Stealing Children
There are days when you're teaching that you see expectant mothers and you want to go up to them and say, "Oh my god, I am SO sorry." These past few weeks have been like that.
The beginning of the school year is always a little rough but this year is different. I have three classes, a sixth grade class constituted of my students from last year, another sixth grade class and a seventh grade class. I am now fully into the middle school years. I had thought that this year would be just like the last with the same children only harder mathematics but unfortunately something happened. Adolescence.
Periods. Mustaches. Girls liking boys and boys liking girls. Cliques. Cool kids. Mean girls. Awkwardness. And, most difficult of all, very little people trying to become who they will be. I had thought the impact in elementary school would be profound because the kids are so malleable but really those are not fully formed people. Instead, they can be easily trained and manipulated. Not so with this age. Now they make demands. They want to know reasons. They question authority. All the things I was warned about and that parents so fear and dread.
And that's what this really comes down to for now. I feel like the single fathers in those movies where their daughters all of a sudden start dating. All of a sudden there's catfights between my little girls who were so sweet last year. All of a sudden, instead of paying attention to me when I talk to them, they're looking at Emmanuelle walking down the hall behind me. Is it disturbing? Yes. Is it sad? Yes. Am I maybe just a little bit jealous even? Absolutely. My babies don't need me anymore. I'm not the superhero idol I once was to them anymore. I'm becoming the old man.
The truly absurd thing about all of this is that I'm 23. I'm a kid myself. There are times when I'm not paying attention to them because I'm looking at the hottie first-year teacher walking by. I'm not supposed to have children. And I'm certainly not supposed to have abandonment issues due to an 11-year-old. The thing is, as I was realizing yesterday as I found myself unwittingly looking in the mirror for gray hairs is that I'm growing up a lot faster than other people my age. I still talk to friends who spend their weekdays going out for drinks and their weekends chilling. Instead, I find myself doing planning and worrying about what's going to happen to each of my kids this year. My kids. My children. I'm not supposed to have children.
There's starting to be a responsibility gap, if you will, between me and most of the other people I know. I find more and more that friends of mine don't know what real responsibility is. Sure, there are some that do, but how many people have someone who depends on them for their life and their well-being? What makes it of course most difficult is that though they depend on you they don't want to depend on you and they'll fight it any chance they get. I feel middle-aged.
It's hard to deal with all of this but I guess the good news is that I'm well-prepared for fatherhood. The thing that I see, that makes sense to me now when I see why some parents have difficulty letting go but also why you never really need to let go is that they still need you to be there for them. Last Friday, one of my girls had a pretty serious problem with another student and their mother and of all the people she could have gone to, her mother, her father, her sisters or her friends, she came to me. I am the constant. And despite how much they want to be independent and assert their individuality, the will always need someone to be there for them when things get too difficult.
The real question then becomes, as this my second and final year looms, am I going to be able to walk away from them?
-Mr. K