Wednesday, September 20, 2006

you know it's time to quit your job when....

you work in elementary education (I'm not a teacher) and all you want to say is "if you don't shut your mouth NOW, I'm going to cut out your tongue and staple it to your desk". And that's the highly edited version of my thoughts.

I don't like kids. Never have. In fact, it's not hyperbole to say that I loathe kids. Ok, ok, I used to loathe kids, now I just dislike them. My kid is fine; I've raised him to be tolerable. A small number of his friends are fine in small doses. But by and large I'm not one of those women who "just looooves" kids. I think anyone who "just looooves" kids is either medicated, a pedophile or clinically insane. Seriously. So how the HELL did I end up working with kids? It plagues me, this question. The simple answer is schedule. Nothing beats being off when your kid is off so you don't have to worry if your daycare provider "just looovvees" kids in all the wrong ways, if you get my drift. So, I work around children in a school setting. To say I self medicate regularly is putting it lightly. I call it my "pretty box": I get paid pretty good for part-time work that's not, let's face it, terribly hard. I get holidays off, two weeks at Christmas, summers. And my day is over by 3:30 p.m. So in that sense, it's perfect. However, there could be no other profession more poorly matched for my personality than working with kids. Butcher, maybe.

Honestly, most days are ok, but there are those like today where I feel like I've been run over by a train and I only work with these kids two hours a day. They are "LD": learning disabled, which mostly means ADD/ADHD/dyslexia and many of them have learned a set of unattractive behaviors or have learned to use their diagnoses as their fallback excuse for not being able to..... whatever it is you are asking them to do. And I'm sure their disabilities play a role. I'm just not sure that's the complete picture. I think a lot of them learned to manipulate their world and get everyone around them to absolve them of personal responsibility because of their "problem". One child in our class is particularly manipulative. You can tell just by how she changes gears/tactics when you put the screws to her regarding her behavior.

I've worked in a school setting for nearly three years now in various capacities. Frankly, I want to go back to criminal law. At least criminals were polite and treated me with a modicum of respect and dignity. I never wanted to shoot myself in the head after spending time with one of our clients/defendants. Which is more than I can say for many a child and parent these days....

Monday, September 11, 2006

Five Years....

I remember thinking on that day, five years ago, wondering what this would feel like in one year? Five years? Ten? What would things be like? Would we be under siege the way it felt like we were on that day? Or would we somehow find peace?

Everyone has a story about where they were and what they were doing when this all began. I always feel ashamed talking about my story. After all, I was safe in Texas, far from the epicenters; I knew no one who died that day. I've never even been to New York. But I think a little something in all of us died that day. Innocence, maybe. Even for those of us who didn't think we had any innocence left in us. We discovered that we did and that moment of discovery was followed immediately by it's merciless death. Even now, five years later, the idea that four airplanes could be hijacked simultaneously and crashed into buildings still has an air of the surreal. Surely that didn't really happen. But it did, as I witnessed again this morning as I watched real-time replays of that day's events.

My son was three-years old at the time, almost four. He had begun preschool in August and Tuesday was a "school day" for him. His day started as always, with Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS. I couldn't help but notice all the networks were tuned to the same story so I went to the second television to watch and see what the news was. At that time, everyone was still speculating - we were still innocent. Perhaps a private plane had strayed; perhaps the pilot had collapsed with a heart attack. All speculation centered on a tragic accident. In another 18 minutes, when the second plane crashed right there before our eyes, innocence died and we knew there was no accident. I was shaken and called my husband at work. He was difficult to find because he works for an airline. Not one that was involved on that day, but still, they were going crazy. I think they were a little ahead of the general public in terms of knowing that there were hijackings going on and that all those planes in the air were potential weapons searching out targets. My husband told me to take our son to school as usual. On the drive over, I heard about the Pentagon. My God, the Pentagon. I feared we were truly at war - not with terrorists, but another country. I took my son to school, kissed him goodbye and stopped in the school lobby to watch televion coverage with the other parents. The first tower fell. I went home and spent the rest of the day watching helplessly.

I didn't cry until about midnight that night. Watching the crawl under the news program and it mentioned how many children were on board one of the planes. And I thought of the sheer terror those children and their parents must have felt. What do you tell a child when you know and they know that death is imminent? How do you comfort anyone in those circumstances? I wept and continued weeping off and on for weeks. I thought my tears would never end. I cannot imagine the pain felt by those who actually lost friends and family. Who lived through that terror of not knowing up close. I wept everytime I saw the scar on the New York City skyline. Those two buildings, a testament to what greatness humans can achieve, brought down in a few hours. Gone forever. A scar, an amputation on the world's greatest city.

So every year, I bear witness so I won't forget that day, those feelings. I watch the news coverage; I watch my DVDs and cable documentaries. I look back and remember what it was to feel "American" for the first time. I've always taken my country for granted and never gave much thought to my national identity. I did then and I do now. But I was so proud (oddly) in those days following. We were all Americans; we exemplified, at least for a moment, what this country is really supposed to be. But that's gone now, too. Vaguely remembered like the New York skyline before 9/11.