Carla Bruce’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

Like many English majors during their college years, I scoffed with disdain when met with the all-too familiar, well-meaning query: Do you plan to teach?

And like many English majors post-graduation, I ended up becoming a teacher.

My feelings about my profession toss and turn as wildly as the tiny human in my uterus. How long do I want to stay here? Am I even any good? What else could I do if I left? I remember instructing rows and rows of silent, pleasantly complacent dolls and stuffed animals in addition and subtraction, and later on, in photosynthesis and mitosis. I mimicked my teachers’ mannerisms and teaching styles as I elucidated on the symbolism in Jane Eyre; gesticulated wildly as I rattled off the causes of the Civil War. Teaching was how I learned, and it was in my blood: my father taught high school for over twenty years. It was inevitable, I suppose, which is probably the reason for my instinctive resistance and subsequent easy surrender.

Sulagna’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

2030, the Year of Winter Songs

The wind whistles outside all day long, and every day we go outside and listen to it. It’s a long ritual, putting on our layers and our specialized snowsuits, but it’s worth it to have the sun hit our eyes and to hear the songs of the season. And it’s our news for the day: our weather report, yes, but also our politics roundup, our scary studies and awkward, shameless cable show. Our national conversation is the chilling tones of winter. And after our time outside – usually an hour maximum, as recommended by the Science Corps – we go back in to the glow of our communication devices. Did you hear that tone change? That dropped beat? Was that a background ocean breeze? People send recordings, remixes, and analyses to each other. The Science Corps sometimes sends out a newsletter, but they tell us over and over again: this is as good as it’ll get.

2081, the Year of Cooking

There are three kinds of country. First, there’s Boil country, where the air is like the inside of your mouth, a hot gasp. Boiled people are always glistening, and it’s said their minds cook in their heads and dribble out of their ears. It never rains, the water hanging around in the air like a promise that can’t be kept. It’s bad country, salacious and greedy. That’s nothing compared to Toast country. Hot as anger, the air feels like a myth. People have faith in it, but it never moves, never budges when they cry to it, gasping for relief against the heat. People don’t look at each other in the eye – it’s no use with our heavy-duty lenses. The worst, though – the worst is Fry country. Above the large cities hang huge swaths of gas, so everyone has to wear gas masks at all times. They say it’s always night in Fry country because you never see the sun.

When I win this fucking award, I won’t even know what award they’re talking about at first. “No, I’m serious,” I’ll say. “What award?” Because I haven’t even been following the nomination process, not because I think I’m too good for it, but honestly just because this kind of thing doesn’t even register with me, like I don’t even notice when people win awards. I mean, if it makes them happy, that’s great, I just don’t even hardly notice it.

It’s not that I think I’m above this whole thing, because I don’t. I’m just in a really different place from it, a place that’s separate and slightly higher up from the place everyone else is in, but not above them.

There are plenty of ways in which I feel COMPLICIT and GUILTY about our constant photo-surveillance of celebrities. ON THE ONE HAND: it was weird and creepy for photographers to follow Kristen Stewart around on the beach last week. ON THE OTHER HAND: if she’s wearing men’s shorts and dating a woman, I want to have this information uploaded into my brain without a moment’s delay. If leaked photos of Kirsten Stewart in a state of disheveled undress were released tomorrow, I would not look at them.

But I am only a human woman, and she was wearing Y-front shorts.