One Freak Out Monster at a Time

It’s time for round two, my sophomore year at work. It’s hammer time.

This past summer was as long as it was short as it was surreal. I married a wonderfully imperfect woman in August, and then we sailed on a cruise to the Caribbean. Not in June or July or the first week of August when the wedding planning was ordered chaos nor now that we are settled into our apartment together a week from day one, year two of my teaching career did I – in all honesty – ever give a thought to planning for the 2007-2008 school year. Make of that what you will.

Hiding behind a pseudonym like Mr. History – forgetting just exactly how stupid a moniker it really is – didn’t at all tempt me to lie and claim that what I would be doing with my students this coming year was foremost on my mind. It wasn’t. Limos, photographers, groomsmen, bridesmaids, rehearsal dinners, DJs, motel reservations, candelabras, Pastors, tuxedos, little ring bearer type children and attempting to wrap my head around two equally distinct concepts – “forever” and “in-laws” – were overwhelming enough to easily instruct my subconscious to relax in the vast abyss of images of my first year’s plans tucked away in folders in my room. Good, bad or indifferent, and, again, make of it what you will, I have politely asked my personal freak out because there’s too much to think about monster to shuffle the new school year anxiety to the basement as he dealt with the my goodness I’m getting married anxiety on the ground floor for quite some time. And trust me, I have thanked him profusely for doing so aloud and otherwise a few times.

Years ago the Yankees used to win by playing station to station ball, one single, walk or sacrifice fly at a time, one base at a time. It was only after they started swinging for the three run homer in the big spot in the past six years or so that they have failed to win the big one. Station to station. That sounds good to me. One freak out monster at a time, please.

And now with a week left, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas plays on one television in our apartment just inches from this computer keyboard I tip and tap on, and inside the bedroom my new, beautiful, amazing wife has escaped the frenzy out here halfway through my selection for an impromptu appointment with E.T. Opposites attract, or so they say. And I suppose, just like in Fear and Loathing, where Hunter S. Thompson ignores his writing assignment in order to bask in his fog, so do I look at the calendar and laugh and cry and laugh a little too. OK, so not a real cry. And not a real laugh either.

But, nonetheless, I have a week to orchestrate a plan for this year, and I have nothing. So whatever combination of emotion and behavior that is, then that’s what I mean to express. I am in a kind of fog too, I suppose, albeit a completely different kind than Hunter S.

I suppose I should be concerned, but I am not.

I imagine some readers will understand. And I imagine others will cringe perhaps at my naiveté – listen, dude, you need to do at least some work. Whatever the case is, I know this much: if I don’t budget these next seven to ten days appropriately, I will find out the exact consequences of not being prepared for year two soon enough. Trial by fire.

I am told, however – lucky me – that as a correctional educator (one who works with incarcerated at-risk males) my curriculum is not as rigorous; the standards are lower. I am told that if I stay too long at this position, and that if I ever want to work on the proverbial outside, I may have a hard time getting hired. The reputation of a lifer in the correctional education system is that he has chosen to stay so long in order to avoid the rigor and responsibility of the so-called real teaching gig. I am told not to stay too long. I am told I am lucky.

And as I type this, I plead with you the reader to accept my genuine confession that my biggest fear this fourth week in August, 2007, just a few weeks into my marriage and a week before my sophomore year begins, is that I may have made summer planning a higher priority if I wasn’t working with incarcerated youth. Please, don’t take such a confession lightly. It wasn’t until I just typed it now that I admitted this fear to even myself.

[Editor’s note: Mr. History is the pseudonym for a teacher of court-involved youth in Queens who is starting a second year of teaching.]

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