The official reason for my temporary turn as an Okie promised a partial yet dramatic change this year. Essentially, every single thing remained the same: the tables, the chairs, the table helpers, the food, the break schedule with a single, major exception. The strategic approach to the work changed. As flawed and as perfect as the last strategy, it WAS different. This change would have been NO BIG DEAL except for the following related facts:
This tension served as background while the foreground filled with more familiar images that centered around the nucleus of the work: the table.
I belonged to table led by a acerbic, task-oriented Table Boss, there to work and that is pretty much it. He set a serious, quiet, focused tone. Except for myself and another, everyone else was a boy. There was a very young professor who reminded me of my eldest son with sandy hair, wire glasses, and slender frame. He and his wife worked on the same question. They seemed lovely but their potential challenges as historians living in the same house and possibly rearing children dominated my thinking about them (“You never mentioned you were a revisionist when we were dating!”, “You know how it wounds me when you criticize Theodore Roosevelt in front of the children...”, “I don't care what your father says! Marxism is a flawed paradigm!”). Next to me sat a likeable, unassuming high school teacher from Michigan similar to me in age. I decided he was the calmest, non-stoned person I have ever run across. I am confident that my constant, ADD-catalyzed motion served as a consistent, minor distraction for him the entire week except for the morning I was still because I could not wake up; that morning, he interrupted his work to ask if there was something wrong with me. I am pretty sure that, for the table, I filled the role Ally Sheedy played in The Breakfast Club (which, really, is not a terribly unique experience for me) so my interaction with the rest of the troupe was limited.
Sitting across from Mr. Chill was the Jersey Train Wreck who fit in as well as a ear-infected toddler does at a funeral service. Jersey Train Wreck started his teaching career before my birth and he began the work a year before I took (and destroyed) the test—conceivably, he had read my deft answer nearly twenty-five years ago and set me on my current path. A pastiche of startling bad tablemate habits, he constantly found ways to cause me pause. Always late, he could not begin the work after a break without some extended commentary that interrupted the calm that had just descended when all of us punctual people reasonably ended our allotted break time and got back to work. If asked a “yes” or “no” question, he responded with a multi-paragraph monologue. He messed up his paperwork so often I began developing the mechanics to make his administrative inadequacy a drinking game. He specialized in being combative. He focused most of his bullying on the young, married professor, constantly mentioning the guy's Ph.D. and his lack of one in that special way mean people can take your accomplishments and disrespect you without actually doing it overtly. Jersey Train Wreck told the young professor that “a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while” at least three times a day in reference to the professor's wife (on the last day, the young, married professor schooled him in history and it felt good to everyone but JTW). He joined every conversation when we were allowed to talk and, on the last day, told everyone else to be quiet after we had been warned by the powers that be that we were too loud and, without taking a breath, continued talking for three straight hours. If the Table Boss said anything to him, Jersey Train Wreck violently cursed him under his breath. He repeated the same phrases over and over again, saying, “The Herd is moving” EVERY time we went on break or “Everybody liked Reagan! EVERYBODY!” until he got a response (I, as a student of early 80s punk rock and my Grandma knowing it to be laughably false, took the bait on that one. He did not understand what I was talking about). Philosophically inconsistent and emotionally volatile, he reminded me of the uncle that gets invited to holiday dinners out of misplaced obligation and results in a tiring day of shielding the children from careening and unpredictable behavior. At night, when I returned to the hotel, I would see him, light beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, shuffling from the valets who would look at each other sympathetically when his back was turned, to someone else available to listen to what he had to say. Briefly, I worried if I was watching my future.
At the same time, a blind squirrel does find a nut every once in a while. He seemed to keep a good pace and took the job more seriously than some others I have known. During a retraining, he behaved himself (Table Boss decided to sit right next to him so that might have something to do with it). One time he made a joke (maybe it wasn't, I don't know) about how he regretted that, as a Baby Boomer, he had been bunched in with “those Thalidomide babies of the late fifties” which I found humorously offensive. He also told us a phenomenal story about how a rabid rabbit once attacked Jimmy Carter in a boat. Carter responded to the assault by beating the rabbit to death with a boat oar. His comment led me to research the incident, reading, with pleasure, this quote of Carter's Press Secretary: “The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.”
I think I might owe Jersey Train Wreck some money for that.
http://www.narsil.org/index/peopl/jimmycarter/killerrabbit
- Many, many teachers fear (like stomach-lurching revulsion kind of fear) change. Part of this is because, right now, within the education industry, change happens for its own sake (and the profits of private companies) without any real critical inquiry of why new is always better. At the same time, my long experience with education suggests that many, many teachers also strongly crave routine, certainty, and security.
- Being a teacher or professor does not necessarily guarantee competence at management, communication, or reacting to criticism.
- The work we do is factory work. One of the perks to doing the same activity for hours and hours is getting to complain about having to do the same activity for hours and hours and how dumb the bosses who make us work are.
- The company (which I respect as much as I can respect a major corporation) that hires us is under attack by a bunch of politicians who want to return to the days of “I can not tell a lie” history. The company, much like the Republican or Communist parties, need to minimize evidence of internal dispute.
This tension served as background while the foreground filled with more familiar images that centered around the nucleus of the work: the table.
I belonged to table led by a acerbic, task-oriented Table Boss, there to work and that is pretty much it. He set a serious, quiet, focused tone. Except for myself and another, everyone else was a boy. There was a very young professor who reminded me of my eldest son with sandy hair, wire glasses, and slender frame. He and his wife worked on the same question. They seemed lovely but their potential challenges as historians living in the same house and possibly rearing children dominated my thinking about them (“You never mentioned you were a revisionist when we were dating!”, “You know how it wounds me when you criticize Theodore Roosevelt in front of the children...”, “I don't care what your father says! Marxism is a flawed paradigm!”). Next to me sat a likeable, unassuming high school teacher from Michigan similar to me in age. I decided he was the calmest, non-stoned person I have ever run across. I am confident that my constant, ADD-catalyzed motion served as a consistent, minor distraction for him the entire week except for the morning I was still because I could not wake up; that morning, he interrupted his work to ask if there was something wrong with me. I am pretty sure that, for the table, I filled the role Ally Sheedy played in The Breakfast Club (which, really, is not a terribly unique experience for me) so my interaction with the rest of the troupe was limited.
Sitting across from Mr. Chill was the Jersey Train Wreck who fit in as well as a ear-infected toddler does at a funeral service. Jersey Train Wreck started his teaching career before my birth and he began the work a year before I took (and destroyed) the test—conceivably, he had read my deft answer nearly twenty-five years ago and set me on my current path. A pastiche of startling bad tablemate habits, he constantly found ways to cause me pause. Always late, he could not begin the work after a break without some extended commentary that interrupted the calm that had just descended when all of us punctual people reasonably ended our allotted break time and got back to work. If asked a “yes” or “no” question, he responded with a multi-paragraph monologue. He messed up his paperwork so often I began developing the mechanics to make his administrative inadequacy a drinking game. He specialized in being combative. He focused most of his bullying on the young, married professor, constantly mentioning the guy's Ph.D. and his lack of one in that special way mean people can take your accomplishments and disrespect you without actually doing it overtly. Jersey Train Wreck told the young professor that “a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while” at least three times a day in reference to the professor's wife (on the last day, the young, married professor schooled him in history and it felt good to everyone but JTW). He joined every conversation when we were allowed to talk and, on the last day, told everyone else to be quiet after we had been warned by the powers that be that we were too loud and, without taking a breath, continued talking for three straight hours. If the Table Boss said anything to him, Jersey Train Wreck violently cursed him under his breath. He repeated the same phrases over and over again, saying, “The Herd is moving” EVERY time we went on break or “Everybody liked Reagan! EVERYBODY!” until he got a response (I, as a student of early 80s punk rock and my Grandma knowing it to be laughably false, took the bait on that one. He did not understand what I was talking about). Philosophically inconsistent and emotionally volatile, he reminded me of the uncle that gets invited to holiday dinners out of misplaced obligation and results in a tiring day of shielding the children from careening and unpredictable behavior. At night, when I returned to the hotel, I would see him, light beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, shuffling from the valets who would look at each other sympathetically when his back was turned, to someone else available to listen to what he had to say. Briefly, I worried if I was watching my future.
At the same time, a blind squirrel does find a nut every once in a while. He seemed to keep a good pace and took the job more seriously than some others I have known. During a retraining, he behaved himself (Table Boss decided to sit right next to him so that might have something to do with it). One time he made a joke (maybe it wasn't, I don't know) about how he regretted that, as a Baby Boomer, he had been bunched in with “those Thalidomide babies of the late fifties” which I found humorously offensive. He also told us a phenomenal story about how a rabid rabbit once attacked Jimmy Carter in a boat. Carter responded to the assault by beating the rabbit to death with a boat oar. His comment led me to research the incident, reading, with pleasure, this quote of Carter's Press Secretary: “The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.”
I think I might owe Jersey Train Wreck some money for that.
http://www.narsil.org/index/peopl/jimmycarter/killerrabbit