Taylor the Teacher

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This was written yesterday, 9/11/07.

My feelings about this are so strong they will take a while to process, but I’m doing a brain dump of the preliminary feelings now, in part because I know deep down that I may never come back. This is actually very hard.

Saw Cameron today. I love Cameron. Cameron was one of my favorite students by the end of last school year, but I really intensely dreaded 5^th period the entire fall semester last year in part because of Cameron.

Cameron almost didn’t graduate because he had a 42 in my class at the first semester. He pulled his grade up to passing, 70, by the end of the year because he was dying to join the Marine Corps. He did it. I was very proud of his work in my class second semester.

Today I was walking toward the front office on my first planning period of the day (which doesn’t come until 6^th period, Argh!) I started seething inside because I saw military uniforms in the vicinity of the assistant principal’s office. I always seethe like this when I see military uniforms in what is supposed to be an institution of learning.

The propaganda the recruiters leave behind on book covers, pens, sticky-notes, and posters is no better, and may actually be worse for being entirely one-way communication. No book cover ever has to address the questions, “Have you ever killed anyone?” or “What was it like to see your friends die?” All I could think was, “get away from these kids you predatory mother fuckers.” I braced myself to bury my feelings, and walked on.

But it wasn’t recruiters trying to turn my kids into cannon fodder for jet-ski money. It was Cameron and his Marine buddy.

As of today, 9/11/07, these were the things I was thinking as I talked to Cameron:

1. I want you to know how much I love and value you.
2. There is no way I can express pride in anything resembling sincerity for what you are doing.
3. Is it okay to hug a man in Marine uniform? (I eventually asked him this aloud because I wasn’t going without that hug, after all…)
4. What if I never see you again?
5. What do I say? “I’m proud of you?” I’m not proud. I’m sad. And I’m scared for you.
6. Your uniform is so bare. I guess you haven’t had a chance yet to prove yourself and earn a bunch of little ribbons for your breast pocket. I wonder if they’ll be worth what you will have to do to get those.
7. You are such a funny person. You always make me laugh.
8. Stop bragging about killing people. It turns my stomach.
9. You look just like my little brother.
10. Please don’t die. Please don’t enjoy killing.

To make all this worse, as I write this, I’m listening to Pink Floyd on my iPod, which I do even more often than I listen to Eminem. “When the Tigers Broke Free” is playing now. I really am tearing up. I’ll have to quit writing now.

Roger Waters said it better than I could anyway.

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black ‘forty four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And kind old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that’s how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.