May 8, 2012
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1 Nice to return to the land of the living.
2 Interestingly, after closing night of Grease, I awoke Sunday morning, put on my straw cowboy hat, and took to gardening.
3 If I’ve learned anything about doing shows over the years, it’s to put a show behind you as quickly as possible.
4 That’s always fairly easy, except for the seniors.
5 That has always been my Achilles’ heel.
6 It’s tough to watch, but it’s also a pleasure knowing they will go out there and make things better in the world. History has proven this to me, time and again.
7 I teach seniors, two classes.
8 Nobody understands them, ever.
9 Parents forget what it was like, and teachers get annoyed by them.
10 Senior year in high school is wid.
11 Make no mistake.
12 I had a lot of these guys in their freshman and sophomore years.
13 The time flies ridiculously fast.
14 It’s almost like watching some science fiction film.
15 The rest of the school is living in what they think is real time, including many of the teachers and staff.
16 The seniors are in their own world, a bizarre spaceship of headed to a strange new world, childhood’s end. The hang on to one another for dear life.
17 I’m glad that I finally got to teach seniors again. They need someone who understands just how bizarre that point in a person’s life is.
18 Some teachers get completely annoyed by what has come down through the ages as “Senioritis.”
19 The symptoms of Senioritis are these: they seem to get more short-tempered, distanced, and annoyed by school. They get angry and short with nearly everybody.
20 After prom, they are “checked-out,” whatever that means.
21 What people don’t realize is that they are scared to death.
22 All they have known their entire lives is the security of being young, and of having friends who are always there. If their lives are stable, there is a lifelong consistency. If their lives are unstable, there is still a consistency. They are afraid.
23 Many are terrified that their world is quite soon going to explode on them.
24 Many more know that come late August or early September, they are going to see all of their friends go separate ways. Many are going to pack and go live in some strange city where they know nobody.
25 Many will stay local, but it will never be the same.
26 I guess that’s what happens.
27 I wouldn’t know.
28 I’m somehow still in high school!
29 It’s funny, because when I was a senior, I asked myself what I would like to do for a living.
30 I got into a cadet teacher program at school, and taught a drama class in the summer, along with my friend, Charlie Caudill. We directed a play with a youth group.
31 It was a bit of a disaster, because our leading kid got the butterflies on show night, and had to keep dashing to the bathroom to ease his nervousness. We eventually put a spittoon behind a stage couch for the guy, but he never did make it.
32 We had to close the show, but everybody understood. The kids had worked hard, but we were young, and didn’t quite know how to handle it.
33 That was my real first show, the one I never cop to.
34 Most of it worked; the rehearsals, the laughs, all of it pretty normal until we opened.
35 Our master teacher had lost a boyfriend in the war, and was unable to guide us to the end. But we held it together as much as we could, but that poor kid just couldn’t handle the pressure of being a lead.
36 Interestingly, because everybody was so young, the kids, and the families enjoyed a cast party anyway, because they were all ready to perform, and had nailed the show at rehearsals.
37 We never saw it as a failure, just a life lesson.
38 I knew way back then that I wanted to teach for a living.
39 That was my entire focus all through college. I figured that I knew nothing about normal life, and that I practically had a Ph.D, since that’s all we learn in school: how to be a student.
40 I had no idea what a Ph.D was anyway. I thought it stood for “post hole digger.”
41 They taught us nothing about money, buying houses, raising kids, working, changing diapers, etc. Why would they teach that stuff in high school when we could be learning about calculus, world history, life science, etc.?
41 1/2
42 I’m still not really sure what high school is all about.
43 I’m guessing it is to make us well-rounded individuals, and for us to have training in every possible thing life could offer us.
44 I just wish I could have used math for more than simply subtraction, which is really what I use the majority of math for. I had this much money, and now I have this much money.
???????
45 I wish they had taught me how to change a diaper, or how to repair a tear in a couch.
46 I mean, I’m glad I’m a pseudo-intellectual and all, and that I can understand the sweeping poetry of a line in a Shakespeare play, but all that and a dollar won’t buy me a bag of chips.
47 Swingin’.
48 Ah, vell.
49 Who am I to criticize?
50 I just watch the seniors clinging to one another for dear life these days.
51 In many respects, I can see why.
52 They are about to get yanked out of their lives in the next two weeks, taken out to the football field to practice for graduation, and be told where to stand, how to act, etc.
53 It’s the ritual. Every year, it’s the ritual.
54 It simply must be this way.
55 They’ll get through it.
56 Somehow, we all do. It’s a modern rite of passage.
57 I’m glad, in a way, that I never had to leave school. I see it all for what it is. I get an interesting perspective on life.
58 I am grateful that I have a job that is so fun, and that allows me to go through this strange stuff each year. And somehow, they all get an education. It’s just wid.
59 I think I’ll bow out now.
60 Lots left to do.
61 Lots left to think about.
62 It’s Tuesday.
63 Fly low.
64 And seniors, we really do salute you.
65 Peace.
~H~
