Today's Lesson: Things that makes us who we are or will become...

This is a little narrative that I wrote years ago, but it says a little about me...

Evil: "Morally wrong or bad" - Webster

I was about nine years old the first time I came into contact with EVIL, or at least what I perceived it to be at the time. His name was Nicholas Cox and he was my brother Derek’s friend. I remember the day, vividly, it was a brilliant sunny day in late May and Nicholas had come over with the sole prospect of traumatizing me for the rest of my life. I was entertaining myself (with angelic dignity) in the den with my favorite doll (it was in fact the Cinderella Barbie doll), trying to decide if she should wear her blue or white dress for the arrival of the prince. It was no sooner that I looked up to see who had come into the room, that a grubby white freckled little hand reached down, snatching my beloved doll out of my hands. I am still haunted by what happened next.

There he was running around with my doll, laughing a purely evil laugh as she plummeted to the ground from the catwalk above. I can almost swear that I heard her scream as she fell what must have been a mile in Barbie measurements. The smacking sound of her plastic body against the tile was enough to send me screaming to Derek.

I have heard it said many times since then that “good always triumphs over EVIL”, but the dark side was just too strong to save Cindy that day. Derek tried to save her, more out of fear of our mom than out of fear for what was sure to befall Cindy. It was a valiant attempt to save himself, I mean Cindy, but in the last she ended up decapitated. There she was her body in one of those grubby white freckled hands and in the other he dangled her head by the pony tail in front of me.

The next week Nicholas was forced to buy me a new Barbie doll by his mom (it was in fact the super long hair Barbie). I decapitated that one myself out of spite. As a result of the actions of this messenger of darkness, I have since then developed an unadulterated hatred of dolls.

Today’s Lesson: Letting go, or at least trying to.

Graduation is fast approaching, an event for which we have all been looking forward to. But now that it is so close, I feel a tinge of pain in my heart. I find myself nervous for the lives that they are about to embark on. I hope that they are ready; I hope that I have helped prepare them; I hope that they will be happy. All that I can simply say is that even though we still have 5 days left together, I miss them. It amazes me how attached you can become to these odd creatures we call teenagers. I am not a parent, but I imagine that this is what it feels like on the day a parent realizes that their child is no longer a child. You are proud yet devastated, relieved but apprehensive. And though the event is joyous, there is a side of you that wishes they could stay with you forever.

But in an effort to ease the pain of those who will miss the students, less sentimental teachers have put together a BBQ in which we will have some highly entertaining events. We will wipe our tears away while the staff put on rented Sumo suits and wrestle to the bitter end. What better way to ease my pain, than to give me the opportunity to body slam someone? All I have to say is, “Library Clerk, your butt is mine”!!!

Today’s Lesson: Vatos at the Gym and a Unique Gift Idea for Teacher Appreciation Week…

My daily routine begins with a trip to the gym, bright and early and with a tinge of resentment. It is there, that every morning I see a particular friendly neighborhood vato. He is handsome, in his late 20s, and not the kind of person that you would ever go up to and start a conversation with. He has “I could kill you with a tooth-pick” written all over his face. To top it all off, he is an extreme fighter. The dude gets paid to beat the crap out of people. Scary? I think so. Did you know that extreme fighters get a new tattoo after they win a fight? Well, now you do. And guess what, he is covered in them! On one occasion at the gym, he approached me and very politely asked if he could use the machine I was on when I finished. I froze, my life, for a brief second, flashed before my eyes. What could I say? I couldn’t even move! All I kept think was, “he could kill me with a tooth-pick” and “is that a new tattoo?”. After what felt like an eternity, I managed to give my consent.

The hard exterior of such individuals can scare us common folk. But really, they are people too. They have feelings just like me and you. And just to prove that even people with the “I could kill you with a tooth-pick” look can be nice, here is a little proof…

This week is teacher appreciation week. Teachers wait all year for it. We get candy, flowers, food, and other random but meaningful gifts. I told my students that I personally like diamonds, but they gave me something even better. I received a special thug life gift from my students as a token of teacher appreciation. An initiation of sorts, if you will. I, yes I was given the gift of a gang sign by my students.

How many of you can say you have your own designer gang sign? I didn’t think so. It is nice to know that each day when my students come to class and hold up that upside down peace sign with a thumb making a horizontal line, they are really saying, “Adams, we love you”.