A Painful Monday and a Memorable Sunday

Okay, a couple of posts back I said I would likely be volunteering for another curriculum writing project later this summer. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. A couple things made up my mind for me today, at least one of them very weird, so it wasn't a tough decision to arrive at. And I feel liberated about it to be honest. It makes the end of this week all the sweeter. And ending this week will be sweet enough as it is, because today was brutal. It was good to get The Band back together for a brief reunion tour, but we quickly found out this will be the last time since one of us is, shall we say, moving on. Unfortunate, because the four of us have a chemistry that just works and wouldn't be easy to replicate. But even being inside of that doesn't drain the suck out of the day, and I'm ready to be done right now. I haven't seen a clock move as slowly as it did today since winter of 1987 during my 8:00 A.M. Philosophy general ed. class. I can't wait until Friday's work is over.

On the subject of my younger days, I'll spin this right into another Album of the Day, "Busted" by Cheap Trick. Mostly an album full of late 80s innocuously melodic pop rock, but back then it really clicked for me. This was one the cassettes I kept in my car the summer it came out, back when I drove an '83 Colt. It didn't have an operating cassette player and the radio lost reception whenever I made a left turn, so I kept a cheap little drugstore boom box in the passenger seat for my music.

That was a great summer. I stayed up in SC to work and take classes instead of moving home, and my roommate spent so much time at his girlfriend's I commonly forgot his name. I had class in the morning, worked in the afternoons, and had the evenings to myself: seeing movies, digging through the cassette discount bins at Best Buy for new discoveries, riding my 10-speed around the neighborhood and through campus, going out with friends... good times.

"Busted" didn't really have any hits on it, but most of the music I have isn't so much about hits, which probably helps me personalize it. Looking back on this album now, about 20 years after the fact, it seems to be little more than a collection of lyrical clichés that have been chained together and assigned a title, but back then it was great music to listen to with the windows rolled down.

And another thing that still ties in with my college days? That was the summer two years previous to my graduation, when I was getting very close to actually becoming a teacher. On Sunday I had one of those experiences that most teachers would be happy to have. If I'd known back then that things like this would be in my future, I most certainly would have looked forward to them.

The thing about education, particularly elementary, is you can work you butt off at what you do and you almost never find out if your efforts have paid off. The kids get older, move on to other schools, and in most cases you never see or hear from them again. But this year I got an invite in the mail from Lacey, a girl who was graduating this year who had been in my class seven years ago, and she wanted me to come to her open house. Well, seven years out and you're still remembered? You HAVE to go. It just doesn't happen that often. I showed up toward the early end of the open house times and parked about half a block away. She saw me coming and kind of smiled while talking to other recent arrivals. Then her mom saw me and just gasped in surprise, then announced to Lacey, all of the other guests and a good portion of the neighborhood that I was there. I got plenty of hugs and was introduced around to the aunts and uncles and grandparents, several of whom seemed to know who I was. It seems I made the invitation list because I was her all-time favorite teacher, and was someone they'd all heard a lot about over the years.

We talked about her plans a while then she had to go meet up with other guests, so I talked with her parents and wandered a bit until I met up with her grandpa. If you are ever at a graduation open house and are looking for someone to talk to, here's what you do: (1) Find the grandpa. (2) Casually mention something the two of you have in common, regardless of how insignificant it might be. These two steps will guarantee you at least an hour of conversation.

A couple other families I knew showed up, and after talking to them long enough to make sure they knew I wasn’t leaving to make an escape, I started to make my exit. I said goodbye to the mom and dad who were so appreciative about my coming it felt more like I had donated a kidney to their daughter instead of just being her teacher. There was more humbling talk about how I was the favorite and had been one of the first people to make the list of invitees. It was all kind of overwhelming but it felt good. I hugged her one last goodbye, told her I was proud of what she’d done and felt her choke up a little.

A day like that makes you want to try to be the person that people like this already think you are.