The Kids (in Wichita) Are Alright

It’s about engaging rather than controlling.

“You look like a Mr. Hall.”
“Yeah? What’s a Mr. Hall look like?”
“Like you’re the teacher who accidentally blows up the science room cuz you wanted to try some crazy experiment.”
“You, young paduan, have remarkably astute people-reading skills.” “What’s astute?”

There are three paths to substitute teaching. The first is simply mail things in like many of the kids. You're there. You get paid for being there. You make sure the inmates do not destroy the classroom or one another and that's about it. The second is to care. You try to teach these idiots something. You have no genuine authority and they know it (like getting a ticket from a cop who you know isn't going to follow up if you decide to toss it in the wind) so you try to control them. You give them orders. You attempt to exert an authority that does not exist.

I prefer the third option. I'm not dead inside enough for the first—if it ain't fun on some level, why am I here? The money? Nah. The second is a Sisyphean task that leaves you exhausted, demoralized, and despising the youngers because they simply did not find you more compelling than their phones. The third option is to engage. Ask them questions. Listen. Give them their assignments left by their regular teacher with the understanding that they know it's busywork and unlikely to matter. Answer their questions. Have a little bit of fun. Make the learning a two-way street. Maybe they ignore you but it is howthey ignore that makes them a Survivor-level anthropological study. You wanna understand your Trump-loving neighbor or your furious social justice bank teller? Watch the kids in high school because most adults are only marginally different. Children are who we are before we knew how to lie with skill.

"Did you ever watch Breaking Bad?"
"I did. Loved it."
"You remind me of Saul Goodman. Not, like, the actual guy but the way you talk. Real fast."

I feel a bit like the description Sebastian provides on the plane early in Fight Club:

Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends.

Each day is it's own microcosm. There is no throughline to follow as if every 24-hour period represents the beginnning and end only to be regurgitated the next day. Where am I going today? To sleep in a bed built by my mother and sister in a temporary room above my mother's bedroom. Sometimes the stairs leading up to the room seem like those twelve steps (yes, I catch the irony) are miles to the top. If this were The Matrix I'd be in the waiting room, moving spoons with my mind and... waiting. For something. For anything.

I find that when I decide to throw down some liquor I now find myself able to get angry at my ex-wife. Not the white hot Hulk rage of my younger days but thoroughly pissed at her choice to blow it all up for nothing more than paid for blowjobs and a loser boyfriend. It just seems to have been a real waste of time, of money, of commitment. The rational part of my brain tells me that this too shall pass and eventually I'll come to the part when I can parse out the good moments from the bad but for now, the bad is all I see.

"Hey, Mr. ???"
"Hall."
"Huh?"
"Mr. Hall."
"Oh.Yeah. Mr. Hall. Did you always want to be a sub?"
I laugh. "No. This is temporary while I help my family. I'm a writer when I'm not here." I wonder if that's true but it sounds right.
"What do you write?"

I can't tell him I'm working on a few more short stories about my ex-wife for a book of short fiction entitled I Didn't Marry a Prostitute (but I Ended Up Divorcing One) so I shrug.

"Lots of stuff. I'm editing a book for a guy who wrote about being an ER doctor in Iraq. I'm working on a book of short stories. I write things f a more personal nature for my Substack and essays about the world for a digital magazine I publish."
"Do you get paid?"
"Sometimes. Not much. That's why I'm here for now."

For now.

I suppose this cul de sac of time at home is an opportunity to self reflect (as if I ever needed time for that with my head perpetually stuffed up my ass so I can navel-gaze from the inside) and chart the next journey. For now. This two-word utterance indicates there is a later at play somewhere down this road. That there will be a direction, a course to follow. Hard to say. I am optimistic.

The other night, I went to a local micro-brewery on the invitation of a woman from the YMCA. Not a date (I make it crystal clear that it would be irresponsible to date with my heavy load of recent trust issues) but hanging out, drinking craft beer, talking small talk with a single serving friend, and watching people. I used to love that about Vegas. The people watching.

As I'm leaving, I notice the venue and my mind starts wondering what kind of show I could do there. It's the first time in six months the idea that I would or could even do a show anywhere occurs to me. I take in the possibilities and work some quick logistics in my head.

Wait. What? Is that... optimism I smell? The stink of potential wafting up and over me?

"Yo. Mr. Dude. You're old, right?"
"I am older than you, that much is true."
"What's something you'd tell yourself when you were in high school if you could?"
"Whoa. Heady question from the Tik Tok generation! I guess I'd tell me that confidence gained through the approval of others is fragile and as easily destroyed as it is built up. But confidence earned—by doing things— is rock solid. Get out there and do things and the confidence becomes a by-product."

Huh. I'm right. These kids are alright and, once in a while, force the error and I have to kick my own ass a bit.

“You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”

Soon I will be singing and dancing.