an irresistibly bad idea

So.

Starting next week, I will be teaching a 12-week drama workshop at a private hoity-toity Jewish prep school here in town.

Yep. I mean, seems logical. The perfect fit for my evangelical shiksa self, don’t you think?

Oh, yes.

Bottom line: It was just too flat-out ridiculous to pass up.

Last week, I drove up to their school and had what turned out to be a TWO-HOUR interview where I met four different men. The first one was short, looked like Billy Bush, was not Jewish, and apart from acting nervous and tongue-tied, seemed utterly generic. He gave me a tour of their school but didn’t seem to know what to say about it. I had to keep asking questions to get him to say anything at all, like some horrible blind date. But without benefit of alcohol.

The next feller was the high shool principal of the hoity-toity Jewish school. He was also short, wore a yarmulke, stared lasers at my boobs, and isn’t that nice, baruch atah adonai. The entire time he cross-examined me, he played absently with the small green clock on his desk, spinning it round and round. I could tell he thought very highly of me as a person.

The next gentleman was the grade school principal. He was not short. He handed me his card, said, “Call me” and walked away. That was all. “Call you” for what, Peaches??

The last man was The Head of The Arts “Collective” they are starting at the school. The “main guy” I needed to talk to in order to get my shiksa self into The Fyvush Finkle Arts Collective. (Not the real name. I’m not making fun here; there is a famous Jewish name in there, just not that one.) He was the art teacher and sported a grey turtleneck, khaki vest, and matching khaki pants. He, too, was short. Also balding, with little round glasses and tiny brown eyes. All that was missing to complete the cliche was the beret. I swear, if he’d been an actor playing an art teacher in a movie and had come out of wardrobe in that, the director would have said, “Please find something else; no one really dresses that way.” He was like a living cartoon and I struggled to look him in the eye. Allegedly, his class was in session, it was the first day of school, but he took me to the back of the class and talked to me for AN HOUR while his kids did Yahweh knows what. They were not creating art, I know that, but they did spend a very long time with their heads bowed over a single piece of paper. Vest Boy, meanwhile, asked me questions and answered them himself, so of course, I found out later he was very impressed with me.

When class was nearly over, he excused himself to go set the captives free. I watched the tight smiles and furrowed brows flicker across the kids’ faces as Vest Boy droned on and on, past the class bell, past all reason, past the end of time. Once the kids bolted from the room, he came back to me and said, “You know, some of these kids have me for several years in row. Sometimes, after a while, they actually think I’m boring.” Said without the slightest sliver of irony. I smiled a tight smile, as I remember. After another monologue where he blabbed about his “partner” Rachel, about “filling the artistic well,” about the personal lives of his students (ahem) and after I purposely, blatantly took my cell phone out of my purse to look at the time, he finally said: “Well, the job is yours if you want it.”

Oh, boy!

Want it?

Want it??

For reals?

Wow!

It’s just like Christmas!

Or I mean Chanukkah!

After all, the four of you have kept me here for TWO AGONIZINGLY MONOTONOUS HOURS. I don’t like any of you. I don’t like that you’re a private Jewish school and it doesn’t matter to you that I’m not Jewish. I don’t like that this is a private school without a dress code. I don’t like your outfit. I don’t like your beady eyes. I don’t like the word “collective.” I don’t like that you have a “partner” and that you talk seriously about “filling the welllll.” I don’t like that I had an instant violent dislike of Principal Laser Eyes even before he proved himself to be Principal Laser Eyes. I don’t like that you’re all making me promises of “bigger and better things to come,” dangling your artsy little carrots.

After a steady five-year diet of major disappointments and broken promises, I don’t believe any of you for one teeny-tiny split second.

I mean, what’s more like Christmas and/or Chanukkah than that?

So, of course, I emailed Vest Boy two days later and said yes. Five seconds before I wrote that email, I was sure I was going to say no. Violently and unequivocally.

But … quite honestly …. and I am so very lame as we all know …. I thought it might make for some good blogging.

Seriously.

An irresistibly bad idea is irresistible for a reason, you know.

So instead, I compromised. They wanted an entire year commitment to this “after school collective,” but the job is too far away and far too part time right now, so I committed to the first session only and told them I would need more for it to work for me long-term. The conceptual arsty carrots being dangled would need to become actual artsy carrots. (And somehow you would all have to become tolerable and non-pervy and taller if you could manage that, mkay?)

Basically, I said yes with room for no later on.

Vest Boy emailed back almost immediately, so excited.

Oh, I too, Vest Boy, am positively brimming over.

You have no idea.

Local shiksa teaches drama to a bunch of rich Jewish girls and boys.

Nothing more irresistibly bad than that.