Traffic jams don’t really bother me. Neither do long lines in Wal-Mart or the grocery store. I don’t get stressed when it takes me ages to get my food in a restaurant.
I’m generally pretty patient. Hello. I work with nine year olds. I have to be.
Truth be told, I can only think of two things that really try me. The opposite sex. (No surprise there) And as of late, the incredible mood swings of the internet here in the coffee region. Come to think of it the opposite sex is rather temperamental, too, huh?
Moving on.
I’ve drafted approximately seventeen blog posts, 58 emails and 73 facebook messages (read: I never exaggerate) in the last week only to have them lost somewhere in cybersphere when the internet goes haywire. I’ve started 62 skype chats and gmail chats and phone conversations and had them cut off mid important sentence.
People are going to think I’m mad at them or ignoring them or that my life has gotten too boring to discuss. And it hasn’t! I’m here! I’m fun! I’ve got stories to tell and the internet just. won’t. let. me. do. it!
And I didn’t even mention the number of episodes of Friday Night Lights I haven’t been able to watch via Surf the Channel! Friends, the Dillon Panthers need me to help them pull this state bid off. Oh, and poor Jason Street! That fine young man is in serious need of my wise relational counsel.
Oh, ye internet, how I loathe thee! At least for today. Maybe tomorrow we can be friends again. You know, like, if you get your act together and function properly.
It’s my job and I’m crazy about it. It’s hard and I’m exhausted at the end of every day, but it’s fun. It’s an adventure and it gives me all sorts of things to write about and think about and read about.
Truthfully, sometimes I feel like the dark horse. My classroom is different from a lot of others I’ve seen. At any given time we might sound like farm animals or look like the aftermath of some nuclear disaster. We’re messy and loud and I know that our neighbors wish we’d give it a rest every once in a while.
But we can’t. I can’t.
That’s not the way I work and it’s not how my kids learn.
They need the hubbub as much as I do. Because when it’s loud they’re involved. They’re asking questions and putting things together and writing plays or playing in the dirt and talking about worms. They’re doing things, exploring things, learning things and that’s what matters.
I’m not the best that there is at my job; I know that. And that knowledge, I think, gives me an advantage. See, I’m learning, too. I’m looking up to people like Dr. Mims, Ron Clark, Rafe Esquith and Daniel Robb. And their stories are helping me to become a better teacher.
As nerdy as it sounds, I get excited when I read about good teachers and creative teaching. It makes me want to work harder and do more and come up with new ideas and innovations for my classroom. And I get even more thrills when I see kids getting excited about what they’re doing. This video gave me chills and a few chuckles today. And it added a thing or two to my list o’ dreams.
You know, like teaching at the Ron Clark Academy. And on a boat. And at a Prep school. And in a one room school that still uses chalk. And at an all boys school. And at a university. And at a charter school.
My brother works entirely too hard. He’s successful and good with finances and long term planning. He can fit in at a dinner with more forks than he needs and he’s right at home with a bunch of small town rednecks talking about hunting season or cleaning fish.
He’s versatile like that.
Brother reads this here blog every once in a while. When he’s got a layover or some free time (which is rare), he’ll sit down and catch up on posts.
He called me today and asked about Lauren’s “SO inappropriate!!” comment that was in reference to the he-thinks-he’s-subtle Casanova. Let it be stated that the girls and I don’t doubt for a second who left that shadiness in the comments section.
Moving on.
He and I laughed for a bit about the humor of the not so mysterious Casanova and then he asked how I’d been. “Tired,” I said, “really tired.”
“Really? How can you be tired? You’re a school teacher.”
Ahem.
Bet you his IRA that he’s never been in an elementary building on Halloween.
I was just a kid when I started college. I’d never been away from home and I had no idea how the world worked outside of a 50 mile radius of that house on a hill in Nowhere, MS. But, even so, I was a dreamer. I guess I always have been I just hadn’t put it down on paper yet.
Then I went off to school and met the girls that changed my idea of friendship forever. Girls that taught me about loving unconditionally and how loyalty fights better and stronger than any heavy weight champ on the planet. Girls that took me dancing, kept me up late, and blessed me with the knowledge of good naps and box fans. Girls that challenged my ideals and graciously helped me to put on the freshmen fifteen (or forty).
Lauren taught me about work ethic and how sometimes you have to be by yourself to get things done. She swam with me before the sun came up and she left notes on my door and books on my bed and every once in a while she’d play the piano for me and I think I knew then that there really was a Somewhere over the rainbow.
Ann was always the one with the spunk begging me to go out, to see people, to do things that were out of my realm of comfort and to wear mascara while I did them. She made me stand up for myself and believe in myself and when I was lying at rock bottom, she was standing over me in a pink and leopard print halter top telling the psycho that left me there to back up or die.
And then there was Kathryn. Sweet Kathryn who kept me grounded and sane and laughing at imaginary kittens and the new girlfriends of old boyfriends. She wrote notes to me during chapter meetings and was marching right behind me when I figured out that I wasn’t made for the sorority life. And when I came home from Australia and said I was moving to Oxford because I wasn’t strong enough to go back to Starkville, she said, “Then I’m coming, too.”
I don’t remember exactly when I started writing down the list, but I know I did it because of them.
Maybe it was in a dorm room on the sixth floor of Rice or maybe it was when we were making folders for all of our travel plans. Or it could have been when we went on that scandalous trip to the beach. Or one night in that purple Accord with its windows down. Or in Granny and Pop Pop’s house on a long weekend. On top bunks and futons or in the midst of The Intervention. At the reservoir eating sticky buns. In Derek and Craig’s living room floor. Over bread pudding at Oby’s.
So, here’s what I wrote down on some random day when I was 18 or so. A list of all the things I wanted to do before I turned 30. My little List o’ Dreams.
Once upon a time long, long ago and far, far away there was a little log cabin on a street in a small, small town. And inside the cabin was a girl whose heart beat heavily within her. It beat for peoples unknown and places unseen and stories untold and the sound of the beating grew ever louder.
So at last the young girl shed tears and said goodbyes and left the comfort of the cabin and her home. She carried her dreams and her insecurities in two suitcases as she braved the wide, wide world alone. The young one saw explosions of color in foreign sunsets and heard symphonies in the night and she was glad that she was gone.
But every once and again, she longed for the smell of those log walls in the small town that she had left behind. And she thought of the way that the sky opened up and shone its light on a green tin roof in the first days of fall.
And the young girl promised that if she ever made it home again she would live there happily ever after.
“Did you have a good sleep?” he’d ask me every morning and my answer was always the same. “Yes, sir.”
My last day working at Port Hacking, Atto told me he’d miss being called Sir and to this day if I answer my mom with a “yes” there’s a “yes, what?” that comes quickly on its heels. But that’s fair, she still says “yes, ma’am” to her mother as well.
I guess with that upbringing it’s no surprise that I use sirs and ma’ams so often. It’s a habit that I’m pretty fond of and that I seem to pass on without realizing it.
Today I was teaching like a mad woman. We were talking about cheeseburgers and picking fights and treasure maps and pirates and long division and how they all go together. (If you’re a teacher and want to hear this little math story, let me know. It’s a gem. Har-dee-har-har.)
There was shoutin’ and screamin’ and we were all getting excited. It was a why I teach sort of moment.
In a last burst of energy I asked with heartfelt fervor, “SOOOO, should you ever ever ever EVER go looking for that quotient treasure without your treasure map, MY FRIENDCITOS???!!!”
And with that same contagious enthusiam all twenty-six of my precious Colombian children shouted out, “No ma’am!”
Because if I don’t some folks might die today and that’s just not becoming of a lady, now is it?
A list should suffice as the aforementioned deep, cleansing breath.
I cannot expect people to value my time as much as I do.
Manizales weather does NOTHING for my hair.
It’s fall in Mississippi and I’m not there.
I should learn to say no more often.
There is no Sonic Diet Coke in Colombia.
The Virus o’ Death stole my Spanish.
I could eat my weight in biscuits today and y’all, that’s a lot of biscuits.
Thank you, bloggy friends, for the diarreah of the mouth that you just allowed me. Which, I assure you, is so very much better than the diarreah o’ death of last week’s glory. Although, I did lose eight pounds.
It’s not the diet of choice, but hey, whatever works.
There’s a young man sitting on the porch of a house next to the river. His boots are standing neatly on the floor beside him, mud on their soles. His skin is dark and rich and his hair is askew. There are books scattered on the table around him each one open with pages that are tattered from constant turning. His notebook is small, but full and he writes in furious spurtrs and then rests. In the pauses his eyes turn to the water, the bosque, the jars in front of him.
I wonder what he’s writing.
She sits with one foot tucked beneath her, the other dangles in the murky water. There’s a bright blue bucket beside her heaping with laundry. Her hands move swiftly- lathering, rinsing, scrubbing - but she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. She works as though today were like every other and I am mesmerized by her leisure. Lathering, scrubbing, rinsing in the river.
I wonder what’s she’s thinking.
“I share a house with the monkeys,” she told me. Her greying hair wrapped her face in silvery light and her eyes shone with curiosity and compassion. She talked easily and lovingly about her primate companions and the twenty years she’s been among them. And then she turned and hurried toward the water. “Ya vienen!” It’s coming now, they yelled. She threw a wave and a smile in our direction and then climbed onto the boat.
November 10, 2008 
Posted in rambling 
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