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.
I suppose the magical power I am proudest of is my ability to magically make people laugh at me. (Yes, they always say they are laughing with me, not at me… but we all know how humor really works. We laugh because we are really happy that it didn’t happen to us!) I am able to put on the clown nose and people automatically laugh almost as hard as they laugh at me without the clown nose. I am able to say things in weird words that stimulate your brain to shout silently in your head, “That jest ain’t right!”, and you automatically think, “Funny!” So, with all this magical power, I have concluded… I am a wizard!
Life is fraught with all sorts of real dangers, and I face them all every day. But I also suffer from acrophobia, the fear of heights. And I can tell you for a fact that it is not a real thing. It is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to get up on a ladder and paint the house. It makes it difficult to walk next to the railing in any balcony. And yet, I have proof that is a phony fear, a goofy fear, an all-in-your-head sort of thing. Not only do I face it and overcome it (I have been able to paint the house), but I love the window seat when riding in an airplane. Looking out the window after take-off is an adventure better than any video game. I love to fly. That irrational fear is a different irrational fear.
I must post upon this holiday because I am trying to post every single day of 2015. I am only 35 days away from completing that goal. And, though I have been in poor health and struggling through each and every day of the year, I like to think I am like the cardinal, the little red bird that never flies away when the winter comes. I am thankful that I have made it this far and that my family is alive and healthy. I am thankful that I have completed a teaching career that I can feel proud of. I am thankful that life is full and rich and full of the resonating music of the great symphony of existence.
Catch a Falling Star 