Teachers best people on Earth
Years ago, I was pulling weeds next to the back fence when I overheard two young children playing in the neighbor’s yard. One, a boy, was trying to impress the other, a girl.
The two were playing make-believe. I heard the boy, in his most intimidating don’t-argue-with-me-unless-
you’re-stupid tone of voice, say, “You know what I am? I’M A DIGIT! YOU KNOW WHAT A DIGIT IS, DON’T YOU?”
While trying not to burst out laughing, I continued to weed, wondering what kind of “digit” he was talking about.
Did he mean “digit” as in “digit of distinction,” that ambidextrous euphemism for a four-letter word?
Or did he mean “binary digit,” eight of which can hold the decimal values zero to 255? Nothing threatening about that unless you think binary math is part of a secret society’s plot to take over the Northwest using black helicopters.
Maybe there was a new-and-improved digit, a concatenation of 16 (two bytes or four “nibbles”) capable of holding decimal values clear up to 65,535. Now that’s impressive when you realize that “64K” is decimal shorthand for that selfsame value.
But I don’t think they teach binary math to children that young, do they?
Was there, perhaps, some toy I had yet to hear about, a beast with five fingers that counted while it strangled its victims?
Perhaps more unsettling was the fact that the boy sounded like me when I was younger, when I was going to be a teacher.
If I could go back and slap anybody from my high school days, it would be all those adults who never told me I was delusional.
They actually gave me a scholarship because, out of an absolutely appalling lack of self-awareness, I said I wanted to teach high school students.
Maybe they had some money left in the budget and had to spend it before the end of the year – I don’t know.
But it was a mistake.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anybody – least of all, yours truly – that, after some education classes and substitute-teaching experience, secondary education and I parted ways.
Yet, still in denial, I focused my educational aspirations on a higher level, ending up with a California community college lifetime teaching credential and two years’ experience as part-time guest lecturer at the University of California at Irvine.
“Lecturer” was the operative word.
Imagine what my classes were like. “That’s an OCTAVE, James! YOU KNOW WHAT A PERFECT OCTAVE IS, DON”T YOU?”
As far as I know, I never was burned in effigy.
Blame it on my teachers – I had so many good ones, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps.
I loved most of my teachers. I was inspired by them.
They challenged me, encouraged me and opened my mind to the wonders of form, shape, color, texture and sound.
They taught me how to speak a foreign language and how to analyze a fugue and diagram a sentence.
They taught me about digits of the physical and binary kind and how to count to 64K and beyond.
They gave me opportunities to stretch my wings and not hurt myself – just a little embarrassment now and then.
Teachers are some of the best people on the planet.
Sure, they don’t work a full 12 months in the classroom – they work 12 months in less than 10.
Then they take classes during the summer to meet continuing-education requirements and work up the pay scale.
Many, many teachers also purchase school supplies out-of-pocket.
Most function as surrogate parents, dealing every day with fights, fads, feelings and fetishes.
And oh, by the way, they teach our community’s kids to read, write, draw and do math and, perhaps most importantly, how to get along with one another.
Teachers are one of the cornerstones of our society.
I was blessed and inspired by them.
Too bad I didn’t have the skills to be one.