Back To School

I have new school supplies. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to buy some, but I went to Office Depot and got some Sharpies, ink cartridges for my printer, a new pair of scissors, a battery-operated pencil sharpener, and a Rolodex. The Rolodex is for the contacts I’ve been accumulating at record pace, largely due to the Spencer Program.

I used to love getting school supplies. Pee-Chees. Pencil boxes. Crayons. I often tell the story of how my second grade teacher, Mrs. Taylor, made all of us break our new Crayolas in half. “So you’ll have two of each color,” she said. I can still see her brunette flip; I realize only in hindsight that there must have been a lot of AquaNet in that hair. When Mrs. Taylor gave us that instruction, I knew I was going to be in trouble.

Everyone I tell this story to sympathizes. How terrible! I didn’t want to break my beautiful, clean, shiny, waxy Crayolas in half! Neither did a lot of the other kids. Now I see my teacher’s practical point, but it might have been just as useful to let us keep our crayons whole; if we lost one, we’d have to ask our neighbor if we could borrow his Burnt Sienna or Cornflower. We’d learn how to ask, say “please” and “thank you.” Or maybe she thought we’d learn how to steal…and fight. To take someone’s Goldenrod or Aquamarine when he wasn’t looking. I remember that our pencil boxes were milk cartons with one side cut out. We wrapped them in yellow construction paper and decorated them. They looked like boats.

Anyway, I have to prep for my first class next week. I’m trying to convince myself that I know what I’m doing. I take comfort in the fact that I taught high school seniors last year, and so it’s like I get to teach them again this year…only for 15 weeks instead of one. I also take comfort in the fact that I said I wanted a do-over for college. Well, I can’t imagine what would be more of a do-over than having to teach students myself. I was reading some of the selections in the Norton Anthology I’ll be using, and was gratified by the awareness that I have become a better reader than I once was, that a story like Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” is more layered and interesting than I remembered. I have the freedom to assign other works, and am thinking that the opening story in this recent collection The Boat, by Nam Le, raises the same questions and sets out the same issues as the Grace Paley story in the Norton. Do I dare disturb the universe? Why the heck not!