The Fine Art of Not Knowing

   Mike McCarthy, press secretary for President Bill Clinton, once said his job was best described as "the fine art of telling the truth slowly."  The truth of my life (at least for the next month) is unfurling ever so slowly and I wish I understood more of the story now.  Two weeks from tomorrow is the first day of school.  One week from tomorrow I will discover if my transplant team allows me to be present at school for that first day...or not.  I have a conundrum here.  I have to get ready for the new year and everything it entails but I don't know if I or some random "guest teacher" will actually be in the classroom with my kids.  This is frustrating.  There are other factors that contribute to this confusion:

• I have to prepare a classroom with bulletin boards and seating arrangements as if I will be the teacher in charge, even though it might be someone else.
• If I am able to go back for that first day, will I have the stamina needed to go each day, every day, and all day?
• I have to start thinking about the curriculum, much of which is new to me and most of which I have neither seen nor laid hands on just yet.  
• I have to become an expert at the aforementioned curriculum soon because after the first day of school, students will get into the habit of returning for 179 more days in rapid succession and I need to have something for them to learn.
• I have to be ready to sound authoritative in my writing about the curriculum because I may need to write the lesson plans out for some stand-in adult authority figure.
• Since my short-term disability plan is exhausted, I have to complete a lengthy application regarding long-term disability benefits, even though Lord willing I will never need to utilize that service.  But just in case...
• Although not school related, I have a pet scan tomorrow that the insurance company initially refused to back financially.  After a bunch of back-and-forth phone calls, the insurance guys have relented and are now willing to help us out.  Just another curve ball in the week.
• The Detroit Tigers continue to lose and I don't know why.  It might have something to do with the fact that they are not playing well this year.  Duh.



My friend John Grisham

• I have to suspend the reading of John Grisham novels for a while (my summer reading accomplishments include The Whistler, The Rainmaker, A Painted House, Bleachers, The Confession, and Ford County).  This leisure activity must give way to reading more professional sorts of material, lesson planning, paper grading, and the other enduring responsibilities that every teacher has.  Now if I was an aspiring law student living in the Memphis, Tennessee area and I was confronted with a case of well-shrouded but thoroughly entrenched corruption in some powerful law firm and/or other high-ranking institution during a siege of weather when temperatures were in excess of 100 degrees (with a 90% humidity factor, of course) and my air conditioner was broken, maybe Grisham's books would be considered professional development.  For now, I have to set aside my friendship with John and attend to these other matters.

    Not knowing is frustrating.  I wish I had a much firmer grasp on what my life will look like on August 28 and beyond, but for now I will have to let the story unfold slowly.  That's how a storyteller like John Grisham would want me to do it anyway.  But to be honest, I am going to miss those young lawyers from Tennessee and their acquaintances,  the people from impoverished but lovable cigarette-smoking, cheap-beer-drinking, front-porch-sitting families who are long on loyalty but short on intelligence or the high-school homecoming kings and queens whose lives have been destroyed by tragedy of some kind or another.  But I guess I can meet some more of them during Christmas vacation.