Pamela Beer

...was my Junior year Trigonometry/Pre-calculus teacher. No joke, that was her name. She was one of those awful people that couldn't master writing with the red pen cradled between her thumb and index finger, while letting it rest on her middle finger. She concealed the entire pen in her fist. I would always picture her correcting my 73% tests and quizzes with that obnoxiously vertical and militant handwriting. I would laugh at the thought of my quizzes and tests being a warm up to a bout with Mike Tyson, that would usually ease the sting of my mediocre grades. She was such an uppity and pretentious broad, and she had a nose and face like a character from a Tim Burton movie. She didn't know it at the time, but she taught me a lot about myself.

Amidst all the meaningless calculations and TI-85 calculator work (playing Super Mario Bros.), log(35), and everything else that I've since forgotten, she made us compute sines, cosines, and tangents. She was so stupid, I can't believe I'm giving her credit, but this valley girl turned high school teacher inadvertently hit on the importance of waves and cycles.

Everything is cyclical. The economy, the S.A.'s emotions, the relationship between the Earth and the rest of the universe, the economy, the reproductive patterns of salmon, the weather, etc. Since living in NYC I've noticed that everything about me is cyclical, including: my emotions, the way I feel about work, the work itself, my willingness to date, the trends of Manhattan rents. Everything has its own rhythm and cycle. I'm just writing this to thank you, Ms. Beer. I get it. I still generally couldn't tolerate you, but at least I get it. I'll feel better tomorrow.