(Yesterday, I had to take my son to see the optometrist. As she was putting drops in his eyes, I was reminded of the following incident. Also, my personal email address used to have the words":"justlikenelly" in it. Here is the story behind it. Does there always have to be a story? Yes)
Teaching is challenging-no matter what the grade level, type of school, or background of the children. But this had been a particularly difficult week. We had a new student whose father was going through some health challenges. Another student, Eli, had been the only child for 7 years but now there was to be a new baby in his family. The parents were over-joyed. So Eli hid his conflicted feelings at home, but acted up at school. Finally, we had just been on an exciting but tiring field trip to the beach.
My own biological kids-three active boys under the age of 12-were not exactly a walk in the park either lately. Pre-teen issues had begun to surface.
“Why can’t I have an ear-ring” was a question to be heard roughly every 48 hours in our house. I had tried all types of polite and analytical reasoning- trying to weave in religious and cultural factors in a meaningful way. Now I was ready to respond thus:
“Coz you’re not a girl and GIRLS wear ear-rings”
Although, I loved being with my boys and felt lucky about working at the same school as them, I did need some time alone every now and again.
One day, my husband decided to pull them out of school for Take Your Child to Work Day. As I saw them leave, I was happy that they would have a wonderful learning experience but felt sinfully glad that I had one whole delicious day entirely to myself.
So did I want to do first? I was so unused to time alone, it took me a while to figure out what how best to occupy myself: the choices were wide-ranging:
Beat the world record for reading “Pride and Prejudice?”
Write in my journal?
Eat a large amount of Swiss chocolate?
Tough decision. How decadent did I want to be today? My lower self was drawn towards the television as I found myself wanting to watch the least taxing show on. This was not the time for the PBS Special on Winston Churchill’s War Years nor the second in the series of Discovery Channel’s Fascinating Facts about Amphibians” to which I would normally be glued. No, I needed something completely mindless. I flipped the channels and suddenly stopped on one of those True Celebrity documentaries and was initially struck by the incredibly beautiful young singer they were profiling. Then the cryptic announcement: “We’ll be right back with the true Story of Nelly Furtado”intrigued me further. We had grown up with a family with the last name,”Furtado”. They were Indian Catholics ( I wrote about them in “Teen Trouble”) I had not heard that name other than our beloved Furtado family. As a child, I did not know about the Portuguese Catholic missionaries in India and grew up thinking Furtado was a Hindi name!
Nelly was being filmed going from concert to concert and the camera showed hundreds of screaming fans trying to touch Nelly’s hand or just hoping she would look their way. I deduced that she must be quite famous. Then Nelly admitted that her favorite part about being a pop star was meeting the fans. She was generous with autographs and tried to shake hands with anyone who came her way. I don’t know what it was that made me suddenly envy her seemingly easy lifestyle. Scores of adoring fans, limousines, fancy hotels, glamour, wealth- popularity. Needless to say, I was having a superficial 3 minutes and allowed myself to give way to utter envy.
The next day I was back at work, grumbling. I had forgotten all about my eye doctor appointment at lunch-time. I arranged for another teacher to cover my lunch duty and the math lesson immediately following it. I had spent the early hours writing out detailed plans for the substitute and wondered bitterly if it was more work to be absent from school than present. Continuing in this disgruntled mood I went to my appointment.
The optometrist did a test where she put some colored drops in my eyes. He then instructed me to wear a pair of cardboard sunglasses for the next hour or so so that the light wouldn’t hurt my eyes.
I returned to school just as recess was ending and hoped to slip back into class unnoticed. But one of my students, Janine, who had gone back inside the building to retrieve a wayward basketball spotted me and, started screaming, Look !, Teacher’s back! She looks like a movie star!!
Suddenly there was a stampede. Then my movie buff, Nathan, who had clearly stayed up late to watch the Oscars last night suggested, giggling:
“Let’s get Teacher’s autograph,”
Before long, a line had formed with eager second graders each clutching a piece of recycled paper from our mini” Publishing Center”.
So I played along with the hilarious, flattering game. They were raiding the writer’s workshop table which had not seen this much action for weeks. Markers were flying everywhere. I signed every single piece of paper peering through those sunglasses and laughing the whole time. I defy even Angelina Jolie to feel as adored as I did at that moment.The look on these childrens’ faces was the same look I had seen on Nelly’s screaming fans the previous night on T.V.
In what other context would you see a 5 foot tall Indian woman, with a headscarf , being idolized by hordes of youngsters.
Teachers’fringe benefits.
But we are ALL “Just Like Nelly” for someone in our life. A child, a spouse, a loved-one. I pray that I can live up to even a fraction of their appreciation of me.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I wrote the above piece several years ago and I no longer teach elementary school and now all three of my boys are teenagers who probably view me as a border-line senior citizen, completely out of touch with reality! I did keep those paper sunglasses for years to remind me what I needed to live up to.
During a recent trip to London, my mother showed me a suitcase that contained art projects we had done as children, cards we had made on Mother’s Day and every single letter I had written after moving to the U.S. and before the invention of email.I had no idea my parents had kept all this memorabilia.
I realize now that the people for whom we will always be Nelly are our parents. If we are fortunate enough to still have them-one or both- let’s cherish the time we have with them. No one else can love us THAT unconditionally. And if they are no longer here, as believers, we are fortunate that we can always pray for them, or we can do something that would make them proud of us.
So did I want to do first? I was so unused to time alone, it took me a while to figure out what how best to occupy myself: the choices were wide-ranging:
Beat the world record for reading “Pride and Prejudice?”
Write in my journal?
Eat a large amount of Swiss chocolate?
Tough decision. How decadent did I want to be today? My lower self was drawn towards the television as I found myself wanting to watch the least taxing show on. This was not the time for the PBS Special on Winston Churchill’s War Years nor the second in the series of Discovery Channel’s Fascinating Facts about Amphibians” to which I would normally be glued. No, I needed something completely mindless. I flipped the channels and suddenly stopped on one of those True Celebrity documentaries and was initially struck by the incredibly beautiful young singer they were profiling. Then the cryptic announcement: “We’ll be right back with the true Story of Nelly Furtado”intrigued me further. We had grown up with a family with the last name,”Furtado”. They were Indian Catholics ( I wrote about them in “Teen Trouble”) I had not heard that name other than our beloved Furtado family. As a child, I did not know about the Portuguese Catholic missionaries in India and grew up thinking Furtado was a Hindi name!
Nelly was being filmed going from concert to concert and the camera showed hundreds of screaming fans trying to touch Nelly’s hand or just hoping she would look their way. I deduced that she must be quite famous. Then Nelly admitted that her favorite part about being a pop star was meeting the fans. She was generous with autographs and tried to shake hands with anyone who came her way. I don’t know what it was that made me suddenly envy her seemingly easy lifestyle. Scores of adoring fans, limousines, fancy hotels, glamour, wealth- popularity. Needless to say, I was having a superficial 3 minutes and allowed myself to give way to utter envy.
The next day I was back at work, grumbling. I had forgotten all about my eye doctor appointment at lunch-time. I arranged for another teacher to cover my lunch duty and the math lesson immediately following it. I had spent the early hours writing out detailed plans for the substitute and wondered bitterly if it was more work to be absent from school than present. Continuing in this disgruntled mood I went to my appointment.
The optometrist did a test where she put some colored drops in my eyes. He then instructed me to wear a pair of cardboard sunglasses for the next hour or so so that the light wouldn’t hurt my eyes.
I returned to school just as recess was ending and hoped to slip back into class unnoticed. But one of my students, Janine, who had gone back inside the building to retrieve a wayward basketball spotted me and, started screaming, Look !, Teacher’s back! She looks like a movie star!!
Suddenly there was a stampede. Then my movie buff, Nathan, who had clearly stayed up late to watch the Oscars last night suggested, giggling:
“Let’s get Teacher’s autograph,”
Before long, a line had formed with eager second graders each clutching a piece of recycled paper from our mini” Publishing Center”.
So I played along with the hilarious, flattering game. They were raiding the writer’s workshop table which had not seen this much action for weeks. Markers were flying everywhere. I signed every single piece of paper peering through those sunglasses and laughing the whole time. I defy even Angelina Jolie to feel as adored as I did at that moment.The look on these childrens’ faces was the same look I had seen on Nelly’s screaming fans the previous night on T.V.
In what other context would you see a 5 foot tall Indian woman, with a headscarf , being idolized by hordes of youngsters.
Teachers’fringe benefits.
But we are ALL “Just Like Nelly” for someone in our life. A child, a spouse, a loved-one. I pray that I can live up to even a fraction of their appreciation of me.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I wrote the above piece several years ago and I no longer teach elementary school and now all three of my boys are teenagers who probably view me as a border-line senior citizen, completely out of touch with reality! I did keep those paper sunglasses for years to remind me what I needed to live up to.
During a recent trip to London, my mother showed me a suitcase that contained art projects we had done as children, cards we had made on Mother’s Day and every single letter I had written after moving to the U.S. and before the invention of email.I had no idea my parents had kept all this memorabilia.
I realize now that the people for whom we will always be Nelly are our parents. If we are fortunate enough to still have them-one or both- let’s cherish the time we have with them. No one else can love us THAT unconditionally. And if they are no longer here, as believers, we are fortunate that we can always pray for them, or we can do something that would make them proud of us.
3 comments:
Very much enjoyed this. Please rummage through your literary closet more often- it's really a treasure chest disguised as a pile of paper! I like the difference of perspectives as tempered by time and experience.
Someone said something about an anniversary....Tic toc
Nag nag nag-o-rama on YouSeeMyFaceTwitter.
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