WEBVTT

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Oh I want to ask a question
before I read this.

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Does the phrase--
like if somebody

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says that somebody saved their
bacon, if that means anything

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to anyone here, raise
your hand so I can see.

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OK.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I want to see if it's common
usage like, no, I don't know,

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they find your car
keys or they tell

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you what's going to be
on the test or something.

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They rescue you in some way.

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A colloquial way of saying
somebody rescued me.

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OK, well.

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I use it in a second round here.

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Now you will all understand it.

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"Mrs. Krikorian."

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"Today I remembered
Mrs. Krikorian,

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how she saved my bacon.

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I arrived in sixth
grade, a known criminal,

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and the new teacher asked
me to stay after school

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the first day.

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She said, "I've
heard about you."

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She was a tall
woman, deep breasted

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with a mass of dark
hair around her face,

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and a large calm nose.

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She said, "You see this."

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It was a little card,
small, white card

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that saved me from evil.

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This is a special library pass.

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As soon as you finish
your hour's work--

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that hour's work
that took 10 minutes.

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And then the devil glanced into
the room and found me empty.

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A house standing open for rent,
for sale, fire sale, fire--

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you can go to the library.

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Hour after hour I'd
zip through the work

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and slip out of my seat like
an angel out of God's side,

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and sail down to the library.

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Down through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass

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and sashay over to the
dictionary to look up spank.

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Dipping two fingers into
the vat of library paste,

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to suck that minty
mucilage while I

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came to the page with the
cocker spaniel's silks

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curling up like the
fine steam of the body.

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After spank and breast, I'd
move on to Abe Lincoln and Helen

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Keller, lost in goodness till
the bell, all thanks to Mrs.

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Krikorian, amiable giantess
with the dark eyes.

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Next, she asked me to write a
Christmas play and direct it.

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And when it was imperfect
and I hid in the closet,

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came up to me in the coaty,
rubbery dark and held out

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a tiny cane of scarlet
and milk white peppermint,

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as you lay a candy on the
tongue of a child and the worm

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will come up out of
the bowel to get it.

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And so I was emptied
of Lucifer and filled

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with school glue and
eros and Amelia Earhart,

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saved by Mrs. Krikorian.

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Today for the first time, I saw
Mrs. Krikorian was Armenian.

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And then who saved
Mrs. Krikorian?

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When the Turks came
across the fields

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like a thresher
flailing its blades,

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who slid her into the
slick belly of a quilt?

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Who locked her in a chest?

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Who mailed her to America?

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And that one, who saved
her when the Turks came

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with their thumpers,
their rat hunt clubs?

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And that one, who
saved her to save

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the one who saved Mrs.
Krikorian, who was standing

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there on the soil of sixth
grade like a wide-hipped angel

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or of smoking hair standing up
lightly all around her head?

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I end up owing my soul to so
many, to the Armenian nation.

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One more soul someone jammed
behind a stove, drove deep

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into the crack of a
wall, shoved under a bed.

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I remember lying there
under the bed in the dusk.

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The dustballs at my head
and feet round and silver,

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shining slightly with the eerie
sweetness of what is neither

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good nor evil. " I hope that
poem finds her, some time,

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some way.

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When I have finished in
sixth grade I would--

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it's a message in a
bottle to her anyway.

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It's a thing which-- a thanks.

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OK.

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Yeah.

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