Several years back, someone set up a Secret Santa gift exchange for anyone on our school staff who wanted to participate. I signed up, because I’m fun like that. It was meant to be an enjoyable little distraction, and for the most part that’s all it really was. I don’t even remember who I had for a Secret Santa, but to be fair I don’t remember anyone I’ve ever had for Secret Santas or Bunnies or Pumpkins or any other holiday-themed derivations of $10-or-less gift exchange activities from my career. I do remember the last day of this particular year though, because on the very last day before winter break when we were scheduled to reveal our hidden identities, this was mounted on the wall in the staff lounge:
Many people told me about it before I saw it for myself. Our staff has never exactly been wacky by any stretch, but we haven’t been immune to occasional pranks over the years, either (something our current media specialist would likely attest to following events of the past two weeks). I figured it might have to do with Secret Santa, and it did: Our lead secretary at the time had drawn my name and put it up early in the morning since she had to be at her desk when the actual exchange was happening.
I decided to play along and left it up throughout the day, feeling certain there’d be a lot of people who would walk in, see that and immediately think, “Oh, for what the hell. He is? Really? REALLY?! Arrogant little chucklehead probably put that up himself....” Or along those lines. The message did not remain intact, with one of two other people making edits to it throughout the day, which thankfully I never had to see since my schedule that year didn’t allow for a lot of lounge time.
It was nearly the end of the day when I had a chance to go down and see it. At the time I fully intended to peel the letters from the wall and take it down since I thought we’d all been subjected to the message long enough, but at the last moment I was hit with inspiration to make my own edit. I didn’t want to change it to something so cutting that it would be seen as an insult, so people would be shocked to read it and think I had some dark and disturbed nemesis hiding on the staff (I actually do have one of those, but that’s a different story), but just a tweak that would downplay the original intent. So I changed it to this:
I took a picture of it and quickly exited the room. It got some good laughs before I took it all down after school, and the whole thing probably would have died there if I hadn’t used that picture as a Facebook cover photo. Several times. Any time I would dig it out again it would get a few likes for as long as I would leave it up, which was never more than a few weeks at a time. This spring though, it seemed to catch on for some reason, to the point that it’s fair to say that “adequate” turned out to be my word of the month. It came up in a lot of my birthday wishes. It was part of an inscription of sorts that I received in being recognized for either 29 or 30 (29 really) years of an adequate teaching career. It was the word that kind of floated around me in some kind of ethereal on-deck circle, just waiting to jump into the minds of anyone talking to me when the opportunity came up to once again throw back to the ongoing “adequate” gag.
Really, I don’t think adequate is such a bad thing. I looked it up in the bare-bones, but adequate, thesaurus app built in to my laptop to see what synonyms were listed: Sufficient. Acceptable. Reasonable. Decent. Quite good. Ordinary. Capable. Suitable. None of these are all that bad. Of course, we also get words like unremarkable and unexceptional, but I don’t know if those are necessarily bad things. How could you truly recognize something as being exceptional if it was like that all the time? The standard would change.
Like just about every other teacher in the world, especially the ones who have invested far too many years of their life into the profession, I’ve had my exceptional moments. I have my strengths, but I also have my weaknesses and failings. We all do. I think for most of us, we should feel lucky if the sum of our parts allows us to reach the end of the school year feeling capable after what we did, with reasonable accomplishments to show for our efforts.
I think adequacy can also apply the same way to life in general. After all, would you want every meal you ever eat in your life to be exceptional? Could you call every book you read exceptional or remarkable if there weren’t a few you came across that just weren’t very good? If the weather of each day was beautiful like it is today, you’d learn to expect things to be that way, and would only notice the differences when it didn’t measure up.
Freddie and I were just out for a walk because it’s such a nice day. A lot of the time I don’t think to notice the weather unless I'm avoiding how unpleasant it is, but today really is an exceptional spring day. While we were out walking, we stepped off the path for a bit to talk with one of my neighbors, who was sitting on his patio under a huge patio-sized umbrella, enjoying the day and working through a book of crossword puzzles. That could have been everything he needed to have an exceptional afternoon, even if it sounds fairly boring, or adequate, to a lot of other people. There he was though, comfortably relaxing, doing something he enjoyed, taking in a nice day without any immediate cares in the world. That seems like the kind of day most of us would aspire to have.
I absolutely believe it’s fair to describe my life as adequate. I think it’d be difficult to come up with anything about it I’d go as far as describing as exceptional. Sure, there are times when a little more exceptional would be appreciated, but a lack of that shouldn’t necessarily detract from what my life is. Speaking as someone with an adequate and unremarkable life, I think of fair descriptor of how I feel about it would be, for the most part, content.
I’ll admit though, sometimes a few more aspects, or even moments, of the exceptional wouldn’t be unwelcome. I have to say, the closer we get to that last day of school and that first day of summer break, especially coming off of The Dreaded Covid Year When Everything Sucked So Much, it feels like any direction I’m even casually thinking about pursuing this year will somehow work toward encountering some of those exceptional moments. Maybe a few moments would be enough. Or maybe I’ll end up redefining what I think of as content, and adequate won’t seem to be enough anymore.
Or maybe adequate will be the highest level I’m able to reach. And if that proves to be the case, well, things could be much worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment