This Place is Like Sea World
August 30th, 2005It’s a new semester, and after a short hiatus from teaching, I’m back in front of students who look to me for some kind of guidance and wisdom and entertainment. At least they will never want for the latter. My 8 a.m. section of composition began like any other, with me trying to find whatever paperwork I needed among my compulsively organized but completely unfamiliar 10-tab binder system. Self-sabotage. Just what did I mean by “Possible Materials” when I printed out that neat and lovely label?
Trying to be cool, I sat on one end of the table in front of the room and talked for a while. It was then that I realized it was hot in that room, and even hotter for the dozen students hoping to add if others drop, all panting with longing, longing to learn! So I stood from the aforementioned table with the intention of walking to the door to prop it open.
It was then that my water bottle, sitting open on the other end of the table, launched into the air—like a baby from a see-saw shared by a sumo wrestler, like a liquid circus performer from a canon, like the mouthful of soda you take just before a friend finishes telling the funniest joke in the world—and exploded onto my papers and at two of the first-row students before spinning long enough on the floor to empty half its contents. Picture it now in s l o w … m o t i o n.
The students, unharmed, seemed worried, tense. I accepted this as what we like to call in the pedagogy business a “teachable moment.” “I’m very clumsy and awkward,” I taught them, “You’ll see more of this type of thing from me no doubt.” And we moved on. While they were writing their in-class assignments, I retrieved what I can only describe as Paper-Towels-Placed-by-God-on-the-A/V-Cart and did my best to eliminate the pool in the front of the room.
The moral here is “Don’t try to be cool.” I never seem to learn this one, despite years of hard lessons.
Sarah says these lucky students of mine experienced an event “sort of sitting in the front row at Sea World,” and I like to think that’s true. Meanwhile, I have another section to teach (of poetry), and then I’m off to the instructors’ meeting, where Sarah says I will have the best first-day story, and that I should “work it.” I’m considering stopping in the ladies’ room to douse my hair and clothes so that when I tell it to the other instructors, I can be like, “Oh my God, we were all drenched! It was a gallon jug of water, after all. I mean, look at me!”