cellular snapshots

This is morning assembly.  We stand in formation, practice turning on command, sing the national anthem, sing the King's Anthem on Friday, recite the school motto and spirit (Fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom; Thrust me while I am here, mess me when I am gone [sic, sic]), and listen to significant announcements.  

I try not to comment about local fashion.  When not in school uniform, the boys like to wear death metal tees from America, or at least hardcore seeming images.  Notably, one kid was strutting around with early-adolescent pride for a shirt that said, in vampiric font, "sample text."
They're kids.  They're trying to be cool with the tools available.
But I had to say something to the kid wearing a black shirt with white font around a red swastika: "Nazi" above, "Punk" below, smaller "FUCK YOU" subscript.
He was standing next to his mom and staring at me.  I walked up, traced "NAZI PUNK" as I said the words, then gave a roughly literal translation of the subscript.
Funny, no matter how accurately I tell a Thai person where I want to go or what I want to eat, they don't understand for at least three repetitions.  But say, "fuck you" and eyebrows snap up.
I doubt he's been allowed to wear that shirt since.

That's right, nonfat pork rinds.  Gram is rolling in her grave.

The last package my grandmother sent me was a bag of pork rinds.  She poked holes in it so it would fit in a smaller envelope.  The note was something like, "Russ, these are called pork rinds.  We used to call them Cracklins.  My land are they good.  

"I poked holes in the bag so I could mail it.  Just put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and they'll be fine."

[Those of you not laughing were not in on her last year or so.  Her diet consisted primarily of sachets of sugar with bits of coffee or packets of jam.  Naturally, nothing the care home served was hot or sweet enough, and none of the plates of food were right--which is prone to happen when your vision has deteriorated after nearly a century of worried application.  So instead of dipping the turkey into gravy and finding it to be mustard, or dipping the fish into tartar and finding it to be tapioca, she ate pudding cups and pork rinds and microwaved cups of coffee-infused syrup.  

And then she put a cup in for 90 minutes, not 90 seconds, and set off fire alarms all along the wing.  A quick-thinking nurse told her it was a new policy: no more microwaves."