Three Muskateers (Cubed)

Last June, I quit my job as a retail manager and went back to school.  I'm in a school immersion master of arts in teaching program, which basically consists of 39 credits, a student teaching internship in an urban public high school with a mentor teacher, and a very long commute.  It's a ten month program, and I graduate in May.  Most of my experience has been positive in that I feel very close to the 15 other people in my cohort, I have a great mentor teacher, and the students are sweet.  I have dealt with the commute by using Audible.com, and no, they did not pay me to write that.  (Oh, but I wish they had!)

I have two friends in my cohort who complain with me more than the others.  (Though they are all excellent complainers, which is a fine quality indeed.)  Min and Shardae are my favorite complainers.  They have style.

Min is a stealth complainer.  She is very earnest, smart, and hard working.  One would never know that she complains at all.  In fact, I hardly do.  We are too busy to really talk anymore, so we gchat (and Google didn't pay me to say that either, sadly.)  She chats me about papers and students and professors.  Her complaints are all quite reasonable and mild, which makes me feel superior somehow to the things and people we are complaining about, since Min and I are both clearly Supreme Beings if we can be so level-headed when irked.

Shardae is more of an irreverent slacker.  She is an eye roller, a sigher, a blatant texter during lectures, and she sees the pointlessness in almost everything.  This is, I have found, an underrated skill.  She complains so well I almost want to cheer.  Truly, one has to be grateful when one's friend is capable of turning shared misery into a standing ovation.  Plus, she procrastinates, but never panics.  She is sneakily supportive about my pathetic job search, and she's funny.

I'm grateful for my cohort in general--I don't know how anyone gets a masters in ten months without one.  But I am extra grateful for Shardae and Min.  This kind of effortless friendship always seems to happen in threes.

Ari is in a new (3-year-old) classroom at his school.  He moved there in January.  With all of the snow days, illnesses, and staffing changes at his school, it has been a rough transition.  His teachers have been complaining to me that he is not always listening.  Because I am training to be a teacher, this sends me into an absolute tizzy of fear.  I imagine he has oppositional defiant disorder and 17 other emotional-behavioral disabilities.  You know, the ones I see in my students and learn about and study every single day.  Of course he has no other symptoms and is generally quite eager to please, but logic has about as much to do with parenting as marshmallow peeps have to do with shoes.

Today I arrived at school to pick Ari up, and his teacher told me that he had listened so poorly that he was not allowed to go outside during recess.  He and his two friends Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt (I share her last name because I like the southern sound of it.) were all throwing toys on the floor and laughing hysterically.  They all had to stay in during recess.

For some reason, the idea that it was a group rebellion made me relax about the whole thing.  Watching Ari with Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt, I saw their bond more than their disruption.  I saw his pleasure in being with them, and it reminded me of some non-listening, disruptive moments in my own life.  It reminded me of Min and Shardae and I, all grown women, whining and refusing to listen to the instructions for our papers and research projects.  It reminded me of another time, too.

When I was in seventh grade, I was on a school bus with two of my friends, Gabriella and Amy, and we were doing something disruptive.  I don't remember what it was.  The window was open, and I was sitting in the seat next to it.  Gabriella was on my left.  Amy was across the aisle, standing up.  (She was supposed to be sitting.)  The bus was moving; the wind was in my hair; the sun was shining.  Someone was yelling at us.  We were not listening.  I was smiling, and I recall this feeling of unity with Amy and Gabriella, this feeling of knowing my place and being at home in it and knowing that my friends and I were rebellious and cool.  It is one of my favorite memories, in spite of its vagueness, because it holds a feeling which I have rarely reclaimed.  Still, when I think of it, I am almost breathless at the sense of well-being it evokes.  It was a euphoric moment, one that I would not trade.

So, when I think of my son not listening with Lulu and Ms. Hunnicutt, throwing toys on the floor and laughing, I hope for him to have that kind of joy.  I hope that when he is 38, he has a memory like mine.  And I don't worry anymore.