the real world

the biggest and best news of the day: i am MHS' newest English teacher! it has been sinking in only superficially in the six hours since they called me. in many ways i'm more nervous because now i know the countdown has begun to the beginning of the hardest year of my life. but i'm terminally thrilled. i can't believe i get to teach kids and talk with them about books. if i focus on my wonder at that fact, it keeps the only natural nervousness at bay.
i pulled up to my local 24-hour coffee joint full of ambition to get some lesson planning done, and had to kick myself for my response when i saw the crowd gathered outside. twenty slender shapes like so many oddly grown trees were planted in front of the entrance to the coffee shop, and i groaned. 'rotten kids,' i thought to myself as i sniffed marijuana and cigarette smoke. and then i had to laugh at my own silliness. 'now,' i said to myself, 'where is your confidence in even the most unmotivated student? where is your impulse to convince kids that they can find some part of what they're looking for in books? where is your desire for them to see themselves in what they read?' i squinted and the shapes resolved themselves into the guests at Gatsby's party, striking dangerously merry poses and smoking in painful elegance. the couple kissing in a darkened corner of the parking lot becomes the youthfully infatuated star-crossed lovers. the boys channeled Holden and Lane as they craned their necks for glimpses of the girls, and one very self-aware young man appeared more like Zooey the harder i looked. 'that's more like it,' i said to myself, and i went inside. i am still a work in progress in as many ways as there are to be worked on. but i am so, so excited.