On the road to Staples and then Home Depot this afternoon. I need three
translucent plastic pockets, jackets for stuffing with collected scraps of
writing and whatnot. From H.D., a few planting implements, seeds, and so on.
Faced with some regreening in the days ahead (mentally, physically,
botanically).
Ph. was with me because we also agreed on a stop at the pound to see if any
dogs were brought in since Tuesday.
Driving along Bridge Street,
Chamillionaire on the radio. Ph. tells me he likes the song. I
haven’t heard it before. Oblivious: I’m old now, bookish, fading into sunset culture
(I remember when I was…):
They see me rollin’
They hatin’
Patrollin’ and tryna catch me ridin dirty
(tryna to catch me ridin dirty) X 4
My music so loud
I’m slangin’
They hopin’ that they gonna catch me ridin dirty
(tryna catch me ridin dirty) X 4
"Is that riding or writing?" I ask Ph.
"Riding, I think."
"Could be ‘writing.’ Yeah?"
"Mhm."
And this made good sense coming just after Ph.’s report of a letter-writing
episode at school today. Not his Language Arts class but another one.
Instructions: write a
letter to an elementary school student (among the ones
they’d been mentoring throughout the year). The way he tells it, Ph.
banged his letter out. Others hassled the teacher about for the "what
for?," resisted. So Ph. was finished relatively quickly. Next
there were corrections and scolds about letters proper. All due and
appropriate, I’m sure (Align your date and your closing, will you!?). But
then, he reports, there were moments when the teacher worked at his
keyboard and deleted some of his stuff and then told him to write ten more
sentences (to fill up the time, he says).
Did this happen? Exactly this way? Who knows. I’m not complaining (even if
the narrative includes some over-the-top acts, namely a teacher taking command
of the keyboard and deleting). He and I had a nice talk, after all, about school
writing and propriety, a talk grounded in stuff that again and again surprises
me about Ph.’s interests in language, reading and writing. I’m equally
interested in Ph.’s reports of his peers, freshmen in H.S., turning away from
writing, resisting it, complaining about how much it sucks. Only to rush home to
the nettlewerk, to vast investments of time and creativity in Myspace activity. Not
approaching a universal truism, by any means, and yet it was a striking moment:
our conversation, the song lyrics, the follow-up. School writing.
Chaste writing. Some explicit instruction: Tryin to catch me writin dirty?
Whatever the case, the lyric is forever altered for me.
It’s Ridin, what would writing have to do with it?
“They see me rollin’
They hatin’
Patrollin’ and tryna catch me ridin dirty”
it’s talking about the cops trying to bust them on the streets…
You might be right. But I’m old, you see, and when I first heard the song, I thought “writing” and “riding” sounded very much alike; so much alike, in fact, that I went on ahead and imagined what it might mean if it was “writing dirty.” Just playing out a thought experiment.