Skies

I have two opinions on UFOs: they are real, and they’re not.

They are real in that my grandpa, the grandpa I barely knew, was a professional pilot, and he said every pilot had seen things. Every pilot had seen things, he said, and pilots know what weather balloons and satellites and reflections look like.

On the other hand, cell phones have made me very discouraged that anything that can be photographed is something I’ve never seen.

I’ve seen it all, baby.

Today was the last day for seniors at the high school where I teach. First semester, we had two seniors who were more like regular kids graduate. Both of them had issues, but also both of them seemed capable of going out there and having a life.

This semester, we had a handful of students who needed a lot of special ed support.

Not a one of them was a shucks, that’s cute kind of teen.

Nope.

One of them rarely came to school, and another student said, today, that the kid is always in bed. Always asleep or lying around.

Depressed, I said.

Eh. I am regularly infuriated that while mild-mannered white kids can be identified as depressed, kids of color are quickly labeled “lazy” or “defiant.”

One of the kids needed so much help with reading and math and speaking, really, everything, and would regularly refuse to take help.

Another would come in day after day and fall asleep and snore heavily.

When I worked at a college prep school, I didn’t let anyone sleep. I tapped shoulders or moved your chair slightly. Or I took away your desk so you couldn’t put your head down.

At the alternative school, yes, we try to wake kids up, but we also understand that for emotional or physical reasons, sometimes a kid is going to sleep, and it’s better than them standing up and throwing a desk across the room, or cussing people out and storming out of the building.

When an adolescent person is at a full-stop no, we just have to wait them out.

One of the kids arrived most days with boots so muddy they left a trail. And then would leave all the plastic packaging from breakfast on a desk, or on the floor.

One kid would leave his hair unbrushed for perhaps a month, and we would begin prompting him to give it some attention. I meant to buy a hairbrush for that kid. I forgot.

I’ve seen two of them cry, silently, and desperately.

It’s hard to remember sometimes– because they are your neighbors, your coworkers, as “Sesame Street” would say, “the people in your neighborhood– that all of them have some brain strands that are wired wrong, or shredded, or dangling without connection at all.

When they are the people in your neighborhood, it’s hard to remember that there are so many affluent people in our country, people who can afford houses and cars and food.

Most of our students’ families rent, and manage without cars, or broken-down cars.

Not all of them. Some come from functional, stable families who have everything they need.

I am in charge of graduation cards. I do birthdays, and graduation. Birthdays I do at the beginning of the year, so I only have to check regularly to see when the next card needs to go out.

I got these graduation card that pop up into a display of balloons and mortarboards. The space to sign the card is about 2″ by 2″, so I add an index card, which is what all the adults at school sign. I took one around yesterday.

Our grad has frequently told me to “shut the fuck up,” and to leave “me the fuck alone.” I’m a New Yorker in my heart. I can let a lot of “fucks” roll off my back.

“I have a girlfriend in Australia.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I’m gonna be a Marine.”

“You have to graduate and take a test to be a Marine.”

“Oh, yeah, yesterday I set fire to my deck.”

“My uncle fought in World War II.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“I’m tired. I’ll do it later.”

“I can’t believe ‘Sons of Anarchy’ is based on ‘Hamilton’!”

“”Hamlet’. Not ‘Hamilton.'”

“‘Hammalet.'”

“Ham. Let. Like, here’s the ham, I’m gonna let you eat it.”

“‘Hammaleton.”

“Good morning! How are you?”

“Terrible.”

“Okay, journal time.”

“Ain’t nobody doing that. I ain’t fucking doing that.”

They are so close, my neighborhood, my kids, and I am as frustrated with them as I am with myself, and the channel changes, and they are gone.

We try to identify them, and then they are gone.