Last Time

"Oh dear, oh dear," said Lucy. "...I thought you'd come roaring in and frighten all the enemies away--like last time. And now everything is going to be horrid."

"It is hard for you, little one," said Aslan. "But things never happen the same way twice."

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

Like a zillion other Narnia fans, I went to see the newest movie version of Prince Caspian this weekend. Since I'm neither a careful critic nor a connoisseur of good films (I tend to love whatever movie I happen to pay ten dollars to see in the theater), I won't review it here. Still, I tend to be skeptical of adaptations, especially of books that I love, even more so when the books are of the imaginative sort. I often find myself ticking off a list of characters, lines, and circumstances that do not measure up, simply because they were different from the way that I pictured them, curled up under the covers with a flashlight when I was seven years old. This puts me in a difficult situation when I pay to see a fantasy film. One part of me--the rational adult part with all the money--wants to be pleased with the investment of a night of entertainment, and is willing to put up with any amount of cheesiness or contrivances of plot, acting, writing, and the like. The other side argues with a whiny, very seven-year-old voice, "But that's not how ________________ is supposed to look!" Moviegoing, for me, is a complicated affair.

All told, however, I did like this latest version. Clumsy embellishments aside, there were additions to the plot that retained the spirit of the story. That, in my useless film-critic opinion, is what adaptations should be about. I shrug my shoulders at wooden dialogue and awkward teenaged sexual tension, so long as the theme shines through. In great measure, it did here.

I am reminded, though, of how differently I read books at various stages in my life. I never remember caring much about this story, actually. Full of war and politics, I usually passed over it as a more concise version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Today, though, as I see this children's story through adult eyes, I pick up on a theme that never stood out before.

Throughout the movie, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy lament that this journey to Narnia is different from the first. They remember being older, kings and queens with a glorious palace, conquerors in a peaceful and magical world. Their return to Narnia reveals a ruined palace and a dark, divided kingdom, into which they are not welcomed as saviors but scorned for being "just a bunch of kids." Expectations thwarted, they are left to pursue Narnia's redemption in a new way and, profoundly, without the direct intervention of Aslan, the lion Christ figure of the series.

By the time Lucy gets the chance to speak to Aslan face to face, near the end of the movie (and novel) a great deal of bloodshed has already occurred, and I can hear the undertone to her questions. "Where were you? Why didn't you just fix it like last time?"

Her questions come at an apt time for me, as I struggle to the end of the second and more difficult year of my brief teaching career. Two years ago, I was hired during a pay phone conversation in Italy at 9:00 PM, during which I wore linen beach pants and a swimsuit and nervously twirled a pigtail around my finger while I waded through my sun-drenched mind for coherent answers to the serious educational questions posed by a principal on the other side of the world. I returned to the beach to join my friends half an hour later, and we sipped wine and watched the sunset, celebrating our youth and education and my unofficial job offer. The moment was golden, a serendipitous beginning to a teaching career.

It's easy for me--and I suspect for others like me--to be seduced by the times and places that seem fated, knit together in intricate perfection. It's easy for me to demand that this year fit in with the glorious beginning, so that I always teach with grace, serenity, and wisdom, and my students consistently transform into mature and astute academics in the course of a ten-month school year. That would be "like last time," after all.

And Aslan's words are true. It is hard to accept, that a moment of rightness and sureness might seem to stand alone, that it might rather become a marker, reminding me that I am on the right path, instead of the first of many brilliant views. Of course, there have been other splendors along the way and more are ahead, I'm sure, but none will be just the same.

There are days like today, when I have lost my voice to a cold and my students cry, "Shut up! Ms. D can't talk loud today. We have to listen! Let me listen." And I write instructions on a yellow legal pad and they read them aloud to each other, their young voices spilling their compassion into the words I so frantically scribble down. They read sonnets to each other and try to understand, and I remember doing the same thing, nine years ago, on their side of the classroom. I whisper hints to them, rewording to fit into ten inexorable syllables all the wild imaginings of ninth grade poetics.

It's not a job interview in Italy, not a glass of wine and a sunset over the Mediterranean. It's not like last time.

But it's still good.

On Being Seen

I got a tattoo yesterday. At 3:15 PM, I pulled down the shades of my classroom windows, kicked out the three musicians who had been jamming there while I corrected papers, and went to get a tattoo. At the time, this didn't seem inconsistent or even extraordinary. This was no drunken, midnight dare. Though I had been planning this for some time, the actual spark was in an escalating conversation with my brother over Sunday pizza. It went something like this.

Noah: Man, I want a tattoo.

Me: Me too. We should do that.

Noah: Seriously. We should. Tomorrow.

Me: Seriously, I'll do it. But not tomorrow.

Noah: Why not?

Me: I'm busy tomorrow. I have a chiropractor appointment, then I have to go grocery shopping.

Noah: Lame.

Me: Thursday?

Noah: Mm... yeah. OK. Let's do it.

Me: OK.

Noah: I'm making the appointment. I'm calling them. Tomorrow.

Me: Fine! Call them.

Noah: Fine, I will!

And there it was. On Thursday afternoon, we went down to a spotless tattoo parlor in a less spotless neighborhood, showed the glum artist our printed-out designs, and submitted to what felt like the cruel proddings of a ball-point pen for about five minutes each. We were each getting punctuation marks affixed to our skin, for reasons best known to ourselves, the two English literature students and denizens of order and reason. In under an hour, we were back to the car, ready for dinner with our parents. All of this was rather mundane, and except for the exorbitant cost we might have just gone out for Jamba Juice and sketched drawings with Sharpies while we waited for the smoothies.

This morning, I am sitting next to the overhead projector while my students write. I just finished reading "I Sit and Look Out," Walt Whitman's grim portrait of suffering, which seems very appropriate at the end of this naturally disastrous week. I have asked them to begin a free-write with his words. On the screen:

Complete the following sentence:

"I sit and look out at..."

If you run out of ideas, simply start again with the same words. "I sit and look out at..."

Free-write for ten minutes. Your utensil should not leave your paper!

I am pleased with them, my students, writing peacefully their perspectives on the world, for better or worse, while the morning outside begins to get sunny. Their writing is fluid and concentrated, and I marvel at how much better able they are to concentrate now than they were earlier in the year. I glance down at thoughtful, insightful observations about the world, and delight in how seriously they are taking this Friday reflection.

(Later, when the sun really comes out, all of the "looking out" would be literal, and I will have to wade through piles of "I sit and look out at the sun and I wish I was out their instead of in hear riting this. the world is mosly boring because there's nothing to do, EVER, expecially in school..." Spring does bad things to the mind.)

After ten minutes, I drag their attention back to the front of the room and sit back down by the overhead projector.

"Please put down your pencils, ladies and gentlemen. Very nice writing there. I'm impressed, Period Two. Excellent, spectacular free-writing time." They nod their appreciation.

There are two boys in the front row, whose desks are about two feet from where I sit. They are in the front for a reason. I notice mildly that they haven't written a great deal, certainly not ten minutes' worth of solid writing, but I don't comment. One of them raises his hand, and the other quickly follows.

"I'm going to give you a chance to share in a minute, guys. Just wait a second."

"No, no! I have a question!" he insists.

"Um, OK. What's your question?"

"Why do you have a comma on your foot?"

I stare at him for a few seconds, unsure how to answer, my delusions of my students' competence crashing around me. I suddenly understand why he accomplished nothing in the ten minutes of writing time. He has been gazing at my left foot. Still, I was impressed that he at least saw it was a comma. Not everyone knows what a comma was, and only someone who knows me well could have guessed that I would tattoo punctuation onto myself. I could have explained that I liked commas, that they were an expression of rest, rhythm, order, and balance. I could tell them the story, but I am vaguely ruffled. I take another tack.

"Um, why are you staring at my feet?"

"I wasn't. But is that a tattoo, or something?"

"Yes it is. OK, now back to the free-write."

My weak redirection is hopeless. Everyone is involved in this conversation, and I hear questions from all over the room.

"Wait, is that a TATTOO?"

"Are you sure it's a comma? It looks like a little 6, or something."

"What... you have a tattoo, Ms. D? Why?"

"Did that hurt?"

It's like being bombarded by water balloons. The questions break around me, none answered, and I wait paralyzed for the maelstrom to cease. The last question is the only one I am able to field.

"Ms. D, how old were you when you got that?" asks a front-row boy.

I have to smile at this one. "Let's see. Twenty-three."

"And how old are you now?"

"Twenty-three."

"So, you just got it this year."

"Yesterday."

His jaw drops. He shakes his head like a soaking dog, trying to brush away the blurriness of this new development.

"Yesterday? No, you didn't. Do you swear--on your LIFE--that it was yesterday?"

I look at him seriously, putting the full weight of solemnity behind this absurd statement: "I swear, on my life, that I have had a comma tattooed onto my foot for less than twenty-four hours."

I am surprised and rather pleased that they noticed at all, actually, especially as it sometimes takes me weeks to noticed a haircut or a new set of braces. It is tempting to feel invisible as a teacher, to be hurt by the times I am ignored and overlooked, treated more like the side-table you always trip over than a person with ideas, feelings, or intelligence. I laughingly consider how well we know the people we see daily, even those we never make an effort to notice, how soon they recognized even the most mundane of alterations.

The chatter begins again, as the class winds down and I let them put away their journals and backpacks. I hear the hum of interest, and gather that I have gained a notch of credibility by my scheduled, well-thought-out trip to University Avenue. "Did you hear her? On her life, you know?" It was Teacher Appreciation week this week, and though I received no cards or flowers--and more than my fair share of arguments--I suddenly feel appreciated, visible once again to those sharp and wandering ninth-grade eyes.

A Time for Everything

"There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1

Our school is waging war on cell phones. I honestly find it a little precious, really, the earnest indignation that my older colleagues have against "those kids who answer their phones in class." I laugh because the cell phones are merely the latest iteration of a common elder phrase about those who will come next:

"Those kids, with their damn _____________!"

Ten years ago it was skateboards. Before that it was MTV. Before that it was lava lamps, probably. All the way back, every decade or so, until the point where Abraham, who waited for about a hundred years to become a father, looked at his promised son, scowled, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said to his wife, "That Isaac. When will he ever lace up his sandals all the way? He looks just so sloppy!" Cell phones, I suspect, are just this year's malady. They won't go away, of course, but they also won't forever be the dire plague that they seem to be now.

I also laugh because I can count on one hand the number of times that students have actually answered a phone in my class. Call it fear or courtesy if you like; I think they're just smarter than that. The real evil of cell phones lies, I suppose, in the busyness of fingers under the tabletop, the busyness of minds behind seemingly docile faces. But I've yet to control either the tapping pencils or the wondering minds, so I don't quite see the need for a special holy war against cell phones, essentially just another distraction in a distracting world. Kids let their minds wander. I would rather they didn't. It's nothing to get all fired up about.

(Nothing, for me, in comparison to the open check-out that is the Kid with Headphones. Against that piece of discourtesy, I will fight for the rest of my career.)

Still, if I can help them focus I will, so I have spent a ridiculous amount of time calmly placing cell phones in a tin labeled "PHONES," crossing names off of a list of first-time offenders, and eventually delivering them to the anti-phone task force. Just one less thing for them to do other than class, I justify.

Now, we are sitting in the auditorium on a Friday morning. The whole school has gathered for one of our thrice-yearly formal assemblies. This is my favorite of the three, the Multicultural Assembly, so I carefully sit between a few chatty students, carefully ensure that hats are off and phones are closed before the performances begin. I don't want them to miss this, and I certainly don't want to be bothered with noisy kids during my favorite event of the year. After my hair is blown out by the tempests of teenage sighs--which always seem to say, "Oh, you're just such a bother!"--the assembly begins with the fanfare of an Eritrean dance.

For an hour or so we are treated to a parade of nations, to acts in various degrees of quality and coherence, to the interesting kaleidoscope that makes my school more interesting than most. I always feel that my students' eyes are on me during such events, judging from my reactions what is appropriate behavior, so I set my jaw on missed notes, laugh at jokes, and clapp when everyone else does. My students, fidgety and intrigued, follow suit.

Halfway through the assembly, a lone student with braids arrives on the stage. She is a student with special needs, seldom seen in the halls, whom I remember from last year's assembly. The program bills her act as "Already There," which I vaguely remember as the name of a country song I knew in college, with "ASL" in parenthesis after it. The other parenthetical explanations are the names of nationalities, and I doubt that many of my ninth graders will understand that ASL means sign language. Filled with a sense of dread that must come from the cruelest moments of high school movies, I watch as the young lady takes the stage.

The music begins, but it is not the bland and pleasant melody of the country song. Immediately, she shakes her head. No, this is not the song. The sound technicians screech the CD to a halt. Again the music plays, a jumpy reggaeton beat with no words. The long braids are flying now, as she vehemently expresses her irritation with their mistakes. The correct song begins on the third try. She nods, reassured, and begins to sign.

I am tense as the song unfolds. Country music is not appreciated by my students, and I fear that they will not be able to "get over it" for the sake of courtesy. I look around at them, but they seem passively engrossed in the signer's broad movements. She is graceful and deep in concentration, her face a picture of skill and thought.

I don't know who starts it. I see the first cell phones at the first chorus, floating in the semi-darkness of the auditorium. A few students flip them open, and are waving the blue screens over their heads, in the same way that another generation might have waved lighters at Woodstock. Soon enough, hundreds of cell phones are on and waving, turning the floor full of seats into an ocean of phosphorescence, swirling blue squares all around.

The girl on stage pauses, arrested at the sight. She laughs and claps her hands together, delighted, before returning to the song. When she does, her movements are less precise and more expansive. There is a bounce at her knees. And on her face, the widest, most glowing smile I have ever seen.

I love my school in the moment, love them for so infinitely exceeding my expectations in generosity and acceptance. But, oddly, I love cell phones, too, for we have discovered, at last, the time for cell phones.