Prose

"That’s the thing about Amendment 28. I remember sitting in school and reading the newest addition to our constitution, the one part of history class that felt vital to me at the time:

'Per the consequences of the Great War and at the behest of humanity’s moral code and ethical necessity, each individual living within the agreed-upon boundaries of this nation consent to the temporary elimination of the senses, to be gradually returned every five years.'

The federal law was passed decades before I was born, and to this day, I cannot imagine how our government agreed to establish this change nor how they convinced the rest of society to comply. When I asked my mother about it as a child, she rubbed the back of her neck, juices of the meat smearing the base of her skull and told me that war changes a great many minds, and it was time people learned to appreciate what they had.

Then, she had me dice the yellow onions on the wooden cutting board, my eyes stinging  as the particles misted my face.

I miss that pain."

"No one told me it would be this intricate and complicated. I would have appreciated it if someone put a warning label on this career to let me know to expect nothing except that everything changes and yet all things stay the same. The students move on, the lessons reformulate, the district “shakes things up,” but it’s the same story, same career, same you. Teaching is a compilation of narrative moments and a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events that cannot be predicted, yet the pattern of uncertainty is there.

Nevertheless, as human beings, we desire order amongst the chaos, a single entity created from many. So this is it; this is our teaching story played and lived through year after year.

Teaching is a cautionary tale."