Shameless Displays of Happiness

Just a thought for the week...

Friday, I went home pissed as hell. I discovered that teachers are not compensated at all for staying after school or showing up early. Despite the fact that we sign in and out everyday, as if it were a computerized time clock (which is what I thought it was), we are only payed for our time in school that occurs between 7:45 and 3:30. Now. Here's the shit kicker. I get to school at 7:30 or earlier every morning, and I leave around 4:00 every afternoon, and this is not counting how much work I do at home grading papers and other such bullshit. I don't get paid for a minute of that time. Not overtime, not comp time, not even extra sick or annual leave (of which I have none, I might add). So, an already frustrated teacher was made even more frustrated by the system. Baah. Needless to say, I started the weekend in the worst sort of mood.

Well, here's where the loveliness came in.

I got home Friday afternoon, and Reiko was working until nine or later, so I decided to go by the store and see her -- it gave me an excuse to go by the bookstore and pick up the latest Entertainment Weekly and perhaps (gasp) yet another chick lit novel (I ended up buying The Jane Austen Book Club...nifty book so far). On the way there, I got a little lost and somehow ended up cruising down Franklin Street. There were people everywhere... and there was a bluegrass band playing on the lawn of a very fancy house nearby, with tons of hippies sprawled out on the lawn with children and dogs climbing over them as if they were human jungle gyms. I thought, bitterly at first, I wish I was having that much fun. And then, I looked over to my left as the stoplight turned green, and I saw a woman walking by one of the sorority houses. She was on the sidewalk, and there was a very tall picket fence separating the lawn of the sorority house from the sidewalk, and spilling over the fence was this -- pardon the corny word -- cascade of pink roses. The woman looked to be about sixty, dressed in black, carrying bags from Food Lion and Dollar General, and would have looked pitiful if it hadn't been for what she was doing. She stopped as I passed by, set down the bags, took one of the roses in her hands and dove into it face first, just inhaling that rose smell. She had her eyes closed and just breathed in all of that rose that she possibly could. I couldn't help but think, how many people literally stop to smell the roses? That's one of those things that people tell you to do, one of those metaphorical cliches that they use all the time in movies, but how many times do you see somebody actually stopping to smell roses?

Two days later, today, actually, the Tanakas and I went to Carrboro for the Carroboro music festival, and on the way back, I saw a girl on a bicycle. Just like the woman on the sidewalk on Franklin street, I saw her for just an instant, but it stayed with me. She was pedalling along, looking very intent on her destination, until she leaned back and flung her arms out and just coasted the way down the hill with her arms out as if she was trying to hug the world. When we passed her, she even had her eyes closed, and she was smiling with the sunset on her face.

I just couldn't help but think... it isn't often that we catch somebody putting on a shameless display of happiness, much less indulge in one ourselves. I guess somebody upstairs is trying to tell me something. I keep having this mental image of God rolling eyes at me, as usual, and thinking, "Jesus, Errn. Cheer the fuck up."

Maybe I should indulge in a little shameless display of happiness.

The name's the thing

Hmmm. I don't usually post blogs or read blogs, but it's become a recent habit, so I thought I'd attempt to jump on the bandwagon; if I fall off, well...I suppose Errn the blogger just wasn't meant to be.
First thing: I hate having to choose screennames, because I feel like I can never come up with anything interesting and catchy that still somehow relates to me. I thought about just using my AIM handle, MountainMermaid8, which I like too much to change, but I realized that I am no longer a "Mountain" Mermaid (having betrayed my roots and moved down the flatlands of Chapel Hill and all) and "ExMountainMermaid" just sounds incredibly depressing. And then I remembered playing on this random name generator a few years back -- what's your pirate name-- (don't ask for the URL, 'cause I can't remember) and my pirate name was supposedly "VoodooEsmerelda." Well, it had this fun pirate/pornstar/stripper ring to it, and it was much less depressing than "ExMountainMermaid." And god knows, since I've starting censoring myself as a teacher, I've realized I need alot more pirate/pornstar/stripper elements in my life. So if you're wondering, that's why "VoodooEsmerelda."
Second thing -- I can't write a blog and NOT sound off about how much my job sucks. I have quickly discovered that I love studying literature much more than I love teaching it; I love to analyze it and read into it and tear it to pieces with my silly little brain, and in teaching, I am more or less regurgitating state-mandated interpretations of books and short stories that were lucky enough to make it into the state's "canon" of literature. Damnitall.
Here's the thing, though. I LOVE my students. They're genuinely good kids. Not just good, they're really great kids. Which surprises me, because I don't have any honors classes. My students got into this absolutely amazing debate the other day about racism after one of my students brought up the Jena Six incident. Considering that about fifty percent or more of each of my classes is black, that got interesting real quick. But in a good way. I thought seriously about having them write letters to the press and to government officials about it, to let them sound off on it and express themselves and WRITE at the same time. My dad told me that they make movies about teachers that pull crap like that; I thought of Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, all about the kindly white woman who comes in to save the black delinquents, and I wasn't quite sure what to think of myself. A little disgusted and inspired at the same time. What does that mean? These kids are NOT in any way shape or form delinquents, and most of them will go on to do good things with their lives no matter what I "inspire" them to do... so maybe they don't make movies about inspirational teachers, just the ones who's students deal drugs and carry guns in their oversized britches. Aw, hell, I've already decided to weasel my way out of this loan debt thing anyway and get my doctorate and teach women's literature at some university until I'm a pickled old hippie anyway, so who really cares if I inspire anybody at all, as long as I meet the state fucktard standards?
Last thing, and then I quit, I swear. I miss college life and Boone and the GANG like a bitch. Seriously. I miss sleeping in and skipping class, I miss being able to take the Appalcart to class and not drive my car for days at a time, I miss POTLUCK, I miss four or five people casually dropping into my apartment to get drunk and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I miss all the people -- seems like I formed the neatest little makeshift family up in those mountains, especially over the last couple of summers (you know who you are), and now I've gone and left to go and figure out what it means to be a grown-up, and I've left everybody behind. It hurts alot more than I expected it to, which is saying something, because I expected it to hurt alot. Just not this much.
Sigh....I suppose I'll live.