Every first night of class, the teacher makes you go around the room and introduce yourself. You usually say your name, what you’re working on, and who your favorite authors are. It’s painfully awkward and easily my favorite part of the first class. I think you can tell a lot about people by how they introduce themselves.

You get your hipsters who always mention Eggers, McSweeneys and authors of that ilk. Your trying to suck-uppers who mention O’conner, Carver, blah, blah blah. You get your super cool girls with cool glasses who say they love Jeanette Winterson (and incidentally, that was not me). Then you have the people I like the best who always claim their favorite author is whomever they are reading that the moment. I used to say that. But last night I went with Mary Gaitskill.

Unfortunately, I introduced my stupid self to the class before it was even my turn. We had gotten about five people into the intros when I realized nobody was talking about their favorite authors — which is my favorite favorite part. Because, duh, how can I superficially and bitchily judge you based on your favorite author if you don’t tell me who it is. Geez.

In typical superdoofis fashion, as soon as I had the thought it was out of my mouth and out there for the rest of the class to hear.

“Hey,” I said between intros. “Nobody’s saying their favorite author.”
Vodo looked at me, shook his head, and laughed.
“Make them do it,” I said.

Later at Grumpy’s, I apologized to him for being so stupid and bossy.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s a time for you to introduce yourself to the class and I think that did more to introduce who you are then anything else.”

Hi class, my name is Jodi. I am rude and bossy. Nice to meet you.

Bleh.

Despite my stupid human tricks, I’m super excited by the class. It’s like (as my friend Jimmy said) Dudeapalooza. Seriously. There were six women and all the rest were guys. That’s highly unusual. I think it will be interesting to see the dynamic of a male-dominated class.

In all my classes at The Loft, I have learned that there are men of a certain age (late 40s or so) and certain disposition who try to take over the class and be the teacher. We have a lot of men of that age, I can’t wait to see if they are of that disposition.

Sadly, there’s only one cutie, and Kelly called him. Which is okay. He’s a cutie but he also said he’s in awe of Jonathan Safran Foer’s talent. Boo. As soon as I get to know him well enough I will have the Safran Foer argument — it’s one of my favorites.

It’s just so good to be back in class that I can’t stop smiling.