The end of the world... again

How many times must we go through this? I'm speaking, of course, of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon yesterday. I'd rather be ranting about how my Chair has neglected to send my paper on to the Graduate School, or what a student said today, or what I ate for lunch...  anything but this. But how can I ignore the elephant in the room? I go through my day pretending it's not there, it didn't happen, it's not real, and I end up with a nauseating case of surrealism.

Everyone processes a disaster in his or her own way. Some avoid the topic, some talk about it incessantly. Because it happened on the other side of the country, some may not even care. We came close to having our own Boston bombing a few Christmases ago, when a crazy young man was all too willing to plant an explosive device at the Pioneer Square tree lighting ceremony. Lucky for everyone, the FBI was on to him: The “bomb” they gave him was a dud. It could have turned out differently. It could have rained body parts.

My coping method involves seeking out news accounts and reading them compulsively, over and over. I feel compelled to watch the raw video, as penance for surviving the day with my limbs intact. I spent Monday in a daze, awash in unshed tears, going through the motions of my job (I'm not a real teacher, I just play one on TV). My face still sags. Smiling is an effort. I'm also running low on patience.

Last night a female student in the Human Resources Management class said something about how difficult dating was these days, how her current love interest wasn't working out the way she'd hoped. Her best friend said, “You need some new eye candy.” The first girl laughed and repeated it. “Yeah, I need some new eye candy.”

“People are not eye candy,” I shouted. “It's rude and disrespectful to refer to people like they are objects!”

“Men do it to us,” she countered gamely, appealing to the group for support. The other two women concurred by nodding vigorously.

“I know!” I yelled. “And that is no excuse. People are humans, not objects, and they deserve respect, no matter what gender they are.”

Everyone contemplated me in shocked silence. I think I know that look. I think that look was on my face when my mother, breaking under the weight of caring for four bratty children, finally lost control and started screaming. Just screaming. Loudly. With anger, with frustration, with fear. Those screams lasted a lifetime in my little magic world. Reality as I had known it suddenly took a dip and dropped out from under my eight-year-old feet. Last night I think my students felt the same way. Like, uh-oh, Mom's gone crazy.

Now I am remembering another incident, one evening last week. The three female students in the Word class started trading Mexican jokes. As their laughter escalated, so did my blood pressure, until finally I shouted, “Enough with the Mexican jokes!”

So, I'm treading on a thin edge, it appears. An incidence of violence doesn't help, but Monday's horrible event isn't what has prompted me to suddenly start speaking my mind. The truth is, I don't care anymore what my students think of me. I don't have to care. I can be myself now. I can say what I want. If I could fit in my Levis, I would wear jeans to school everyday. F--k the dress code. F--k the school. F--k the student evaluations.

I'm exiting their lives in less than three weeks. They will forget me. I'm already forgetting them.