Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Grumble. Chuckle.

You know it’s gonna be a bad day when it is already a bad day by 7:30 a.m. Come on! The proverbial writing is on the proverbial wall!

By around 9:00 a.m. today I had invented a phrase for how bad of a day it was—GrumbleChuckle. I was already grumbling by that time so much that I had to chuckle as to how bad of a day it could be in just a few hours.

Two of my students are performing in a play in Amman, and so they are unable to take a test with the rest of their class on Thursday afternoon, so flexible man that I am, we looked at alternative times so that the test could still happen for them. It turned out with their rehearsal schedule that the only time was at 6:50 a.m. this morning.

Doing tests before school is a mixed bag of success: twice it has worked this year; twice the students have not shown up. Hmmm…I don’t like those moments. Especially when I got up early to do a favor.

I had sent an email yesterday reminding them of their obligation. I mentioned in class how I important it was to show up for such plans…one of them supposed to come this morning had been one of the failures earlier in the year…hmmmm….

So I got up about 20 minutes earlier than usual, was dressed and ready to receive the young scholars by 6:45 a.m.

No shows.

About 30 minutes after they should have arrived, and should have been neck deep in the Baroque period of art essays, I had a frantic knock on my door from a colleague. “There’s damage in the dormitory and boys aren’t in their rooms!” I quickly learned as the colleague and I went out exploring. I followed trying to assess what the damages might be, who and to where the young boarders might have made off, and a sneaky suspicion that the day just might not recover from its shaky start.

I knock on the door of a proctor and discover several students who do not reside in this single room. Stony silence greeted me as I asked if they had spent the night there, what they were up to, and if they knew about any damages. The replies, especially from one, was that typical senioritis-y apathy yucky you don’t matter stance and tone. Oh, great.

And it wasn’t even 7:30!

They assured me that they had gotten up early to study theology together. As brash comic Judy Tenuta used to bellow in her comedy routine, It could happen!!!
I noticed a half hour later that my early-rising theologians did not make it to morning meeting. Of course not.

I was enjoying a cup of coffee in my usual spot at 8:30 when those same boys came in requesting a late slip. I inquired why they hadn’t made it to morning meeting when they had obviously been awake and ready to greet the morn. The same one who had had the chip-on-his-shoulder conversation with me earlier just dug it a little deeper with a caustic, ”I was cleaning up the damage you told me I should have been responsible for.” In the next few minutes he made such an impression on one of my colleagues that when he left the room, she felt compelled to call his mother and report on his disrespect. She countered that people at the school do not treat her boy well. By the way, later in the day I followed up with a colleague, he had lied to me. He did not clean up the damage.

Okay—time for class…always the saving grace. Students had prepared presentations on artists from the Romantic period and they did a strong job…maybe all the evil spirits had dissipated. Grumble. Chuckle!

And the Lord taketh away…

Then I had one of those encounters with an administrator that just makes you giggle if you would happen to be watching it on Youtube. I was told that I must accept that a certain course count as a history department requirement for graduation even though it is not a history course. It reminded me of one of those old jokes like, “A guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head.” I don’t even know why it reminded me of that except it just seemed to be absurd to be having the discussion, and that as head of the department I should determine what does and what does not count as a history course towards graduation requirements. Double Grumble. Chuckle?

I don’t know, it just felt if I walked 15 feet someone said something or did something that caused the grumbling to increase, so naturally the sardonic chuckles became a throbbing bass line.

On and on and then the class that often is the coup de grace for behavior et al. Two students “confessed” that they had done a presentation (“Really, I thought I was going to get the presentation done, really!”) and one boy is absent. I had told the class that no excuse short of being in the middle of surgery counted for an absence.

During the day the two errant early-morning scholars professed disbelief that this had been the agreed upon day…sure…

It just continued, and let’s just say I muttered Grumble Chuckle fairly regularly.

Oh, I should tell you of the audacity of this one student who simply logged onto a website and just read aloud from the site as his presentation!

At the close of school I pondered the day. I needed a lift. I needed a distraction and a smile.

I looked at my phone list and made a call to New York Kate. We love her! She wasn’t in.

So I called dear Margie, dear friends, and parents of a superstar former student from the class of 2000.

We hadn’t talked in months and months. Margie picked up, and as we talked we picked right up where we had left off.

I learned her son Joseph is engaged. We talked about the old days. We talked about the weather and the snow and the books we have read, the TV shows admired, and just sat back and enjoyed a Grumble-free conversation. Just great.

Earlier this morning I had a conversation about “bouncing back.” Obviously the Grumble Chuckle days come along—no question, but how do you bounce back? We mused about how as we age, the bouncing is probably a little more difficult.

I told them about this great episode of Monk I watched recently wherein character Randy Disher shares his philosophy of life. Monk had asked Randy how he was so good-natured all the time, and essentially implied that Randy had a gift for “bouncing back.”

Randy shared how during one case he had had an epiphany. He had seen a bumper sticker that changed his life. It read, Happiness is a choice. Randy had decided then and there to be a happier person. Now Randy is a little like Barney Fife, but still, you have to admire his pluck and smile.

Our pessimist friend Adrian Monk reminded Randy that that bumper sticker had been found on a car that was wrecked and the owners murdered. So where was the happiness?

Oh, Mr. Monk—what a sourpuss view of life!

Of course if I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting—but I would decline, for life would no longer teach me anything.

As for tomorrow, hope springs eternal.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

sooo sorry I missed you but can't wait for Chinese :)

Unknown said...

Johnny,

Hope springs eternal then we fly home.