Every Dungeons and Dragons player, especially game masters, know about the oubliette. In the foundations of towers in the castles of the French you often find a windowless room with the only entrance in the ceiling. It is a dark hole where you throw captives you want to simply forget. In fact, the name comes from the word in Middle French, “oublier” which translates to “forget”. Now, of course, as a former school teacher, I know about oubliettes. I have been in one more than once. I have tossed bad kids in there more than once. But the thing I had to learn about “forget holes” is that there is always a way out.
I had a principal who decided I had betrayed him because he overheard me talking sympathetically to a teacher he had been berating for asking that he discipline students she sent to him for disruptive behavior. He overheard me saying that he would be more understanding if he tried to manage a class himself once in a while. For my indiscretion he took away my gifted class and gave me in its place a class composed entirely of students who had been repeatedly sent to him by teachers for being disruptive and unmanageable. It was a class from hell. Really… from hell… Satan’s stepson was the first student he put in that class. I was told I would have to discipline them entirely without help from him. But as tough as it is teaching twenty dysfunctional learners at once with no outside help, it was do-able. In fact, I liked some of the kids in that class. (Hated some too, though, because you can’t always like every kid no matter how crappy they act.) I didn’t manage to teach them much English. They all spoke Skuggboy fluently the whole time. But I did endure. In fact, when that principal was suddenly jobless two-thirds of the way through the year and replaced by a new principal, I got a chance to get some back. She overhead Satan’s stepson doing his comic stand-up routine in response to my specific directions and came in to remind him who was in charge in the classroom and who deserved respect. That reminder lasted for a good fifteen minutes and was a prelude to a parent-principal conference that same afternoon. I saw his evil smile turned upside down for the first time that school year.
Whenever I put a student in the oubliette (asked them to stand outside the classroom door until I could talk to them about their bad behavior) I never left them there more than five minutes. I would quickly give the class the directions they needed to continue on their own, and then I would go out to execute the prisoner. It usually was an explanation of how I wanted them to behave, and then giving them a choice, whether they wanted to go back in and do the right thing, or they wanted to visit the office with a written explanation by me of exactly what they did wrong. Even though nothing would probably happen to them in the office, they rarely chose that option.
So, there is always a way out… but there are many forms of the oubliette, and no one is immune to being sent there.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Man with One White Eye
I might be going blind. With a year and a half to go to finish paying off my Chapter 13 bankruptcy, I don’t have the money to pay off the eye specialist the ophthalmologist referred me to in order to get my glaucoma treated.
Odin traded one eye to gain wisdom.
What do you suppose I can get for two?
If you look someone in the eye, you can see revealed the light and the darkness that person carries within. You can tell if someone is thoughtful and intelligent or reckless and stupid by gauging it in their eyes.
Look at these eyes above. What do you see?
One has warm, brown eyes, looking directly at me… evaluating, pondering, imagining me.
The other has chilly blue eyes, looking past me… probably seeing only what’s in his head… not actually me.
If I go blind, I will no longer be able to see that, appreciate that, or even draw that anymore.
Of course, the power of that depends more upon the mind doing the looking then the eyes that take in the light and the details.
I have a chance to be okay on that second score, the mind behind the eyes. I have a good one that has had a lot of practice interpreting the world I see. And I have learned more than a few things that I can still teach and pass on to those I leave behind me.
Thirty-one years as a public school teacher means I have already taught a lot of things to a lot of people.
And I now have 19 books published, with two more I may be able to finish and publish before May of 2021 is through.
Those represent things that I can do to continue to teach the world even after my eyes are no longer working… or even if my light has entirely left the world in the near future. Of course, a lot depends on people reading what I wrote. Still, I feel good about that. I got a five-star review on Amazon from my book The Baby Werewolf just today. And the comments prove the reader actually read the book and liked it for its good qualities.
Wisdom, of course, has little value if it is never passed on. How much have you benefitted from the wisdom of Soren Kierkegaard? Do you even know who he is? Notice too, the students of Chiron in the picture, do not seem to be paying any attention at all to the lecture from the scroll of ancient wisdom. Heracles is practicing with his bow. Theseus is grinning to himself about wrestling. And Jason and Achilles are telling each other jokes about guys that have a horse’s butt instead of a man’s. ( Teaching, of course, is always like that.)
But the man with one white eye, one blinded eye, Odin, has earned his wisdom. And he gives it freely as a gift.
So, just think what wonderful gifts I might be able to provide by next Christmas if I lose both eyes. (Of course, I am not suggesting I am secretly Santa Claus… And if you can prove that I am, well… that puts you on the Naughty List.)
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