Do Teachers Get Depressed Too?
The other day I watched this movie about signs
it's this movie where Jessica Alba eats soap
except it’s not her it’s her character
and it’s when her character is 10
and she’s played by Bailee Madison.
And so she eats the soap because
her dad gets really sick
and she makes a deal with the universe
that she’ll give up everything that makes life worth living in exchange for his health
and while she’s eating the soap Jessica Alba is telling us in the narration
how the “more she liked something the more she needed to ruin it”
well not Jessica Alba it’s Mona, her name is Mona in the film
So I guess she just liked soap so much that she had to eat it
but see, the thing is
it’s nice to think about eating soap
it smells so silky and feels like fresh laundry
you want to have it, feel it slink down your esophagus
like a spoonful of pudding
but you can’t do that
because when you eat soap all you taste is bitter
that’s why it’s a flavor in the Jelly Belly Bertie Botts Every Flavor collection
it’s thoroughly disgusting, gross
in that, it’s not what you expect
Soap is not supposed to go in your mouth
and when it does it does not make you feel clean
that is what mouthwash is for,
it makes the soap feel dirty and evil
I know because I tried it
but not because I thought it would make me feel clean
because I felt so extraordinarily dirty that I thought
“what would make me dirtier?”
and I took a bite out of the dish soap
It was my first Jessica Alba movie
or at least the first one where I understood her as being Jessica Alba
She’s an elementary school math teacher and she hangs up an axe in her classroom
but she covers it with blue paint and these white cumulus clouds
and really it’s fine because it just becomes the sky in the shape of the number 7
until one of the girls in the class tries to slice another girl’s head open
then it’s an axe again
despite it Mona is actually pretty good at her job
This other teacher is falling in love with her
and her defense mechanism of choice is regression
so she starts picking up her childhood habits along with her undeveloped logic
and she’s
eating soap again
but the kids are kinda digging her whole quirky thing
so it works out