Sometimes ideas for essays find me instead of making me find them. It happened to me again tonight. I have been posting a lot of liberal political gook on Facebook lately to see how many of my conservative friends will shoot me a mad-faced “like” or write a comment about how stupid and blind and ignorant I am (with the word ignorant misspelled). One angry face came from Ronald Broccoli (not his real name because I don’t do that to students). I thought I knew who that was. But I just couldn’t place the name. Then he messaged me on Facebook chat asking if I didn’t remember him from Creek Valley Middle School. He was an eighth grader in my English class during the worst year I ever endured as a teacher. That was the year I had all the worst kids available in the whole school so that the other English teacher on our team could have only good ones. I had all the emotionally disturbed kids, the low socio-economic-level kids, the kids with discipline files thicker than Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. It was the year that my diabetes kept depleting my blood sugar to the point that I couldn’t remember my own name by the afternoon. I even got lost one afternoon and found myself in Lewisville, the next city over, by mistake, completely lost, but in a restaurant and needing to eat, with absolutely no money on me anywhere. But Ronny was not one of the bad kids. (In fact, there were truly no bad kids in my classes, just kids with expectations totally stacked against them. I was just in very poor shape to deal with them.) He told me on Facebook that though I was only his teacher for a very short time, I had a big impact on him and his confidence in himself, and that he would never forget me. If you want to know the truth, he made me cry. Not tears of unhappiness… tears of joy. Even if you are lying, if you say something like that to one of your former teachers, you are going to make him or her cry.
This video of Miss Watson is also something that I encountered on Facebook. I should warn you. If you watch it, she cries in the video, and you will probably cry too if you don’t remove your heart and hide it safely in your sock drawer first.
I had a wonderful teacher once too. Her name was Mrs. Houser (That is her real name, because I won’t embarrass her… but I need everybody to know she was a life-changing sort of teacher too.) When she accepted my friend request on Facebook, I wrote a note on her wall. I said, “I just wanted you to know that I recently retired after 31 years of being a teacher in middle school and high school. And a number of my former students have found me on Facebook and told me how much of a difference I made in their lives and how much I meant to them. I wanted you to know that you were that wonderful, inspiring teacher for me, and I couldn’t have done it without you.” That goopy little comment got more likes on Facebook than anything else I have ever written. People all over the United States were adding their thumbs-up to that post. They were her family and former students. And it wasn’t about me. It was about her. Teachers throw stones into the pools that are the lives of their students. And sometimes they can muddy the water, but more often than not, they make a splash that needed to be made, and the ripples of it can flow all the way to the ocean.
So, what is this really about? I have just revealed a secret to you. If you remember any of your teachers, and you need to get even with them, or you just need to pass it on, now you know how to make them cry… and feel good about it at the same time.
Catch a Falling Star 
I Have No Idea
Yesterday I posted a weird picture that I haven’t used before and made myself cry gushers of tears again for the boy the picture is a portrait of. I suppose it is a catharsis I didn’t really need. I woke up today with a blistering headache to keep my perpetual backache company. Could that have been caused by the crying and the blues that ensued? Probably.
So, I have no idea for today. My brain hurts and my heart is burned out.
I checked Facebook where I had posted this quote from Malala ;
I wasn’t really prepared for controversy. I should’ve been. It is obvious from the guns versus books graphics that it would stir emotions in my liberal author and teacher friends, as well as my conservative cracker anti-Muslim friends.
My aunt, a former career teacher, responded first. She wrote, “Like the thought.” She was a great third grade teacher in Iowa for many years. She loved all kids then and still does today. I want to be like that in retirement too.
But the next response was from a former high school friend who voted for Trump and hates all the people the Republican Party orders him to hate.
“Sounds great like most sound bites. Much harder to explain and implement.” My friend, Ali Hassenbutter (not his real name, but this will make him angry as well as protect his actual identity), likes to take jabs at me for being a liberal, and the subtext here is that, even though I was a teacher for many years, I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to education. So, I answered him with some heartfelt teacher-ism.
“I had Egyptian and Lebanese and Arab students in my classes at Garland ISD. They are people just like us. You help them learn English. They make American friends. Americans learn that most Muslims are not terrorists. What’s so complicated about that? Unless you start slamming doors in their faces and treating them as less valuable than you are.” I admit to maybe being a bit snarky in that last line, but sometimes he gets my goat. (I know I should just let him have it. I have never liked my goat that much anyway. It smells bad.)
A fellow ESL teacher from Garland chimed in even though she doesn’t know Ali. “And these students added spice in our classroom… Just like they do in the USA.” She knows all the students I was referencing.
Then one of my other Belmond classmates who knows and probably detests us both as heathens added his words of wisdom, “The real concept here is that we are in fact ALL HUMAN.” See there? The Bible banger gets it. And I really appreciate when he steps in and tries to make peace. He’s somewhat nutty at times, but his new-found religion allows him to believe like I do that we should choose love over hate as our default response, even to terrorism.
But Ali comes back with; “It takes both approaches to this problem. But then there is Berkley as a shining example of education gone off the rail.” He’s at least trying to sound like he is listening to our comments, but then he pulls this old red hot chestnut out of the fireplace. He offers it like the opinion of the crazy, racist uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner.
“Yes, because it was the teachers’ fault at Berkley. That poor young racist agitator from Breitbart was supposed to have a peaceful forum for spewing his hateful mouth garbage at young liberal college students, and the college administrators who granted him that right didn’t bend over backwards far enough to prevent a violent reaction.” I know, sarcasm is the resort of the defeated. I should be championing love over hate and freedom of speech over my personal revulsion to Milo.
My teacher friend had this to add; “I understand the “right” instigated that incident.”
“Yes, but they wore masks to hide their identity. That makes them automatically liberals, doesn’t it? If I am able to follow Fox News Logic, anyway.” Sez I.
And so, there we stand, at the very beginning of a month-long Facebook love/hate debate. And I will lose. You can argue with brick walls and score more debate points than you can arguing anything political with Ali. And the frustrating thing is, he’s an ordinary decent human being and stand-up guy too. Not just a dismiss-able deplorable because he voted for Trump.
I have no ideas today. I have a headache. If I can’t defend Malala’s heroic logic, then I can’t even argue my way out of a bowl of chicken soup. Doomed to drown in chicken broth. At least I will die healthy at the bottom of that mixed metaphor. That should be worth a laugh.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, compassion, education, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, Liberal ideas, politics, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as arguments about education, Facebook friends, Malala