There was a man who went to work, dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum. He sat at his desk and waited to be busy, organizing papers and fighting lazy. The kids never came and the rain never stopped so he didn’t go outside and just sat at his desk. Dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum.
Lonely goes slowly when you’re the only office employee not laughing at jokes. The clock refused to go any faster than once round a minute no matter how often he looked at it. Twelve o’clock was eating time. Eat earlier than twelve, and he would finish earlier than 12:30, leaving way too much day. Eat later than 12, and his stomach’s protests would grow too obstreperous. (He found that word one day when he ate earlier than 12 and had too much day left. It was the word of the day on May 28th, 2001. It’s a synonym for vociferous, which itself was word of the day on December 24th, 1999.) Eat exactly at 12, and he would leave himself with the best possible balance of boredom and hunger. Mind you, this number was not an arbitrary choice based on changeable fickles of human comfort or faulty perceptions of impressionable and gullible sensory organs. Twelve o’clock was a rigorously proved, fundamentally deterministic and solid result of three days during Winter Vacation when he solved a two variable max/min calculus problem, taking two days to relearn calculus in the process. The office didn’t mind. He told them that the funky symbols, like ‘∮,’ were advanced English that he was studying for the benefit of the students. This one means, ‘cycle,’ he had said. '∮∮' means ‘bicycle,’ and '∮∮∮' means ‘cat.’ The English teachers’ responses were panegyrical. (Has not been word of the day yet.) After all, he was an English expert.
When he questioned his superiors about what to do with his apparent windfall of time, they said, ‘If you get bored, just ask for something to do.’ So, five minutes later, he asked. They said, ‘Oh. Ask again later.’
Keyboards clicked, feet shuffled, people puzzled, writers wrote, phones rang, wringers wrung, rings rang, runners ran, principled principals planned practical things, and all the while, the lonely assistant English teacher pondered how much more interesting the world would be if dolphins had thumbs. (Dolphins are one of four known species to be able to recognize themselves in mirrors.)
He imagined a world where the sea was not mankind’s swimming pool. A world where going tuna fishing was like trying to steal diamonds from a museum because the dolphins were amassed and waiting to protect their treasures. Of course Japan would be the most affected, what with their love of tuna and precarious position as an island nation surrounded by disgruntled, thumbed warrior dolphins. The war would start there. The first round would be an easy victory for the dolphins. The Japanese, with their superiority-over-dolphins complex, would simply march out to sea in regular boats armed with harpoons and the like. All the dolphins would need to do was swim under the hulls and unscrew the screws holding the ship together. Underwater ambidextrousness in the wrong hands is a powerful tool, the dolphins would teach the Japanese.
Round two would be a much fairer fight, with ship screws facing inward. And so the fighting would go for years and years, through ebbs and tides, with control flip-flopping like a dolphin out of water between the sides. During a lull in the action, the dolphins would demand prisoner release under the context that their flippered brethren were taken during peace-time and thus not able to be held under the Geneva Conventions. In addition, the public humiliation and torture of jumping through hoops for the sadistic pleasure of regular citizens who had nothing to do with the war furthered their case for immediate prisoner release, the dolphins argued. The Japanese prime minister quipped that if the dolphins could get to land-locked Geneva they were more than welcome to ‘have their fish back.’ Shortly after, the Great Dolphin Offensive of 2015 began.
It wasn’t just the boredom that was boring into the lonely ALT. It was also the weather. Muggy and humid, it made sitting still miserable. To combat the sweat and the heat, he found that he had to shut his mind completely off. If he let the calculus and kanji in, he’d also have to let the misery of each moment in along with it. The fundamental theorem of calculus smells like old wood, chalk, and Lilla’s hair, while 結婚 (marriage) smells like sweat and natto. (Miura Sensei was enjoying a particularly viscous batch of the stuff during lunch while the lonely ALT studied that kanji.) The knowledge is never separate from the moment it is acquired.
But shutting off the brain, even for a little while, is a dangerous game to play. Yes, it provides a reprieve from the physical environment, making the uncomfortable moments more bearable, but it also lets the body know that it don’t need to use the brain all the time to get through life.
There was once a man who went to work, dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum. But today, he decided to talk more, rather than sit at his desk with his own thoughts, which were getting confused and jumbled. He struck up a conversation with an older teacher to his left, one whom he had not talked with much. In fact, he never really had seen her talk to anyone. She looked away slowly from her laptop. ‘I said, it’s a little hot today, isn’t it,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if ∮∮∮s had thumbs? Oh! I’m sorry I can’t talk more now. It just turned 12 and I have to eat lunch.’
