Life Skills

This afternoon, I not only substituted a high school Life Skills class, but babysat a three week old kitten, curled up in a box on the teacher's desk. Tiny, soft, gray, the kitten woke from sleep as I stroked its head and tried to look at me with cloudy blue eyes.

"It just learned how to purr," a student said. He smiled as I cupped the kitten in one hand and smoothed down its fur with my fingers.

Before she left to attend a meeting, his teacher explained how she came to have a kitten nestled in a cardboard shoebox on her desk. Two students (step-sisters) found the kitten in a field. Barely a day old and the size of a large mouse, its umbilical cord was still attached. They took it home and stayed up all night, watching it breathe, hoping it would live until morning. It did. Since their mother works and the girls attend high school, their teacher offered to babysit the kitten during the day. Every morning, they place the kitten inside a shoe box, which they gently put into a paper bag, and then smuggle onto the school bus. They use a different bag each day to divert suspicion. Their teacher nurses the kitten whenever it's hungry, takes it out in the grass a couple times a day to go to the bathroom, cleans it with a soft cloth, and keeps it warm with a heating pad.

The students watch her care for the tiny, helpless kitten. Now that's how you teach Life Skills.

Ravens, Crows, and Seagulls

At twelve-thirty in the afternoon, I close my eyes and listen. In the darkness, I hear the cries of seagulls. Their sound reminds me of a fishing village off the coast of Italy: ancient, red houses built into the hillside, families sunning themselves on the rocky shore, and a green boat bobbing in the light speckled water.

Then I open my eyes. Another school day. I sit on a plastic bench next to a trashcan overflowing with crushed orange juice boxes and half eaten corn dogs. Seagulls wheel the white sky, crows perch in pine trees and a lone raven sits on the cafeteria roof. They wait while the last children run to class, the bell loudly ringing, and then they swoop down. Lunchtime. Two seagulls fight over a slice of pepperoni pizza. The larger one rips off the crust and gulps it down like he would a small, silver fish. His opponent moves on to a sesame bun. The raven pulls a slice of cheese toast apart with his sharp, black beak as the crows devour muffins, french fries, orange peels soggy with chocolate milk, and ketchup smeared coffee cake. There's more than enough junk food for all.

Twenty miles from the ocean, I wonder how the seagulls picked this as their lunch spot. Is this a daily commute, a 9 to 5 destination only, from which they return to their perches under the pier at night? Or are these seagulls urban dwellers, the descendants of gulls who went searching for a better life-- tired of the competition down at the beach-- and ended up staying and raising their chicks in the hot, dry Valley, a spread of concrete, car dealerships, and big supermarket centers, with no water in sight except for the turquoise ovals and rectangles of swimming pools? And if the latter is true, how would they feel if one day a soft breeze brought them back to where they belong, to the ocean?

Fuck You, Miss

This afternoon. Middle school. On the way to lunch. Short, tan kid with a scarred face walks by me, turns around smiling and says, "Fuck you Miss ___."

I remember him. Used to go to another middle school, until he got kicked out and landed in this one. He made me cry (privately, of course) at his old school, but this time I'm just temporarily stung and thinking about two things:

1. This school. Last year the kids started trashcan bonefires during every passing period until the janitors began filling the bottoms of the cans with hose water. The new principal has separated the 6th grade from the 7th & 8th grade, hoping to keep the innocents away from their corrupted, older peers. There are so many "problem kids" and they all end up here. But whose problem kids are they? Well, I guess for a day they're mine, and for all the other days, and sometimes years, they're the other teachers' problem children. The school becomes their family by default. Where are their parents?

2. The boy. No matter how tragic a story he carries, I don't deserve this abuse. Only 14 years old and already constipated with anger. I'm sure he has a thick file in the counselor's office. Yes, he's a "problem kid." The dean tells me he'll give the boy lunch detention, nonchalantly remarking that he's been doing well at his new school and will soon finish eigth grade. The dean clearly doesn't want to alienate him any further. He's trying to be his friend, but the boy needs a father.

I'm Mr. Morales

Being a "substitute" for another person is a strange concept. In the cafeteria, the teachers ask, "Who are you today?"

I'm tempted to answer, "Who am I? Well, today I'm myself, like every other day. I'm 25 years old, a young woman, a daughter, girlfriend, friend, sometimes a creative person, on the verge of being a cat lady, and, yes, a substitute teacher. Only, is that really who I am? What is my "self" and what makes me "me"? If you bottled all of me up-- my skin, my eyes, my hopes, my fears, my love of certain books, animals, people, and places-- what would be my scent? And am I simply defined by my likes and dislikes, my body, my feelings, and my experiences? After death, when I'm merely a handful of ashes, will there be anything left, and if there is, what will it be? What is the essence of "me"? Now that I've slid down a rabbithole, each tunnel revealing another question, I'd like to pause and thank you for asking me such an intriguing question."

Instead, I smile and say, "I'm Mr. Morales." Or Chu, or Bachmeier, or Sarkisian, or whoever it is I am for that day.

In Her Nature

"Teacher, come here. I want to show you something."

I walked over to the tall girl with the black braids. She sat hunched over in her seat, a red notebook in her hands. Her classmates began to crowd around us, eager for the surprise.

"What is it?" I asked. I expected she would proudly show me a pencil drawing or a prom photo of her boyfriend.

"I found it right on the ground. I couldn't believe it," she flipped back the notebook cover. "Isn't it pretty?"

I had to agree. Pressed inbetween two lined pages in the notebook was a shimmery bluish-green butterfly, the size of my palm. I began to compliment her on her unsual find when the butterfly actually began to twitch and then squirm. It struggled to peel its wings off the page. "It's still alive," I said, shocked. I put my hand out for the notebook. "Give it to me."

"No." She slammed the cover shut, pulled it away, and hugged it to her chest. "It's mine. I found it, so I want to keep it. It was gonna' die anyways."

I desperately grabbed at the notebook, holding back tears. The students around us laughed and commented on my flushed face. Some murmured that their lepidopterist friend was mean, and that she should let it fly away.

"But it's still alive." I tried to reason with her. "You're being cruel. How would you like it if someone came and squashed you like that?"

The girl held on to her notebook. "It's mine. I found it so I'm keeping it," was all she said.

So I retreated to the teacher's desk at the back of the room. I tried not to imagine the butterfly imprisoned in her book-- the fine blue dust of its wings stuck to the pages, furry body squished to a pulp. It made me sick.

At the end of the day, as I left the classroom, the teacher next door stopped me and asked about my day. I told him about the butterfly incident. "It wasn't a big deal. I just thought it was strange."

"Was it Jessenia?" He asked, locking his classroom door behind him.

"I don't know. I didn't get her name."

"She was supposed to stay home today. She's suspended for the week."

He described her and we agreed that Jessenia was certainly the lepidopterist. Yes, he could definitely imagine her squashing live butterflies.

"It's in her nature," he said.

Writing about this, I wonder why I didn't force her to release the butterfly. How could I let her get away with it? As a substitute teacher, didn't I have any authority? But it wasn't about that. Truth is that I could have played the teacher card if I'd really wanted to, but I gave up because I felt silly for nearly crying and making a big deal over a small thing. I showed emotion. I felt weak. Somehow, I felt like I was being silly and overly sensitive over a little butterfly, just a shimmery bluish-green butterfly plastered to a lined page, struggling to fly away. It was gonna' die anyways, right?

This is how I treat my creativity. I'm trying harder to grab that notebook back.