As a teacher the year begins weeks before I ever see a student. They begin to creep into my consciousness in August. It begins with bulletin boards usually. I find myself on the patio sipping iced tea or on the hammock reading a book when suddenly the thought of color schemes and clever headers seems to overtake my train of thought. The dreams begin soon after, usually I dream they’ve removed the numbers from the rooms and I am wandering aimlessly down the hall worried because I’m going to be late. I begin to think again about the travels of Odysseus, about what I’d have done in Hamlet’s shoes. I find myself turning toward the fall in much the same way I turned in May toward summer. Why is that?
Why do so many of us turn away from what is happening now and move, at least mentally, into the impending future? I do this in my writing too. When my son was 8 or 9 I wrote poems about him as a teen. I envisioned I am up to my ears in planning. him full of angst and struggling with racial identity long before either of those things crossed his mind. I suppose I thought if I envisioned the future I would be prepared for whatever was coming.
My mother will tell you that worrying is a weakness of mine, that I need to box things up. Every year my parents buy me a calendar about how to handle ‘worst case scenarios’ because they know there is something in me, and I believe many others, that fears being caught off guard. The gift is made partially in jest and partially because they know that I will find comfort in knowing how to wrestle an alligator or survive an avalanche, that for someone who is a natural worrier, escape plans are essential.
Next week, I will meet over one hundred teenagers for the first time face to face but in truth I have been preparing for them for weeks now. I expect the shy girl who seems almost pained to speak, the ‘look at me’ kids whose hands are always in the air, the ‘way-too-cool’ kids who wear indifference like a shield, and all the others who I have tried so hard to prepare for. But like the so many times before, they will not be what I expect. They will be better and worse and different, like all the other things I’ve prepared myself for.
And life was so simple when it simply meant keeping you from watching that racy MTV
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