A lead ball to the heart

I love to brag to every non-teacher I know that I have the easiest job in the world. I tell them about the whole summers-off thing, the endless laughs, the near impossibility of getting fired and ... did I mention summers off?

But sometimes, this job can just wreck you. Oh, I don’t mean tire you out or frustrate you or cause you to blow a gasket because of that one asshole who just won’t stop his bullshit in seventh period every day! Whew, sorry. Gotta settle down and deal with him tomorrow.

No, I’m talking about the occasional shot to the heart that can devastate you, leaving you with a sadness that feels like a ball of lead in your heart. It can last for days, or, in the case I’m about to describe, even weeks. You stick around this job long enough, and one day you wake up and realize you’re pushing 20 years of seeing five and six classes of kids per year, meeting even more kids if you sponsor some extra-curricular activities. You meet that many kids, and you’re bound to hear some incredible life stories, because kids will tell you damn near anything if they know you’ll actually listen and not try to solve every problem by spouting off a few platitudes about hard work and not doing drugs. Some of these stories will shred your heart, and the worst ones are usually the ones relayed in the most matter of fact manner. Which brings me to a few weeks ago.

I sponsor – or coach, if you will – the school’s Speech and Debate team. I don’t know how I even got roped into this. When it comes to speaking, I’m about as articulate the Reverend Jesse eating a peanut butter sandwich. When it comes to debate, my idea of brainy discourse is as follows:

“Fuck you!”

“Yeah, well fuck you, too ... scrote-muncher!” (Winner!)

But I guess the principal figured that since I’m labeled as an English teacher, he’d ask me. One Friday during lunch, the principal came into my room and asked me if I’d start up the Speech and Debate team again. Since I was in a fantastic mood because it was both lunchtime AND Friday, which meant I was just a few short hours away from a crowded Uno’s happy hour, I unthinkingly spit out a “sure” with a mouthful of turkey on wheat.

When you coach Speech and Debate, you aren’t exactly working with the “cool” clique at the school, unless you teach at Young Republican High, and I don’t think you’ll ever find the name Bitters on that faculty roster. Instead, you get those kids who have: good grades, zero athletic ability, a desire to perform, but not enough balls to go out for the school play. The kids are often very smart and willing to work hard, and they put in long hours without much complaining. (Yet more reasons to wonder just how the hell I got involved, as the aforementioned qualities will never be found on my resume.) Perhaps the best function this club serves is that it allows the uncoolest of the uncool to have a place where they can feel like they belong. On a Coolness Scale of 1 to 10, with one being football and the Mock Trial team being 10, Speech and Debate comes in around number 37. These are the kids I work with for over three months each year.

Three years ago, a freshman girl I didn’t know showed up for the initial practice. She was one of the saddest, sloppiest, dirtiest, most unkempt kids I have ever had the sensory displeasure of knowing in this school, and believe me, we draw from some dirty backwater areas. That was three years ago, and little has changed in her personal hygiene department. Not only is she dirty, but she’s also grossly overweight, and she doesn’t carry it well at all. Her stringy hair has a perpetual suffusion of grease and oil. Her clothes, which are two sizes too small and always speckled with food stains, never fit right, showing off the most unflattering rolls upon rolls of fat. Her glasses hang down on the end of her nose, and her black tennis shoes look like chew toys that the family mutt would no longer allow in his shit-filled doghouse. She is devoid of any physical grace, galumphing through the halls without a smile or a friend.

That first year, the other kids tried to ignore her as much as they could, which was easy, because she seldom spoke, and when she did it was nearly inaudible. But as the weeks passed, she started to talk a little bit more and even managed to snag a role on the team. In a Reader’s Digest heartswelling story, this is where I’d describe how eventually she became extremely well-liked and was the best speecher and debater on the team, and how by the end of the season she had snagged a boyfriend, gained the affection of her peers and won the most valuable goddamn debater award!

Well, it didn’t quite work out this way. After three years, the other kids – even the supergeek mondo nerds, don’t like her. She is a very intelligent girl, but she’s never gotten very good at speech and debate. What’s worse, her personality sucks. Even if she weren’t despised for her ungodly appearance (which is what happens in high school, remember?) she’d be pretty much ignored because she’s so unfailingly obnoxious. She’s got the whole package. What’s worse, she knows it, yet she just can’t seem to change one thing about herself. I don’t even like her, and I like damn near everybody at that school.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have an endless supply of pity for her. I can’t imagine what it must be like to walk through the halls as a junior girl with ill-fitting, secondhand clothes, greasy hair, a face that will never, ever be called pretty and the personality of Andy Rooney on decaf. I’ve met her mother a few times, and she’s nothing like her daughter. When I try to figure out how that mother can let her daughter exist in such a gross state, the only explanation I can come up with is that the mother just can’t stand her own daughter and on some perverse level just loves that her daughter is a complete mess.

So every day for over three months I have to deal with seeing a girl who will never know one day of coolness, who will never know what it’s like to have a boy have a crush on her (trust me on this one), who will always be the dirty, ugly, fat, obnoxious girl that no one calls, no one jokes with and no one even likes. That’s heartbreaking enough.

But a few weeks ago, this girl dropped the lead ball smack in the bottom of my already indigo blue heart. I have to drive her home every day, because her parents get home very late, and she wouldn’t be able to do Speech and Debate if I didn’t give her a ride. As much I’d like not to have to be subjected to how bad she makes me feel about the cosmic unfairness of this goddamn haphazard universe, I couldn’t deal with telling her that I wouldn’t be able to drive her home, meaning she couldn’t be on the team this year. So every day, she somehow manages to squeeze herself into my car, and I deal with her smell for the 10 minute ride to her house, at which point she begins the laborious act of peeling herself out of my car so that I can then drive home for 25 more minutes of trying not to gag on the pungent stench she leaves behind.

On this day, she was unusually quiet on the ride home. She usually runs her mouth the entire time we’re in the car, which is easy for her because I’m usually holding my breath. Then she thought of something to say. That something began with the line, “I had to wash my hair, like, three times this morning.” Somehow, I managed not to stop the car and stare at the Exxon Valdez tragedy that is her head and say, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Instead, I kept driving and asked her why. The reason? “My dog peed on my head.” This time I wanted to stop the car so that I could go suck on the exhaust, because this was the saddest thing I had ever heard. That is, until 10 seconds later. When I asked her just how in the hell the dog managed that feat, she informed me that she has to sleep on the living room floor because her younger brothers get the two beds in the one extra bedroom.

That evening, as she struggled to drag her obese body out of my car, I didn’t have to try to hide my disgust, because for once I didn’t feel any. I didn’t notice the smell on the ride home either. I had other things on my mind. And a ball of lead in my heart.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.