It was a rather typical Thursday. My last day.
I dropped the lunch order off Upstairs, where I had a stimulating conversation about chocolate milk with a 7-year-old.
I uploaded new class photos to the server, during which I had a not-as-stimulating conversation about Shia LaBeouf with a 16-year-old.
Then Soup formally kicked off the morning with an announcement about the Friday field trip that nobody was paying attention to.
Classes began, and Dimples was not-so-surprisingly wandering the halls. New Guy was taking care of stuff for our class while I filled out the last of my paperwork. Usually I make sure I’m in there with him, because he gets a little flustered, the poor guy. Today I didn’t care so much. Usually I make sure Dimples gets back to where he should be, the little snot. Today I didn’t care so much.
Despite already knowing the answer, I asked my favorite escapee what he was doing away from everyone.
He smoothly grabbed a nearby broom.
“Cleanin’.”
“Cleaning?”
“Uh huh.”
“Is this your first time holding a broom?” I teased.
I received the shamelessly provoked scowl in response.
“This my job today.”
“Ooooh. Says who?”
Shrug.
He proceeded to shadow my general vicinity the rest of the morning sweeping up invisible messes around me. I humored him, feeling the first twingey reminder that this was it.
Soup brought in a small cake (unfortunately it said “Goodbye” instead of “Hoodbye”) for me to share with the other adults (our budget would never cover anything to feed 50 people). Tyson was loitering around the office as I cut myself a piece. He looked at it questioningly.
“It’s her last day,” Soup supplied.
“Oh,” Tyson considered for a beat. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Soup looked at me while speaking to him. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”
“Uh–” Tyson began, before I interrupted.
“I know,” I said, “why don’t we delay the goodbye until later this afternoon when I tell you not to cuss, and you tell me to ‘get out yo bidness,’ and I tell you ‘yo bidness is my bidness when you’re setting examples for the younger kids’, and you say ‘sikenah I’m just playin’, and I say ‘probably not, but it’s my last day so let’s pretend you’re actually going to listen and enjoy this landmark of a moment.’”
Soup looked confused, not quite following my recitation of the daily exchange the two of us seem to have, but Tyson grinned.
“Sound’ good, I’ll be there,” he mumbled over the cake he just stuffed in his mouth, and left the office.
It was the sort of finale of understanding I could only achieve with Tyson… a kind of twisted version of “agree to disagree.” Other than anyone who ever got kicked out, he’s been my most difficult conquest. It’s like we both know that no matter how many times I say things, he’s adamant on being more stubborn than Bob Knight doing a grades check.
Although his antagonistic determinism mindset hasn’t changed any, I’ve learned more about their complex culture from him than anyone else. But he’s a smart guy (moreso than his socioeconomically discriminatory, racially skewed SAT scores will ever show) so I have to believe the exchange of learning was bidirectional, and someday he’ll finally hear my voice in the back of his head right before he does something incredibly stupid. One can dream.
I guess Tyson went on talking with his mouth full after leaving, because it only took 30 seconds for Pixel and Red to show up. Soup tried to ward them off (“but it’s YOUR cake,” he insisted. “so it’ll be fun to share,” I countered) but he gave up and went back to his office. The three of us started talking about places they wanted to take pictures during their afternoon class with me. We didn’t get far before another interruption hurled herself through the door.
“Happy Birthday Happy Birthday Happy Birthday!” Diva bombarded me with hugs and nonsensical well-wishes. At least I think they were.
I smiled at her patiently.
“[Diva], it’s not my birthday.”
She eyed the cake.
“Oh but what about the—”
“It’s her last day,” Dimples piped in from his spot sweeping up the invisible mess behind me.
“Oh. You leavin?” She paused for half a beat, then launched. “Ohwellyouknowthatssadimgonnamissyouanderrythin – now can I have some cake?”
Anyone who wasn’t so endeared by her personality would have been offended. I leave here knowing Diva always puts herself first (and second, and third), yet still manages being the sweetest person in the world at the same time.
“Of course,” I tried to answer, but her back was already turned, bypassing the plates and grabbing a piece.
After the relatively uneventful morning, I played some more football at lunch. Romo seemed distressed that he’d have no one to pass to after today, and I said that not completing passes would make his portrayal of the Dallas QB much more realistic.
I think he was fine with me leaving after that.
So, it was “last chance day” in my class – last chance for groups to take advantage of my camera and photography skillz if they still wanted images for their projects. It made for a lovely afternoon of running around outside playing paparazzi for the kids.
Among the messing around and picture-taking was just the most normal, natural conversation and interaction possible. I can’t even properly recount the afternoon because it simply felt so typical. It was the type of ease and familiarity that, last October, ranked up with “education receives same yearly budget as national defense” on the probability scale.
Towards the end, though, Pixel started getting clingy. Those two things usually don’t go together.
She and Red decided that I needed more pictures of them to take with me. So we wandered around taking random shots, and every once in a while The Professor would run over and get in one.
“Now one with us three” Pixel said. “So you can remember us.”
I choked on my long-stale piece of gum. Remember them? Of course they wouldn’t realize their own impact. They’re just teenagers with, to them, seemingly normal lives. And I’m just the random person who happens to work here this year.
I gave the camera to The Professor, teasing him about how to compose shots. He seemed to regularly disappear to play Internet video games when I covered that stuff.
He took a couple before Red told him to erase those because I was smiling.
“No cheesin’ — we be lookin’ serious. Be tough like I taught you. You reppin’ now,” Red told me.
“Oh. Right,” I said.
Naturally I couldn’t quite do it. And although the photo is more than goofy, it’s perfect, and will have a spot right next to the Certificate of National Service that Captain AmeriCorps (or maybe just a rep from the office) will give me next week.
A bit later, back in my quasi-office, I was finishing up the cover design for the camp CD. Pixel and Red were hanging around and we did more of that innocuous smalltalk. Finally getting around to the inevitable, they wanted to know what I’d be doing after I “left them.”
I tried explaining grad school, but their eyes replied with complete bewilderment. And why not? To them, education is just another in a long line of crappy entrees on their life’s menu. What use could anyone possibly have for going to college….TWICE? But the specifics of my next endeavors weren’t the important thing. I tried to emphasize the fact that I’d still be in DC.
“Remember when we went to Georgetown?”
Pixel looked confused and Red reminded us that she was sick that day.
“Well, that’s where the school is. So I won’t be going far.”
They just both gave me these incredulous looks, like “yes it is!”
I looked back at them sadly.
Wanna leave with me? I didn’t say. I can home school you. You know, in between reading what will almost positively be 655 pages of whatthefuh academia discourse every night.
“Here,” I said, scribbling on a piece of paper. “My email and my cell number. Don’t lose it.”
“Aight,” Red answered for both of them.
I watched them both stick their own lone, tiny connections to me in the front pockets of their bookbags, glad that the information succeeded in reaching a semi-safe place, but knowing it would likely never see the light of day again.
“You contact me if you ever need anything. I’ll only be across the city.”
Nods.
“You’re going to need recommendations when you apply for college. Don’t forget to call me.”
More nods.
Yeah right, I didn’t say.
By now, I know how all of these kids operate. I may not always know what they’re thinking, but I know their mindset. And because of this, I also know that despite my encouragement, they won’t call and won’t write. I’m only on the other side of the city, but it might as well be the other side of the planet. They don’t exist in a culture that acknowledges the one that surrounds it. If I’m not in that group, I’m not there. The reality is, I have serious doubts I’ll see them ever again. It’s a concept only truly understood when you ditch the books and the theories and immerse yourself as an ethnographer. Or, in the words of a smart dude named Atticus, “until you climb into [their] skin and walk around in it.”
But I had to try anyway.
Finally time to punch my final punchout, I told Pixel and Red I’d see them around. They said goodbye and went off in search of Cupcake, probably already on her afternoon curryout run (she already had her first of the day during lunch). Somehow, knowing Cupcake was off enjoying some mumbo sauce-slathered Unidentified Fried Object made not giving her a proper goodbye more than okay.
Dimples’ one-man cleaning service had disappeared right on schedule. He would much rather not acknowledge my leaving him than catch me before I’m gone for good. Play #284 from the Dimples Life Survival Guide. Maybe in his mind that made it easier, because then it’s just like another in his long line of abandonments.
But that’s just a bit of drive thru curryout psychology from my end. He’s been nothing if not my enigma. This kid who reads with all the skill and grace of a 4th grader stuck in the Dick and Jane group, but instinctively works a camera like a seasoned art student. This charming, lovable goof-with-a-record… who once taught me the best way to pick a lock (including the difference between picking car locks and door locks) and the best way to cook mashed sweet potatoes — in the same afternoon.
Knowing (and understanding why) he’d hide still didn’t stop me from being a little disappointed. Halfway down the front walk, I took a quick glance back. Part of his face was just visible, peering out the kitchen window. But he shot out of sight before I could react. My tiny smile and empathetic head shake was, of course, automatic.
I want to believe I’ve had some kind of impact, but realistically – even after all this – I could very well end up as just another adult who drifted in and out of their lives. So I’m going to try my best from this end not to lose touch. But even if that happens, and they continue life without anything else I provide them, I can’t possibly top what they’ve given me.
At my old summer camp job, the last day always meant scoring a huge pile of booty. Gift booty. Have I mentioned the clientele? Suburban, rich, white Jewish kids, with a tiny smattering of suburban, rich, white Catholic kids. All darling, mind you, just a sociological 180 from my peeps.
So they’d bestow me the latest styles in Vera Bradley bags (how’s this for hip – I didn’t even know what Vera Bradley was before receiving one as a gift; thankfully I restrained myself from asking if her grandma knitted it), t-shirts, picture albums, jewelry, candy, Barnes & Noble gift cards, Skyline Chili Bucks, and lots (and lots and lots) of handwritten cards and notes professing love and devotion and the apparent end of the world because I’d no longer be their counselor. It was pretty much the same thing when I finished my student teaching, too.
Of course I didn’t expect, nor receive anything like that here. But I still left richer than I could have ever predicted – richer than if I went to a thousand summers of the old camp. What did Bono say that one time? “You gave me nothing — now it’s all I got.” That line was always kind of obscure and throwaway until now. Funny.
I walked to my car without the vigilance of an outsider, but instead the confidence of a community member. An errant Upstairs kid called me by name and waved; I gave a cheerful return before pulling out of the lot.
Without making a conscious decision I found myself taking an unusually circuitous route out of the neighborhood. I passed the corner store already overrun with loitering kids holding the telltale black bags; the side alley that lead to the dumping point for their favorite Metro shortcut; the school where Tunk and Inspector Gadget endured textbookless trigonometry (among other things). I cut back along the street that served as a dividing line for the crews responsible for many of the beefs this year, before passing Cupcake’s favorite Popeye’s branch and the shop where Darth Vader and Michael Vick used our stolen homework rewards.
Eventually I got back on the route to lead me home, which meant habitually turning onto the country’s most paradoxical street. I crawled along with the rush hour traffic, having plenty of time to stare at the grandeur of the Capitol dome, straight ahead and characteristically blurred in the midsummer humidity.
The buildings lining the street gradually gentrified as the dilapidation of the periphery slowly faded away. A clump of Hill staffers and map-wielding tourists crossed the street in front of me — signaling my return to Postcard Washington, while the true DC was relegated to forgotten existence in the rear view.