dona's 365

The older waitress with whom I worked at the all-night pancake house obsessively and fastidiously scrubbed counters while complaining vociferously about the rotten job everyone else did in cleaning the workstations. Imagine my surprise then, when visiting her home with another co-worker, to see cockroaches crawling across her television screen.

Armed with only a needle (sterilized by placing it in a candle flame until it became red-hot), a raw potato half, an ice cube and some rubbing alcohol, Debbie pierced my ears in my attic bedroom one winter day. “Will it hurt?” I asked. “Not much,” she replied. She lied.

“Oh gosh oh golly gee!” or “Oh geeze oh man!” exclaimed Joyce with bulging eyes given almost any provocation -- missing homework, a bloody nose, the correct answer from a failing student. The half-year I co-taught sixth grade with this artistically talented former nun was full of these quirky expressions.

Tall, dark and slender, Barbara wore fur coats, designer outfits and high heeled shoes as executive administrator of the private school for emotionally and behaviorally disordered students. Although too overdressed to be of much help when restraining a violent student, she was real handy at soliciting funds from unlikely donors.

Generous, gregarious, and charismatic, Father Cilinski was the priest in St. Ann’s Parish during the four years I taught there. He delighted in treating his staff to dinners at his favorite Italian restaurant . Not being Catholic, nor Italian, I was mildly shocked at the copious amounts of alcohol being consumed.

Carole’s son had a developmental delay with seizures and impulsivity. Once Carole gave me a car ride. Her son put his hands over her eyes. She told him that was dangerous. The following year Carole and her son died in a car crash. I always wonder if he didn’t listen.

Older than I, recently divorced, and an artist, Barbara was one of a long line of teaching assistants assigned to me when I taught emotionally disturbed students in Pittsburgh. She and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye concerning our students and I’m pretty sure she loved them more than I did.

Quiet, kind and handsome, Alex was a short-order cook at the all-night pancake restaurant his Greece-born uncles owned. It was said they were grooming him to take over the tiny franchise. His eyes disclosed a different plan as he served a side of philosophy with the orders of eggs over-easy.