Sometimes we all are made happy by something we shouldn't be happy about. It's natural and human, if a little bit wrong.
The classic example is when we are pleased over another person's misery, usually because it's someone we dislike, or who we feel is deserving of misery. The Germans have word for that (because of course the Germans have a word for that,) schadenfreude.
And if I wanted to be drearily self righteous and topical, I could loftily comment how all those who are condemning the newly-late Hugo Chavez to the fires of perdition, I might snidely comment about how it's not my place to judge others or how it is corrosive to the human soul to take pleasure in any human's suffering, blah, blah, whatevs.
I will totally rock that moral high ground another post (it will have big words and everything!) but not today. Today I am going to exult in self analysis and examine something much more common and pathetic in our own lives; the pleasure we get from others' acknowledgement of our own sufferings.
And I'm not talking about the classic 'martyr routine,' perfected by everyone's mother, ever. That subject is as played out as it gets, and needs no further comments from me (again, another post some day.)
Instead, I am talking about something akin to confirmation bias, where we learn something that seems to justify what we already believe irrespective of evidence, like when your neighbors of twenty years, all of them filled with quiet resentment for their impeccably maintained property, are finally hauled away by the FBI for running an underground Girl Scout fighting league, you suddenly feel vindicated about decades of seething, passive-aggressive hatred.
This phenomenon of which I speak is when someone comes along and acknowledges some bane of our personal existence and we take it as a compliment, lifting our spirits and giving us a shot of joy and encouragement by pointing out our lousy situation.
And I don't just mean obvious stuff, like someone commenting "Hey man, it sucks that you got fired last week," that is pretty obvious, and is simply commiseration. Nor am I counting when someone counts you out or excuses you because they pity you "It's okay Dave, I know you can't come help me move, what with your wheelchair and all."
No, I mean when someone's observation validates our doubts. We all have things in our daily lives that weigh us down like millstones made of rotten meat (sorry for that image.) But these drains upon our essence aren't large and obvious like an injury or infirmity, they're just regular little annoyances, but they seem to be entirely out of proportion with how much misery they inflict.
Like when you get one of those tiiiiny little pimples, the ones that no one can see but are like, super painful? Especially when they are on the inside of your nose? God those suck! They can make you doubt the existence of a loving God some days.
Yeah, like that.
We wonder if these things bother us so much simply because we are raging pussies who can't handle a minor little annoyance. And this in turn makes every instance where this bane ruins your day seem even worse, because that nagging little voice in our head makes us feel ashamed for being so affected by it. And so the shame spiral continues...
But then, someone comes along unbidden, and perhaps because they too have felt the sting of this particular lash, comments on how terrible this thing is.
And the heavens open up as the seraphim send down shafts of golden light to bathe you in love, and the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies wafts through the air.
Because now, your pains don't seem like they are all in your head anymore. Your trials have merit, because others too see and acknowledge them. You are not alone in your grief and detestation over this bane. And you can finally utter that most cathartic of phrases:
"I know, right?"
For me it's my seventh hour class. High school scheduling follows some predictable patterns, and are dictated by the needs of the student body. Without boring you with specifics, I will simply say that the lower level core classes tend to be scheduled at certain times, and that means that the kids who are placed in such remedial courses have their elective course 'dump classes' scheduled at the end of the day.
That is why every year, my worst classes will be in the afternoons. Usually random chance puts a larger proportion of, ahem, 'aggressively extroverted personality types' in one of those classes. Last year it was 6th hour, this year it is seventh.
So after a day of struggling in core classes with mind numbing repetition, these kids show up in my class to learn drama.
Which none of them actually chose. You see, the administration needs a place for these kids to be every period, and wherever there is an opening, it gets plugged. And the aforementioned scheduling situation means that more of them get crammed in at the end of the day, which is why on an odd-block day, I have 28 kids if 3rd hour, and 37 in 7th hour.
My class is overcrowded with kids who do not want to learn about Drama, and who certainly do not want to perform in front of the class. What they want to do is talk.
You see, one of the other side effects of the schedule, is that a lot of kids who have the same classes end up following each other throughout the day. They are friends from forever, and their bond is stronger than anything I can say to them about the import of what I am teaching.
This year my seventh hour class is dominated by a group of about seven Freshman girls, all of Haitian descent, who are rather exuberent and loquacious. They honestly seem to completely lack the ability to shut up. They just can't do it. And I mean talk loudly. I have done my best to separate them in the seating chart, but they just shout across the room.
And they have zero impulse control. This was apparently not instilled at home, and middle school apparently did not stress that quality (another topic for a future post,) so now they are in a classroom and simply do not see the value in behaving. Their own grades don't matter, and they sure as hell don't care about anyone else's ability to learn.
Writing them up is often pointless, as the deans are trying to limit referrals because those are tracked by the county and factored into school grade. They tell us to handle it in class and call home. I don't have a lot of time for parent phone calls (my planning is first thing in the morning,) and zero interest in calling home. After the first few dozen times of calling home to parents who speak only Creole, you just start to give up getting any support from parents with French sounding last names.
It's a South Florida thing, I guess.
So I have to work five times harder in this one class than in any of my others, and it just fucking drains me. Anyone who has never taught high school can never really understand why we are so tired at the end of a day of work that involves simply standing in front of a room of surly teenagers.
Which brings me to Friday. I had the flu, and called in a sub in the morning. Now whenever I call in sick, I always end up driving in to school in the morning anyway, so I can set up work for the day. I have emergency lesson plans, but I hate leaving busy work, and always prefer to create lesson plans that go along with what we are learning in class at the time, because I am actually a pretty awesome teacher like that.
But sometimes we can't get enough subs to cover on a Friday, because reasons. So since I was going in to set up my plans anyway, I packed my lunch and brought my bag just in case they couldn't get a sub, because I did not want to inconvenience any of my fellow teachers who would have to cover my classes on their planning periods. Because seriously, I am completely awesome like that.
When I got to school, not only did no sub pick up, I had actually screwed up the process, and had never actually submitted the damn request on the computer. This was not the fault of the STUPID, POORLY-DESIGNED WEBSITE, but pure user error due to feverheadedness.
So I resigned myself to play through the pain and said I would just work the day.
I was wrong. Fifteen minutes later (I have morning planning, remember,) I called back and said 'just kidding!' and asked them to get coverage for me because I simply could not remain at school.
They got subs pulled for two of my classes, but guess which one they couldn't cover? Did you say 7th, because I've clearly been leading to this? Of course it was! I felt terrible that they might have to either put one of my fellow teachers in there instead of their planning time, or have to split my kids up and send them to several different classrooms, but I seriously could not stay to do any more. So only mostly awesome.
So they split my HUGE seventh hour class amongst nearly every teacher in the English department, so everyone got a slice of shit pie. Of course my gaggle of Ratcheteers (the new term for them that I just now came up with and will now use forever,) ended up clumped together and sent to one of my fellow teachers whom fate must really despise.
I was not pleased about learning all this when I returned to school. I felt like I had failed as a professional. And my classroom is far from the rest of the department and I do not share planning with most of them and have a different lunch, so I rarely run into many of them. So who knows what terrible curses and imprecations they would hurl down upon me for abandoning them thus?
But then I ran into my department head today while I was setting up work for today's absences (my daughter got the flu so I'm home with her.) This was not the teacher who had to deal with the Ratcheteers herself, but it had been her duty to split the kids up, so she got to see the whole class together.
She came up to me and said "wow, Crumpler, how do you handle that class? They must really test your patience, I don't know how I would keep from slapping them myself." And she wasn't alone. Other teachers in the plan room heartily echoed the sentiment. And just like that, my mood brightened.
These girls really are that terrible! I'm not just the mean old stupid racist curmudgeon who hates fun and doesn't know how to teach anything interesting up in here! Those little bitches really are little bitches!
This does not fix the main problem (see 'little bitches' above,) but at least I know it's not in my head.
Well, not only in my head, anyway.
Now we just need a word for this phenomenon.
Whatta ya got, German?
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