What Alexander says he wants to do, throughout the day, is move to Australia and escape his problems. What he learns at the end of the tale, though, is that “Some days are like that. Even in Australia.”
And some mornings are like that. Even in España.
When I arrived at my second period class, which is English with the first graders, the teacher with whom I work said she needed me to help her with something. She said that the teacher-in-training who has been sitting in on our classes would teach the children today, and that she (the teacher) had to grade papers. She wanted me to paint the cork bulletin board in the hallway. She asked me if I was mad at her for asking me, and I said, “No,” because I wasn’t.
She got me paint and rollers. I said I wanted a smock to not ruin my clothing, so she found me one and took a picture on her phone because it is big and green and flowery and not-so-masculine. I started painting and realized that I was going to stain the metal frame which houses the bulletin board, so I told her I needed tape. And I complained about staining my shoes. She got me tape and wrapped trash bags around my shoes.
Then, with the others in class, I set about taping the frame, then painting the border with a detail brush, then rolling the paint on. It was one of my favorite colors: Booger Green. Soon after starting, it dawned on me that there was not enough Booger Green paint in the can to adequately do the job. This bulletin board needed two solid coats of paint to look good, and we had enough paint for three-quarters of a coat.
As I am not the type of person who likes doing something poorly, this frustrated me. That, plus the monotonous painting – up, down, up, down, pushing as hard as possible to eek all the paint I could out of each stroke until my wrist ached – plus the happy sounds coming from inside the classroom, and soon enough I was not a happy camper. Then, toward the end of the period, students entered the hallway and started making fun of me in my big, green, flowery apron, and then the teachers followed suit – everyone telling me how pretty I was, “Hola chica,” etc. Then one student asked me why I was painting, and not the normal teacher.
And that did it.
When she walked out of the class, I gave her the type of dirty look that I rarely give people, the kind that expresses strong displeasure. She asked me what was wrong, and I handed her the paints and said, matter-of-factly, “Estoy aquí para enseñar inglés.”
“I am here to teach English.”
Then I walked off. I tried washing my hands in the bathroom sink, but once I’d covered them in soap, I discovered that the faucets weren’t working. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning.
Wiping my hands off with a paper towel, I went to look for the teacher. By that time, I had re-thought what I’d said and knew that it wasn’t my best moment.
Naturally, she did not want to see or talk to me. I followed her into class and said I wanted to discuss it, so I followed her out of class. She went to the girl’s bathroom with the tray of paint that I’d left her with, and as she scrubbed and scratched it and I twiddled my soapy, painty fingers, I tried to explain myself to her in Spanglish.
Then she ripped me a new one. She let me have it. However you want to say it. She told me I was being childish, and that many times she lets me take it easy in class, and that the one time she asked me to do her a favor, I complained and got all high-and-mighty and said, “I am here to teach English.”
I responded by describing how silly the kids and other teachers had made me feel.”I felt like a fool. I felt like an idiot.”
She told me I was being pretentious and elitist and, in so many words, acting as if I was above doing the work of a teacher that goes on outside the classroom.
Of course, she was right. About everything. I had let myself get frustated about a number of things that weren’t her doing, and I was taking it out on her. She had asked me to do her one favor, and nothing too difficult, and I’d decided to rant and rave against it as if she had deliberately given me the task to ruin my day.
I felt ashamed of what I’d said, and I didn’t want to enter the school cafeteria with all the teachers for fear of them knowing what I’d said, or having to once again confront the teacher, who I consider to be one of my best friends in the school.
She wasn’t there, and she hadn’t told anyone what I’d said (or at least no one hated me), but the other American working at the school was there. He handed me a paper I’d written. It was intended for an online medical journal of sorts, and I asked him to critique it before I submitted it.
He handed it back to me. And he had ripped me a new one. Let me have it. However you want to call it. He basically pointed out a number of areas where my points were completely unsubstantiated by details or facts, and others where I made sweeping generalizations about things I maybe knew something about but was not representing well. At the end, he listed web sites where I could go to learn more about my topic.
For the second time in an hour, I’d been shown, in no fluffy terms, the error of my ways. Looking at the paper, I knew: It was crap. Comeplete and utter crap. It was the kind of thing I might’ve turned in to my high school teacher the morning after prom.
This is not easy stuff to take. The human mind is a stubborn entity, and my natural reaction this morning was to make myself angrier and angrier and reject the criticism that was sent my way. But innately I knew that they were right, and I was wrong. I knew that it was up to me to rectify things. I had to recognize how I was acting, in the first instance, and how bad my writing was, in the second. I had to own up to the day’s situations and let go of my anger.
With a clear head, I will fix the paper. If I submit anything to that medical journal, it will be a completely re-written document.
More importantly, with all the humility I can muster, I will apologize to my friend. Hopefully she will understand that what she asked of me was more than reasonable, and that on most days I would’ve done it with a smile. Hopefully she’ll understand that it wasn’t her, that I’m sorry, and that it was just a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning.
And that some mornings are like that. Even in España.
—— Post-script (day after): She understood. ——
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