Stone Life

I was a truly terrible coach (reason #489 that I have no business teaching school children) yesterday and skipped the Junior High Sports Banquet, but I could not bring myself to do it. I felt bad… I could give a laundry list of excuses, but let us be honest, I do not think I would have gone had it been the only thing possible to do with my evening. Have you ever been to one of these – it’s as exciting as watching paint dry, only instead of paint, it’s my soul, and, instead of drying, it’s like rotting from the inside out.

My players came to me this afternoon and gave me a photo album, which was very cool of them. They are their parents were pleased with the season, and so they wanted to show their appreciation. The best picture in the album is this one:

It look innocent enough, and I wish I could remember the story as well as my players and their parents do, but they reminded me that the poor kid sitting next to me was in the process of, not patting me on the back or offering warm affection in the midst of a tough game; rather, he was in the beginning stages of what would soon become something like a bear hug to keep me from from being swallowed up by the white and black monster just out of the frame.

What the picture fails to show is that, just prior to this shot, in a moment of weakness on my part, I let a ref know what I thought of him, and particularly his calls that game as he ran by. It is fair to say that we had a disagreement with his officiating, ending with my repeatedly questioning his mental state. He T’d me up, and told me that “if [I] so much as moved from that seat again or said another word, he would throw [me] out of the gym.” In my opinion, mission accomplished; I said what I needed to say, which made me feel better, and he did what he needed to do to shut me up. My poor kids were scared to death, though. Charles immediately clutched me as if I might spring out of my chair and attack the poor ref. Everyone had a good chuckle afterwards about the technical (my first and only, I believe), but they still will not let Charles live down his reaction. Now it is immortalized.

Surreal. As I drove back to my apartment late Saturday night, it occurred to me that the evening had been like something requiring a time machine. I both A.) went to Prom, and B.) went to a Black Crowes concert. Throw in some Boone’s Farm and some hormone-induced-angst (I liked to imagine myself brooding and mysterious…I was neither), and I might very well be seventeen again.

Not much to say about the Crowes. I loved them in high school, and I still do. This was the first live show I had been able to attend, and they were stellar. No complaints; no long-winded explanations as to their greatness. Instead, let us focus our attention on the appetizer of the evening: Prom. I learned some things that a few years removal from the land of MTV and The Bird (you Craneite’s know of which grease-pit I refer) have taught me a thing or two.

1. High School students look stupid in tuxes. It doesn’t matter your build, your choice of colors, your anything – each and everyone one of you look like you are playing dress-up in your dad’s clothes. Our moms convinced us that we looked something other than imbecilic, but they were either lying or blinded by motherly affection, because it is nothing more than pure comedy to see sixteen-year-olds dress up like James Bond for the evening. The girls do not quite embarrass themselves in their get-ups; maybe it is because most of them have at least some experience looking presentable. As a junior in high school, the ONLY time most guys put on anything resembling formal attire is for prom or cousin’s wedding. Anything requiring more than combing one’s hair is dressy, and so nights like Prom are far exceeding the bounds of a young man’s abilities to maintain any level of cool.

2. Chaperone’s will find a way to imbibe. Enough said.

3. You could not pay me enough to turn the clock back a decade. There are times I watch and listen to my students and I think, “If I was in their shoes, I would….” It is at those times that I think how interesting it might be to reverse time and redo some of those things I regret with the experience and wisdom of a few years’ growth. Then there are an overwhelming majority of times that I see their awkwardness, their neediness, their insecurity, their drama, their inability to see beyond the nose on their face…etc, and I KNOW that it is a sign of God’s grace that I cannot possibly go back there save for some future incident involving Marty McFly and Doc. Saturday, I kicked my feet up on one of the tables and watched the parade of teenagedness, and sighed a deep breath of relief that I am quickly becoming an old man.

4. I am turning quickly into the little-old-man that my students think of me as. Proof 1: I stayed out until 1 a.m., and I’m pretty sure that is the first time this semester I can say that. I felt like a rebel, like a teenager, but mostly I felt lame. Proof 2: I did not know a single eff’ing song that they were excited to dance to. I knew the ‘oldies’, like Edwin McCain and Bon Jovi (yeah, they still play both of those people at dances), but they might as well have been Elvis or Patsy Cline as far as the kids were concerned. Proof 3…and this is the big one: I was asked politely to move farther away from the dance floor, because the prommer’s were getting uncomfortable…no joke.

…may be my head sinking — no, not sinking. how about crashing, violently-crashing — on my faux-oak desk. I am a bit of a melodramatic when it comes to writing; I like the poetry of overstating things, but I am in an existential quandary at this moment, a funk, that I am having trouble making heads or tails of.

When I last left the blogworld, things were set. I felt ‘on the right track’. Since that time…all one or two-weeks of this odyssey, the wheels have since come flying from their bolts, and I am careening somewhere in the vicinity a black hole of blood-filled death –like I mentioned, hyperbole is something like a defense mechanism. Long story shortened (I know myself better than to ever call one of my stories: short), I was rejected in my bid to A) get a job with the university, and B) get them to pay for my tuition. Instead, I am jobless, and they are sillily
demanding that I pay them a small fortune each semester for the privilege of working my arse off. There was never a guarantee that I would get the position, but I was led to believe that it was a given, and I have been working under that assumption all along. Alas, what can I say, “screws fall out of doors; the world’s an imperfect place”…possibly a misquote, but that’s the way I remember it.

I was geared up to type more, to wail and gnash my teeth, but I do not have the energy right now. I am in what doctors call a funk, and, though I am questioning the legitimacy of this argument even as I now type, it seems like the best way to exorcise the demons of doubt and potential failure is to broadcast my inner angst on the computer-machine hooked up to the internet-web. We shall see.