This past week, I had the unique experience to see one of my Delta hypotheses proven correct. This is a rather long story, so grab a snack and let this tale unfold.
I was in Memphis last Friday retrieving my brother from the airport for a weekend visit, and as luck or fate would have it, this was the exact moment that my car started to act up for the first time since moving to Mississippi. Apparently a common problem in Saturns, my ignition cylinder was faulty, and I found that I could not turn off my car. Perplexing problem, right? I called a fix-it man in Clarksdale, who put me in touch with a mechanic, who told me that in order to get the car to stop, I would have to pull some fuses. Exciting start to my brother’s visit!
We drove back to Clarksdale without incident, and my brother pulled some fuses to stop the car. We discovered that when we turned the car back on, it would not accelerate, jerked terribly when shifting from first to second, and generally acted rebelliously. Saturday morning we took the car to a repair shop down the road, but they sent us on to another shop across town. With a car barely running, this was an adventure for my brother’s driving prowess! At this second shop, they asked me to leave the car until someone could look at it on Monday. It wasn’t much use to us at the time anyway, so we just bummed rides and loaner vehicles for the rest of the weekend, and I rode with fellow teachers to and from work.
On Monday, the repair shop informed me that the problem could only be addressed at a Saturn dealership, which in my case is 90 miles away on the northeastern corner of Memphis. The car could not possibly make such a journey on its own, so I was obliged to hire a tow truck, which was discouragingly expensive. I rightly suspected I was at the start of a rather costly repair job.
By Tuesday evening, my car had arrived in Memphis, and the dealership hit me with an estimate, which only covered the cost to replace the ignition cylinder and housing. If the driving problems persisted, who knew what kind of nightmare would ensue! However, this is a tale of merely inconvenience and not highway robbery, so the expenses ended there, thank God.
Wednesday was a half-day at school, which seemed to me the perfect opportunity; my car was fixed and ready to go by noon and I had an afternoon free of teaching. On a regular day, I could never make it to the dealership before they closed at 5:30, and I loathed the idea of leaving my students with a substitute (read: babysitter) while I trekked to Memphis. I found out my co-teacher had a doctor’s appointment in Germantown (just south of the dealership) that afternoon, so I could just tag along and get my car! Everything was lining up perfectly.
I approached my principal with my solid plan, explaining that I would miss nothing but my professional development session, which did not promise to be very helpful this late in the school year anyway. Besides, I had never missed any sessions, so I had a reliable track record behind me, and I was positive the administration at the central office would be accommodating.
THIS is where my tale of vehicular adventures turns into a shocking nightmare: my principal told me that she would rather that my co-teacher and I missed a day of school than for us to miss an afternoon of professional development. After all, the state education department would theoretically be checking to see that our school’s teachers attended PD and NOT that we were missing school. In short, my principal would rather cover her own a** than have me in school teaching! She preferred to pay money for a substitute—IF she managed to do that; I had taken a scheduled day of vacation the previous Friday, and she left my co-teacher with all 54 students for the ENTIRE day, even though she had plenty of advance notice to hire a substitute! I knew that if I wasn’t at school, the whole day would be wasted for my students. And apparently unlike my principal, my first priority is my students’ education!
So I bummed one more ride to Kirkpatrick Elementary, where I was scheduled to attend a fourth training session on my Shurley English curriculum (seriously?!). Then guess what! After 45 minutes of doing NOTHING, the facilitator sent us home, expressing her apologies for our district’s misguided request for her services, saying that she knew our teaching priorities rested with the state tests and NOT in her already-covered training. Unbelievable!
As I walked home from Kirkpatrick, I realized I had a choice: I could either take my free afternoon—and boil with anger at this twist of incompetence—OR I could scramble to find a ride to Memphis! I called another teacher I knew had no PD sessions to attend (lucky bastard) and who happened to owe me a favor. At 3:15, he picked me up and we headed off to Memphis for the start of even more adventures.
I should tell you that 3:15 is the time my school day usually ends, so this would be a grand experiment in my original premise—that I could not make it to the Saturn dealership before it closed. But I had high hopes: this guy is roughly my age, and my generation is a culture of speeders, and he drives a sporty little Honda. But nope, he happens to be the one red-blooded American male who religiously observes the speed limit. Luck had turned against me again! And as we sat in deadlock rush-hour traffic, I was seething with dread, especially after I called Saturn Mikey and he told me, “Either get here by 5:30 or you are out of luck.” What grown man calls himself Mikey anyway??
So what time do you think we made it to Saturn of Memphis? At 5:30 on the dot. Thank God a salesman was “working” a customer, otherwise who knows! Best part: the receptionist gathered all the paperwork, and then forgot to make me pay. THAT in itself tells you I was there past 5:30. (Don’t worry. I did actually pay.)
As I rolled up to school the following morning in my own car (for the first time in five days!), I was already highly strung with pent-up frustration at my principal. I welcomed the opportunity to call her out on her misplaced priorities and to point out the fact that I was even there, rather than on my way to Memphis to get my car. But I imagine it is very much for the best that that confrontation never took place. I am just so happy that I have my car back and I did not have to miss a single minute of school to take care of it!
And that is why I Teach for America.
Whew.
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