Those Who Do Everything (But Not Well) Teach

Let me be the first person to tell the world that I am not exceptionally great at anything. Though some close may disagree, the truth is that I am mediocre, if not sometimes okay, at a lot of things, but I’m not really good at anything. I consider myself a pretty intelligent person, but I am also of the “Ooooh, shiny!” breed. I’ve tried damn near everything, or at least I had it in my mind I was going to do something, usually creative, part-time, and low-paying.

Shortly after finishing Jon Krakauer’s book while lounging in the two baby pools it took to create my faux-resort, I decided that I would not, in fact, be climbing Mount Everest.

My career was delayed about five years after college graduation before I began my foray into the honorable profession of teaching. I went through the workshop, substituted for longer than I wanted, finally landed my dream job only to discover I was not good at teaching.

Make no mistake: I am a quality educator. My superpower was planning lessons like a maniac, state standards and objectives dancing through my head while my fingers, furiously banging the keyboard of my district-supplied MacBook Air, struggling to keep up pace with my brain as I typed the week’s agenda, strategies, activities, and assessments using best practices and always to the extreme pleasure of administration.

There was one problem. I couldn’t execute those exceptional plans because I couldn’t get a group of seventh graders to shit their traps long enough for me to say, “Turn to pa...” before erupting in social chat, playing music from phones, hacking the SmartBoard (yes, they did), or making it rain rubber bands in an otherwise fluorescent world.

I developed a stutter. I wish I was kidding.

Because I have a Bachelor’s degree in fashion design from a land grant university in the Deep South, I thought I’d go teach art. Obviously this would be an easier teaching position. It’s art! After two miserable failures, I crammed enough to pass the test for certification, and the principal still fired me for coming to work with a urinary tract infection and falling asleep in the floor during my planning time. It was the second round of antibiotics before I could treat my stomach infection, and my body quit. I was alone. I got fired for not calling in sick.

How can somebody be bad at calling in sick? Calling in sick is as American as baseball and apple pie, and playing hooky from

work!

I crochet a mean granny square. Don’t believe me? I have over a hundred individual squares to prove it.

I like to collect magazines and pull tears, but I never do anything with them.

I was going to go to law school, but I had to get a job instead ironing vinyl on face masks. Finally, I was using skills related to my college degree only to find out I was bad at that, too! My careful pressing open of the seams and screwing up a few masks apparently constitutes slow and inept. This is why I steam my clothes before I wear them.

I never hung up the cute decorations I made from paint chips when I went back to teaching instead of law school.

I went to college to be an engineer and ended up with a degree in how to take care of your family and a business minor. I even got the coveted Mrs. degree while I was there. My husband cooks, or we get takeout. We have a robot vacuum. I’m not even a good housewife! I do have a ridiculous sense of style that it took me 30 years to cultivate but when I ask if my dress is a little ugly, the correct answer is yes.

One day everyone will learn to love and cherish me as the eccentric, childless, thirty-something grandma that I am. The few special people who accept this love me more for it.

It gets better! They have no choice. An ADHD diagnosis at 31, accompanied by an OCD diagnosis, explained me to me. It validated what I knew. My brain works in its own, uniquely and hopelessly scattered way. I guess it also explains why I’ve only used the Cricut I got for Christmas to cut out hearts, my failed attempt to be a blues guitarist, written and saved business plans for never-opened businesses, and my current job teaching math.

Math is the only subject taught at my school for which I am not qualified to teach according to my certificate. Good thing it isn’t really required because I teach at a legitimate one-room schoolhouse.

Other than the $1000 art certification firing fiasco, I guess I should count my blessings. I’m not bad at many things. I’m just not good at them.

Artist, teacher, wife, crazy person, adult, daughter, paper cutter, maker of sun catchers, calligrapher, tie-dye designer, curriculum builder, student, online tutor - call me all those things, but I dare anyone to say I’m good at any of them.

At the end of the day, I’m okay with it. If anyone wants to start a book club or do yoga, I’m game. Otherwise, my main mission is life is saving the world and being as stressed out as humanly possible.

Coincidentally, I didn’t mean to lie. I am AWESOME at being stressed out. It’s probably because my interests are too many, time not enough, and abilities to do all the things there are to do simply mediocre. As for things I’m flat out terrible at like bowling and shutting my mouth or laughing at very inappropriate times, I refuse to go bowling. I laugh to keep from crying and cannot shut my mouth.

I hope anyone who might read this appreciates it for its blatant honesty, if not downright mediocrity. No one seems to think I’m as funny as I know I am; maybe that’s why I never for that callback for Saturday Night Live.