One Man in His Time

If you press your lips tightly against a door window, such as one that might look directly in to a classroom as students sit, and then blow as hard as you can, your lips and mouth spread out marvelously and reveal the oral cavity in such a sweet, indignant scene.  It looks like you’re trying to sing in a one hundred and ten mile an hour wind. Or I’ve also heard that it looks like the inside of a horse’s mouth.  Of course the longer and harder the blow, the more one can exhibit.  This is all hypothetical of course, and not something I recommend you do unless your personal dignity is as immune as mine.  Whoopsie there, it almost sounds as if I’m the wretch who dreams this up!  Heavens to Betsy, you don’t want to be mistaking me for that jack ass, no sir.

It’s actually a fun thing to do on another teacher’s classroom door.  But make sure it isn’t a math teacher first.  They won’t get it.  Actually, a number of teachers might not get it, but you certainly have less chance with a math teacher I can tell you that from the start.  Marjie Tibbits was the best.  She taught language arts and social studies and she laughed so hard I thought she was going to have an aneurism.  She was bent over at the waist with her hands on her knees and not breathing properly, but she was just catching her breath for the next explosion of the giggles.

It’s a sad thing for a teacher to say that he enjoys making fun of himself for the sake of the other teachers more than he likes to teach students but it’s true.  I would never have lasted as long as I have if I didn’t.  But I have to be honest.  If I hadn’t spent so much time around the immaturity of middle school students I’m not sure I would have become immature enough myself to create these zany ideas that make adults laugh.  It’s scary when I wonder what I would have become if I had chosen to be an air traffic controller.  “Hey Charlie, lookie what I can do with my nostrils on this radar screen!” Nonetheless, I discovered I can make some people laugh with an adult twist on adolescent humor.  Not really meaning to, but expressing myself helps me survive.

I heard an interview with someone one time.  He was an integral and persuasive pillar of our civilization.  One, without whom, our culture couldn’t progress, and who possessed other qualities that pretty much eliminates us teachers as being even remotely critical to society.  He was a professional athlete.  But forget that for a moment, or longer if you wish.  He told the interviewer that his number one priority in his working day was to make himself happy first, and everything else that matters took care of itself from there.  I understand this because I think this is what I am doing.  Actually, I don’t know for sure what I’m doing.  I think I’m just operating on instinct and there has been very little thought into the matter.

I read somewhere that when a person is crawling along in the desert, desperate for water, that the brain becomes aware of the danger and it begins to suck water up from the body to protect itself.  It is going to make darn sure that it is the last thing to go. It is a beautiful defense mechanism.  This is similar to how I survive my day at school except that preserving my brain has nothing to do with it, although it should.  In fact, preserving my sanity has nothing to do with it either.  You’d think that anything I would do out of self-preservation would defend at least some of my sanity.  One would think that the total opposite would be true for teachers but it’s not with me.  I don’t mind living on the edge of educational sanity for some reason.  Maybe it’s because that in the end, I know I don’t matter.  At least as a school teacher.