Children Are Our Future

For a while, I was a substitute teacher. I was not very good at it. I like kids, and generally enjoy them. I have a sibling and babysat a lot when I was younger, so children are not frightening or mysterious to me. But being a substitute teacher - a good one - requires a person of uncommon qualities. I did not have these qualities.

Maybe if school started later, it wouldn't have been an issue. I am by nature a night owl. I despise morning. Waking up at the crack of dawn to deal with a herd of screaming children, all demanding your rapt attention, is one of the circles of hell. So whenever I was called in, a lucky class full of bright-eyed students got a cranky, semi-comatose substitute who wanted nothing more than to declare an eight-hour nap time and curl up under her desk.

Despite my groggy demeanor, the students overall liked me. I often started class by stating, 'Look, I am not your teacher. I'm just here for the day. Let's just get through your work and we can all relax. You guys still take naps, right?' I didn't pretend to have any real authority, and I didn't bully them. I liked to think of myself as a cool older relative whose primary goal was to make sure nobody ate paste or set anything on fire.

I think my failure as a teacher can be summed up in one day. I was subbing for the art teacher, which is only slightly less hilarious than the time I subbed for the gym teacher. If I had to run for my life, I would die. If I had to draw a map to save my life, I would die, after being ruthlessly mocked for my tragic stick figures. But the administration didn't care about my inherent artistic abilities, so I was the art teacher for the day.

Teachers are supposed to leave you a syllabus for each class. You follow the syllabus, and unless a kid tries to stab someone with a crayon, it's pretty uneventful. But as the first graders filed in, I found myself without an assignment for 30-odd hyperactive 7-year-olds. It was not an enviable position.

It was the day of President Obama's inauguration, and I knew the kids had all watched his swearing in. I had what I thought was a brilliant idea: I told the kids to draw something that made them think of America.

"It can be a picture of the White House, the flag, a bald eagle, whatever you think of when you think of America!" I enthused. I'd had a lot of coffee that day, and was pretty pleased with myself. The kids would color, I would read a book and not have an existential crisis when I discovered that small children had more expensive phones than I.

And it worked. For a few minutes. The kids colored industriously, with a modicum of talking. I oversaw their work, feeling like a Real Educator. Then one little boy approached me to show me his drawing.

LITTLE BOY: I drew the White House!

ME: That's great! And who is that outside it?

LITTLE BOY: John McCain.

ME: Um... OK.

LITTLE BOY: My parents like him. They say he should be President.

ME: A lot of people thought that. But that's what's so great about America - we can all have different opinions.

I'd like to mention that I was enormously proud of my diplomatic response. And then it all went to hell.

LITTLE BOY: I don't like Obama.

At this point I should have pat him on the head and distracted him with something shiny. 'Look, an iPod! Justin Bieber! A unicorn! Justin Bieber riding a unicorn while building an iPod!'

If you are thinking of being a teacher, my one piece of advice is this: do not engage in political debate with someone who just recently mastered eating solid food.

ME: Oh? Why is that?

LITTLE BOY: He wants to kill the penguins.

ME: ....What?

LITTLE BOY: The penguins. He wants to kill them.

ME: The penguins.

LITTLE BOY: Yes.

ME: Kill them?

LITTLE BOY: Yeah, he's going to kill them.

ME: I don't think the President wants to kill the penguins.

LITTLE BOY: Oh, he does.

ME: We don't have any penguins in America.

LITTLE BOY: Well, he's going to drive to the penguins and THEN kill them.

By now the boy was looking at me like I was either incredibly stupid, or part of the Penguin Killing Brigade. And I realized I was arguing with a 6-year-old about the leader of the free world hunting down and murdering flightless birds.

It was a surreal moment.

Luckily, the situation was defused by the arrival of snack time. Rather than alerting the principal that I was plotting the demise of penguins, the little boy scampered off to enjoy his juice box.

As I watched the kids dig into the Goldfish Crackers and wheat-free cookies, I glanced down at their drawings. If you recall, I'd asked them to draw what they thought of when they thought of America.

Almost all of them had drawn money.

An Internal Monologue I Have Far Too Often

Me: I'M DYING.

Common Sense: No, you're not.

Me: No, really, this time I am. Totally. Dying. Like, the dead kind. SO DEAD.

Common Sense: What is it this time?

Me: My nose is stuffy and I'm coughing and cold and achy and tired. 'Because I could not stop for Death-'

Common Sense: You have a cold.

Me: LIES. Lots of hideous diseases present as colds, and you think it's just a cold, then BOOM DEAD.

Common Sense: Stop it. You do this all the time. It's tiresome and exhausting. Hypochondria is not charming.

Me: Just wait until I am dead from EBOLA. Then you'll feel stupid.

Common Sense: You don't even know what that is. Anyway, remember when you had an ingrown toenail and decided you had toe cancer?

Me: I was kidding.

Common Sense: Yes, but you were also legitimately concerned that it meant something was really, really wrong with you.

Me: It COULD have been a sign of a degenerative disease.

Common Sense: This is JUST like when you accidentally cut off that other driver and were convinced he would hunt you down.

Me: Road rage is a legitimate concern. Anyway, you should be nice to me. I AM GRAVELY ILL.

Common Sense: OR you are just overtired and eat terrible food, and your body is rebelling.

Me: ....Dying.

Common Sense: You know, when you're actually, genuinely sick, people don't believe you. Like the time the doctor said it was just anxiety, and it turned out to be a double bronchial infection.

Me: He was a TERRIBLE doctor.

Common Sense: Very true. However, perhaps people would be more sympathetic if you weren't ALWAYS sick. Tired is not sick. Bored is not sick. Annoyed is not sick. And sick does not automatically equal HORRIBLE, EXPLODEY DEATH.

Me: I know, but if I expect the absolute worst, anything else will seem tolerable.

Common Sense: Could you at least do it quietly?

Me: Fine. I have a cold.

Common Sense: Thank you.

Me: Which is EXACTLY how things started in The Stand.

Note: While writing this, I Googled for rare diseases out of curiosity. And ended up reading about necrotizing fasciitis. And panicked over the idea of getting it. There's a lesson here, but I'm too busy buying stock in antibacterial soap to think about it.