One of the first things my roommate Ann told me about herself was that she would be absolutely suicidal if she didn't get married by 30.
She was 29.
And a kindergarten teacher with and ass like a life raft and the most bizarre family that kept showing up in my home. I was a mondo slob, I'll admit, but I kept the mess totally restricted to my room. If I was gone on the weekend (and I tried like hell to be) and Ann had folks over, she'd take them on guided tours of my room.
On Hallowe'en she picked up some guy in a bar. He proposed over Thanksgiving. They got married in June, so she didn't have to kill herself after all, which, after enduring 7 months solid of wedding planning mostly carried out at full volume with her toad of a mother in my dining room, I felt was a shame. We don't stay in touch.
Meanwhile, Gaston County, recently ranked as fourth in the nation for per capita murders, was providing me with an education. Fall semester I taught mornings at a rural high school. Spring semester I taught mornings at a swanky suburban middle school. Throughout the year I spent my afternoons at Arlington Elementary -- the inner city nightmare.
Try to keep in mind that this is an elementary school I'm talking about as I give you a sampling of some of the problems: brother/sister incest, death from huffing kerosene, mother of a fifth grader younger than me (I was 23), the school locked down as two parents run around the grounds with guns trying to shoot each other and the math tutor was on crack yet nobody could manage to fire her. The deep, existential challenge there was: Good God, Almighty, what do these kids need to learn
French for? Believe it or not, I actually did some good work there.
This is what I learned: I couldn't teach high school at that time -- there were boys in my class the same age (19) as the last guy I had dated. I couldn't teach elementary school -- I'm very anti-hugging and I tend to find it funny when small children cry. But middle school seemed to be juuuuuuust right.
Better than that quality insight, however, was the discovery of my new best friend, Anna, a 5th grade teacher at Arlington struggling through her first year as well. Not only did she provide me temporary respite from Ann throughout the year, but we became roommates as soon as Ann ditched me for a trailer in Alabama with her new groom (SO not kidding) and Anna's family adopted me for holidays as well.
Not only that, she's a hell of a role model as a teacher as well. I cite, among her many accomplishments, the fact that, during her second year of teaching at Arlington, when that craphole had been Taken Over By The State, and 60% of the teachers had been run out the door before Christmas, she not only was left alone, she was recognized for doing things right. Later, when she had moved on to a well-deserved nice school in Raleigh, she was one of the youngest teachers ever to get a student teacher, last year she got her National Board Certification and a teacher of the year award from the local Chamber of Commerce, and this year she's teacher of the year for her school, which puts her in the running for the district title, and so on.
And she's got this GLARE on her that you would not believe. Juvenile delinquents turn to dust and learn how to read in it's uncompromising beam.
Anyway, expect her to be mentioned again. At the end of my very trying year in a very depressing town (I refused to leave the house after dark, and I've walked through Paris at midnight by myself) I was thanked for all my inconsistent work by not having my contract renewed. Fortunately Anna, ever the lifesaver, had me hooked up with a new job.
Selling shoes.
For a long time I was convinced that the stupidest thing I ever did was graduate from college.
After graduation, I went to work as a camp counselor at a church conference center. Meanwhile, I had sent out a good dozen job applications to school districts around the state.
A private school in Fayetteville invited me up for an interview. They paid for a motel room and wined and dined me and promised me the job. I got back to the conference center relaxed and pleased to know that I had my future well squared away.
Two weeks later, they were kind enough to contact me and let me know they’d given the job to someone else.
I got one other interview the rest of that summer. I showed up hung over and sporting endless fake tattoos. I think it’s fair to say I wasn’t fully committed to the process.
Self-destructive behavior was a general theme that summer. I’m fairly sure I couldn’t look anybody I knew during that time in the eye. There was a lot of booze and nudity, if you want me to paint you a picture.
By the end of the summer, I was packed and ready to drive to Denver to live with my aunt who was going through a divorce and needed help with her kids. The evening before I was planning on leaving, my mom called: Gaston County needed a French teacher so bad they were willing to hire me on the spot.
The guy who was planning to ride along with me as far as Louisiana got the short end of the stick on that one. I put him on a plane and went back down towards Charlotte. School had already started in Gaston County, but they were willing to give me a week to get my feet under me before I had to report to work.
At one apartment complex I especially liked, but totally couldn’t afford, I was told there was another late-hire teacher who needed a roommate. I got in touch with her, and the Year From Hell Began.
The unfortunate thing about enjoying a high as elevated as a year abroad in the South of France, is that the corresponding low is pretty far down there. My senior year in college, which included my teaching internship and my French thesis, sucked balls, for me and anyone foolish enough to get near me. Honestly, I was mental.
My college’s education department was two whole professors strong. One, the redoubtable Dr. Mitchell, who had called my parents while I was in France and set this career track in motion (I describe her as the woman whose fault it is that I’m in education), was unflagging in her wholesale support of me. The other, and I’ll be nice and not name her, called ‘em as she saw ‘em and could only see the human train wreck I was during that time, and was as unenthusiastic about my career prospects as Dr. Mitchell was enthusiastic.
That was fun.
But the person I pity the most was my master teacher, under whom I did the actual student teaching. Even today, nine years after her retirement and three years after her far-too-early passing, folks in the district who knew her get misty eyed when one mentions her name. Not only was she an excellent teacher, but she was the soul of kindness and thoughtfulness and did as much for the adults she worked with as for the kids.
I must have driven her crazy. I was consistently unprepared, prone to bursting into tears at any criticism, and liable to blush whenever I had to speak to one student in particular who was really, really cute. I also never dressed appropriately and probably was argumentative.
I have a tendency to want to reinvent the wheel on a daily basis, which, for a teacher means, coming up with super-elaborate, extensive plans that require endless work in the execution. It’s cool if you’re experienced, organized and efficient, but it’s a recipe for disaster when you are, as I was, none of these things. I’d come in with all of these fancy ideas, but none of the understanding to see their flaws nor the energy to execute them, and my master teacher would do her best to talk me out of it.
Anyway, it wasn’t a fun time for anybody (probably least of all the students). Later, when I was applying for jobs, a letter of recommendation I had requested from the Professor Who Was Not Dr. Mitchell fell into my hands (as it were) and was remarkably unflattering (which you’re not supposed to do, if I understand the protocol, nay, the legality of letters of recommendation, but that’s okay). And then it was no longer such a mystery as to why nobody would hire me.
Clearly, I was destined for greatness.
My career in teaching officially began in a phone booth at Vert Bois dormitory at the Universite Paul Valery in
Montpellier, France.
The hefty rent of fifty bucks a month got me a bidet and weekly maid service (which, since it entailed the maid invariably dragging out all the luggage stored under my bed and depositing it in my unmade bed in a declaration of cultural disparity, I usually opted out of) but it did not get me a phone. Bi-weekly chats with the ‘rents entailed careful timing, expensive phone cards, and this plexiglass cubicle outside the laundry room.
I had become a French major for the sole purpose of spending a year abroad in France. To appease the nice people paying my tuition, I had mumbled some bullshit about wanting to teach, but really, my ambitions ended at a small bar on Place Juan-Juares, where I could read novels all morning and drink café au lait, while sneaking admiring glances at Jerome, the hot French waiter.
The mistake I had made was taking an education class with Dr. Grace Mitchell the year before. Apparently I had somehow caught her attention and she actually called my parents and told them to make me enroll in the intensive certification program when I got home, so that I could graduate with a teaching certificate.
I heard about this for the first time in the plexiglass phone booth. Cigarette dangling from my lips, a whiskey-and-hash hangover pulling my eyes closed against the glare of the Midi sun, I listened in shock as the nice people who paid my tuition disabused me of my fantasy of staying a student for the rest of my natural born life. I would enroll in the certification program, I would graduate on time, I would get a job and move on with my life, because the gravy train was scheduled to stop in June of ’96 and cigarettes and whiskey did not pay for themselves.
It’s a good thing I had such a fantastic time in France. I dyed my hair weird colors, never went to class, went to cool indy movies (I saw Clerks and Shallow Grave ages before you did), rode shaggy horses on the beach, ate incredible food – even at McDonalds, had an enlightening love affair with a Jewish comedian and bought some really sweet boots in Barcelona. It was the last fun I was going to have for a long time.
