The Wee Democracy

portrait of a josh as a young teacher

it began a few weeks ago, when i was unexpectedly accosted by a co-worker as we rode the train to our midtown destination. nancy was her name. since then, i've wanted to crawl back into my shell and tell her that i appreciate what she's doing, but she needs to back off.

what she was trying to do was to get me to change my life. i've written about it before, so you know -- i'm phobic when it comes to making life changing decisions. applying to college, finding a place to live, deciding on grad school, taking a job offer, or not, all of these things have been tortuous processes further complicated by my penchant for procrastination. usually, decisions get made by default, rather than deduction. it's a fault, i know.

we stood there on the train platform, and i revealed that i had not only gone to college, but graduated. she looked at me, stunned, and asked with the same disbelief usually found only in children upon the revelation of the truth about santa claus why the hell i was working at the store? i told her i was just passing time, she said i shouldn't be just passing time. i said i have a degree in english....companies aren't exactly beating a path to my door to hire me. she said, so quickly i had no time to come up with a decent excuse, why don't i teach?

she said, imagine what you could do making three times the money you make now, not working during the summer, having weekends off, using my education. imagine having my own car, my own place, being an adult. imagine having job security, insurance, pride. there wasn't anything i could do to argue with her. this all began on february 10.

since then, i've hemmed and hawed and gone slowly about the business of investigation into the program. i always had a response when nancy interrogated me about what i was doing, but the deadline to turn in the application was today. on monday, i was thinking, i don't want to do this. i don't want to spend 120 bucks to get all the stuff done that i need to get done. i don't want to take another standardized test, and still maybe not get into the program. then i was thinking, god, nancy's gonna see me and ask me what i'm doing, and what am i gonna say? that's what made me think, god, she needs to mind her business! she needs to leave me alone! my life is not her concern!

but then i thought -- what do i have to lose? 120 bucks? shit, i'll blow that on one night in a titty bar. and the TASP test? i took the GRE in november, i can handle this. and not making it into the program? well, if i didn't apply i sure as shit wouldn't make it into the program, and i'd still be working for 7 bucks an hour at a department store. so, tuesday i printed what i needed to print, wednesday i ordered what i needed to order, thursday i bought what i needed to buy, registered for the test, and today, i proudly turned in my little packet. i applied to start the process of becoming a teacher. isn't that fucked up??

but i'm excited about it. yesterday i watched me some sex and the city, season three, and made a list that serves as a preliminary syllabus of my idealistic first year. i'd start them out reading short stuff, to get a sense of several different styles of writing, and themes and all that good stuff.

first month or so we'd read: excerpts from al burian's "burn collector"
flannery o'conner's "parker's back" and "good country people"
joyce carol oates "where are you going, where have you been?"
james baldwin's "sonny's blues"

then we'd start the novels that would hopefully carry us deep into the spring:
david benioff's "the 25th Hour"
mary shelley's "frankenstein"
jd salinger's "nine stories"
ken kesey's "one flew over the cuckoo's nest"
john steinbeck's "of mice and men"
victor hugo's "the hunchback of notre dame"
anthony burgess' "a clockwork orange"
edward albee's play "who's afraid of virginia woolf"
denis johnson's "jesus' son"
and the shakespeare plays "richard III", "hamlet", and "a midsummer night's dream"

wouldn't i rock as an english teacher? yes...yes, i would.



feeling: cautiously hopeful
thinking of: my next interaction with nancy
song of the day: no surprises - radiohead
A heart that’s full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you, bruises that won’t heal.