Faking athleticism and the third eye

School’s been delayed by about three weeks due to construction. That means that the previous week and the upcoming two have been and will be the most boring three weeks of my life. There’s literally nothing for me to do anywhere. I realized this week that the reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping is that I simply don’t do enough during a day to make myself tired. I sleep for like three hours and that’s all the rest my body needs. Usually I fill up the remaining five hours by eating. I bought a big pack of artificially flavored peanut butter cookies and baked myself a cake in preparation for more early mornings. Yes I know, my life is awesome.

In order to combat my impending bulimia, I’ve decided to take up soccer. Twice a week a bunch of guys play soccer on this little patch of grass with a telephone pole in the middle of it. Out of all the things I’ve quit in my life, I think soccer is the one I regret most. It’s basically a way to make friends no matter where you are in the world, kind of like drinking. Unfortunately I only played like one year of “little league” soccer plus a few IM games when someone who actually knew how to play was too hung over.

I’ve always found interesting the dynamic that is created when someone who is incompetent at a certain activity joins a bunch of people who are more or less competent at said activity. I guess there’s two schools of thought. The incompetent guy can disengage himself and learn passively so he doesn’t screw up the people who are competent, or he can engage himself and learn actively and try to compensate for a lack of skills with extreme effort in order to mitigate the anger of everyone else. I usually fall into the latter camp. However, in this case, not only did I lack skills but I also lacked fitness. Thus, when I kicked into “OK I suck but at least I can earn points by trying really hard” mode, I couldn’t go for very long and soon became an enormous waste of space on the pitch.

Whatever. I’ve gone about four or five times. It’s pretty much the only thing that makes me tired enough to fall asleep for eight hours.

On Friday I was out with some new teachers at a private elementary school here. Apparently someone had asked one of them if he believes in the “third eye,” meaning telekinesis or some shit. Moreover, this guy had also asked pretty much everyone else at the table the same thing, a revelation which naturally resulted in much raucous conversation about third eyes, third nipples, third testicles, etc. – basically anything that naturally exists in pairs and would be really fucked up if they existed in threes.

A few minutes later, a friend who had been here for a year walked by and told us that she had just been at her host aunt’s elomej. If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you might remember that an elomej is a wake before a funeral and a very large and important part of Marshallese culture (see my host grandmother’s elomej post two years ago). Anyways, the new teacher, the one who had recently been asked about the third eye and hadn’t been here long enough to recognize what an elomej is, responded with, “Oh really? DID SHE HAVE A THIRD EYE?”

He kind of smiled faintly at her, wondering why she wasn’t laughing. The other new teachers kind of gave each other probing looks, like they knew something wasn’t right but couldn’t quite figure out what. My friend Jay, who’s been here off and on for a long time, gave the new dude the “you should shut up now” elbow. And you know how, in every group, there’s that one jackass who derives so much pleasure out of other people’s really uncomfortable and awkward moments? Yeah, that guy’s me. I started laughing uproariously. First, I tried to keep it in, which resulted in hacking sounds emanating from me and a general shaking of my torso. However, it soon escaped but luckily, by then, the teacher who’s host aunt had died explained what an elomej was and everyone else had started chuckling too.

Two weeks to go before school starts. I’ll take suggestions about what the hell to do.