?”

ME: “My phone. It won’t do what I tell it to.”

HIM: “Ah, issues with the Voice Activiation?”

ME: “What?”

HIM: “The Voice Activation, it’s not responding?”

ME: “Oh, no, no, I don’t even know about that. I don’t use that.”

HIM: “Oh. Ok.”

ME: “I just mean, the phone, the whole thing isn’t working. No Internet, no—“

HIM: “Whoa. No Internet? You can’t get the Internet on it?”

ME: “Uh, no, not anymore. It stopped—“

HIM: “When did it stop?”

ME: “Day before yesterday.”

HIM: “That is not good, that is not good, not with a Storm.”

ME: “Right. Well, I need…can you fix it?”

HIM: “Oh, I bet I can. Let me see.”

He then proceeded to take the entire phone apart. We waited for five minutes. Then, he put the entire phone back together. We waited again. He turned the phone on. We waited some more.

The phone then worked. I was elated…mostly because I’ve spent a good deal of money on this stupid phone and I expect it to do what it’s made to do.

But then, along came karma.

As he said, “ ‘Cause these here, these Storms, they’re top of the line, they’re good and they need to…shoot, hold on a second, please….”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his own personal Storm (no pun intended), held it up to his ear and said, “It’s not me, I didn’t mean to call you. It’s this phone. I don’t need anything. Talk to you later.”

“Sorry,” he said, “My phone keeps dialing my Mom.”

“It’s fine,” I replied, smiling, “I know just how you feel.”

The service was free, so I left after it was fixed thinking, It’s a real shame that they don’t sell gum here.

A real shame, indeed.

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Having played tennis most of my life, I am more than well aware that I have a good, nice, firm butt. Like, I could point my butt toward a bowl of walnuts and they’d crack immediately.  Out of pure-D respect.

I mean, facts are facts.

Now, I don’t often talk about my butt because a) it isn’t tasteful to do so, and b) I mean, look at it. I don’t really have to talk about it. It’s a little gift from Up Above (two, if you count my I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter legs) that I have somehow managed to take care of…where other things I let fall by the side.

That’s also a fact, I’m afraid.

The point is: I have, all in all, a magnificent butt.

And usually, I give it its due credit. When it behaves.

And I do what I can to take care of it; though I wish I could get out on the tennis courts more regularly, these days.  I frequent the gym (well, mostly just the tanning bed located at the gym); I’ve bought the specially designed Shape Up shoes that are meant to help aid and tone the buttocks area when doing mundane activities such as walking to the copier, grading papers, and racing your swivel chairs down the long, lonely hallway outside your office with a select few of your really cool colleagues.

Apparently, though, my butt had other ideas as to how it wished to spend its time: butt-dialing.

For starters, I have no qualms sharing with you the fact that I am not a fan of my own cell phone. As a matter of fact, next to Hitler, the pending Apocalypse, and people bad-mouthing the good honest work of Jamie Gertz on the ill-fated sitcom “Still Standing,” there is nothing I hate more than my Blackberry.

Had I only known at the time of purchase the sheer hatred I’d carry in my heart for that dreaded piece of smart plastic, I’d never have gotten it.  Had I further known the secret love affair my phone would have with my butt, I’d have taken the time to practice my once-perfect penmanship and reverted to that old art form known as letter writing.

However, I was already a Verizon contract-player, so I held out in the hopes that I was finally and successfully integrating myself into Modern Society by getting the next Big Thing in the world of cellular communication.

I have since 86’ed that notion.

I’m six months into my torrid relationship with the Qualcomm 3G CDMA model of the Blackberry Storm, and am more than ready for the clouds to clear. Of course, to ensure a proper storm passing, one must be ready to break the contract, and that costs a pretty penny.

At first, I took Blackberry aggravations in stride. Because the root of the problem seemed to be at hand: my hand. I hit everything but the right button and became accidentally more intimate with the Voice Activation Command than voice mail.

It was a real talent I had, there. I do everything backwards, I guess.

But, never did I expect that all along my beautiful butt was waiting for a chance to betray me.

I have, for as long as I can remember, never, never put items in my pockets. I couldn’t stand it. It felt so weighted to have coins, keys, the like, in my pockets.  So, why I ever started putting my phone in my pockets (front and back, mind you!) I simply cannot answer.  But, I did.

That’s when the trouble started.

I have to date butt-dialed twenty-two people. One person, my friend  Abigail, has been butt-dialed no less than six of those times. She’s the first name in my Address List. I can only imagine the strange, unintelligible messages she’s been left by my butt.

She did have the decency to call back, though, and leave a message for me, after the fourth butt-dial. “Kris, so good to hear from you, I hope everything’s OK, you’ve called a lot recently. Let me know.”

Bless her heart. (I hate you, Butt).

Back in the shameful days of my heavy drinking, I had a bad habit of “befriending” everyone at the bar. This led, of course, to many random exchanges of phone numbers. Some with real names assigned to them; others with, what I can only guess, were nicknames I’d given them at the time of the second or third round.

My butt knew this, and as payback, has also butt-dialed them. For kicks, I guess.  This has led to viciously punctuated text messages along the lines of WTF?!? Who is this?! and so on.

I’ve never been one to like a phone. I’m harder to track down with a cell than without. I just liked the convenience of a cell phone.  You know, in case I ever get lost backpacking through the Appalachians, my cell phone would have GPS; or, if I needed to immediately rifle through endless Facebook updates, then, Voila!, there’s my cell, ready and at the helm.

But for talking…I can do without that part, though, apparently, I don’t even have to worry about dialing should the need to talk to someone arise. My butt is more than happy to do it for me.

I don’t know how to prevent this, so instead, I keep my phone far, far away from me at all times, now. I let it ride in the passenger seat, seatbelt on, on my way to work.  I’ve put an extra chair in front of my desk, and there it sits all day, while I’m in my office. I don’t touch it unless I have to. 

Its ringer is on Vibrate because the other sounds scare me. I’m in search of a name to call this so I can at least have a viable diagnosis for this newfound phobia.

It’s not just butts you have to worry about these days, either. I have a chilling tale to share with you that involves another unbelievable betrayal.

Purse-dialing.

Several years back, I was driving a friend of mine and myself to a last-minute dinner, in town. We’d worked hard all day and were bent on rewarding ourselves with a tasty morsel or two in a local diner.

Two things had happened to her that week that she was eager to share with me: her cell phone purchase, and the introduction of a new man into her life.

She was ecstatic.

She was, however, still married.

We were barely a few miles down the road when a cat darted in front of my vehicle. We lurched forward in our seats, her purse fell from her lap, and the contents of it (and god were there contents of it) spilled all over the floorboard.

She picked them up, and continued talking—about the new man. In detail. Full. Graphic. Detail.

I did what I could to share her enthusiasm. I did what I could to not be judgmental. She was, after all, a grown woman.

Fate intervened, though. Because somehow in the course of dropping her purse and picking it up, the phone was dialed. The number? Her husband’s. Who then heard every word she had to say.

Now, that, my friends, is a confession. No?

Thank god I don’t have a purse because I’m having enough trouble with my butt.

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• One of my favorite games, growing up, was Beleaguered Librarian.

I rarely get anything back from them, so that’s hardly the reason why – there’s no monetary motivation behind it – it’s just that, deep down, I really like filling in things, forms, blanks. I like putting things where they go, seeing them meld into the template of the 1040EZ, or the W-2, or the New York Times Crossword.

I like it because when things fit, I’m pleased.

I like it because, when it’s all said and done, it looks neat.

And I like it because it looks intimidating:  To think that all the hard work you’ve done throughout the year can be reduced to nothing more than a small collection of rows and shaded squares, all neatly labeled and cross-referenced by the IRS and national bank chains.

There’s a part of me, a part I do admit mostly trying to deny, though, that craves organization.

It’s true. 

One of my favorite games to play growing up was Beleaguered Librarian, for crying out loud.

I think 26 Down is "Loser."

And before you ask, here’s how it’s played: Melinda, a favorite childhood friend, and I would spend hours in her house, going room-to-room collecting all the books we could find; they’d been mis-shelved, obviously. We’d have to settle down at the kitchen table (the office), and take out all the postcard-sized bits of paper we’d previously put inside them (carrying the title of each book and Return Date, clearly legible), complain (quietly) how time-consuming doing this was and gossip about how rude it was that “most of the people who come in here don’t even bother to look at the return date, anyway,” which meant we would have to charge them overdue fees.

Groan.

This, of course, required more paperwork: more pieces of paper cut checkbook-size, which would then have to been written out with the amount of the fee expected. This would have to wait until we’d re-shelved the books, obviously, because “so few people who come in here put the books back, they just leave them lying anywhere.”

No one ever came to our library.

And yet, there was always a ridiculous load of work to be done. Before you knew it, a whole Sunday afternoon had passed.

I’m not even sure there’s room in the definition of Nerd to describe this game, but play it we did. And we loved it. And I don’t think we’re one bit ashamed about loving it either.

It satisfied a deep need I had for order, as a child. Yet, I rebel against this same sense of order today, for reasons I cannot explain fully—though in part, I have more than an ample girth of opinion.

I'm still Kris with a "K."

I think it has something to do with a fear of conformity, with the surrendering of our uniqueness to the One-Size-Fill-in-the-Blank Philosophy of capitalism.

They force us to become One by not letting us be one, you know?

Our entire careers, taxes, insurance claims, retirements, bank accounts, you name it, are all sitting, in duplicate, stuffed in large, collective boxes, stored in back rooms, looking exactly the same to the naked eye, from the shelf…when the naked eye cares to look.

You have no Name with these constructs, just a Number. And the back room itself is a last-resort, at that. The glory-holder of anonymity these days is without doubt, the computer.

Heck, it’s like that at my school, and we’re in the middle of somewhere even Verizon can’t find.

Half the people I teach, when it’s time to record grades, are faceless, student ID numbers scrolling across my computer screen. There’s very little humanity in it…but it certainly is neat, contained, and orderly, which is something of an improvement over, ahem, humanity.

And in attempt at appeasing Big Brother: I kinda like it, I have to say.

No, now, I’m not saying I don’t want to know or care about my students, I certainly do, but even more than that, I like ease and convenience. I like knowing that I can pull these obligations out of my own mind and dump them in some software whose sole purpose is not to care; a problem of mine, personally, is caring a little too much.

That’s got to stop, to some degree. Especially as I get ready to do two things: teach online and bravely face this mammoth of a Program Review Report, due by Friday (I’ve just been told).

Online teaching has its own challenges: The severity of setting a deadline is hard to manage in the physical classroom. When it’s online, however, either you do it by 3:00 PM on Thursday, or you don’t do it at all, e.g. I’m OK with that, as a professor, even if I’m more than a little bothered by it, as a human, but then, I’m not paid to be a human.

Touché, huh.

It will take some adjustment, I know.  Doing your taxes still requires intimacy. Teaching students whom you’ll never meet doesn’t.  That’s the part that I will struggle with, even against the alleged ease of online education.

Because starting next semester, my words are going to count for a hell of a lot more than they do right now.

This mammoth Program Review is a different devil. I’ve only been here for four months; this report doesn’t care, though. I’m now, among other things, responsible for figuring out who spent what monies badly over the last three years…and Why.  I’ve been staring at this thick, multipage document all morning; I may or may not have had a stroke around 11:38. I have little to no intimacy for it. Scratch that: I hate the damn thing.

But, considering that, a couple of things come to mind: either I can be afraid of it, of losing myself to and behind a computer screen (who respects a computer screen?), or I can take pride in filling out these forms, tooting my horn whatever note comes out, and creating lessons and assignments and syllabi that are creative and challenging – on my own terms.

I’ve chosen to re-institute my sense of pride in the latter; it’s less unknown.

Try to reach $1.00 without going over.

I’m intent on making my words matter. On the shelf in that back room, I might look like any other overindulgent Rolodex entry; on the bank’s computer or the hospital’s, I might be nothing more than a statistic or a blood count, but when you pull my name out of the piles to read about my medical history or educational philosophy, I better make sure what I’ve written down can stand alone…and speak for itself.

(People do still read, right)?  

No, rather than be upset by the New World Order, I plan on going down (at least on paper) in a blaze of glory. I’m determined to be a “good read,” if I’m nothing else from now ‘til kingdom come.

Which, according to some popular opinion, is December 20, 2012.

…and I can last another two years, easy.

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