MY PARKINSON’S DIARY
MY PARKINSON’S DIARY
IT’S SOMEONE ELSE’S PROBLEM NOW
Friday, December 12, 2014
November 14, 2014
This morning I found myself channeling Craig Ferguson as I tried to work through some eminently forgettable dilemma or another, so I thought what the hell, let's see if we can catch his final monologue on YouTube. To my happy surprise, not only is he not done after ten years of The Late, Late Show, but he has a channel so I can watch his last run of episodes the morning after broadcast all the way through his closer on December 19. Best of all, in a recent show he's even got the perfect tag line for me as I leave teaching and Room 2803: "It's Someone Else's Problem Now.”
Why I love Craig: he's obviously been through the shit, and he loves his life more fiercely because of this. Yet as is the case with anyone who's been through the shit , he understands how suddenly it can descend all over again. So his work reflects a constant gratitude at having gotten this far when, really, he could have just as easily stayed where he was.
In that sense he tugs at my Purkinjes in reminding me of my absolute favorite part of teaching: the first five-ten minutes of class before we actually got down to work. Once upon a time this was explicitly called the monologue, a free form account of my thoughts and feelings about nothing in particular. Eventually this was supplemented and finally supplanted by commentary on the Thought for the Day, though it's worth noting that the thought was only rarely actual "words of wisdom," far more often being the first thing that came to mind when I picked up the chalk at the blackboard or eventually put stylus to iPad for later projection on whiteboard. Regardless, any commentary I may have offered was clearly linked to any such putative "thinking" not at all. Finally, in my last few years of teaching the beginning of class became the domain of the Dog of the Day in which I would engage in dialogue with selected students about their canines based on e-mailed photos projected on the whiteboard. In other words, it was me providing entertaining patter around the matter of marking attendance, including taking note of stragglers, and doing whatever else was necessary before starting the day's business. When I look back on those opening moments of class now, it seems to me it was a kind of prayer: Thank you, Lord, for bringing me this far.
I will defend until my dying day the worth of this in explicitly educational terms. The most valuable things I had to teach my students did not have anything to do with parts of speech or the theme of The Great Gatsby so much as they had to do with modeling for them what it means to be someone who has been through the shit and loves his life all the more fiercely for it. So sure, if you want to see knowing the difference between adjective and adverb as the shit and love your life more fiercely because of having sorted that out, make yourself happy; as a fellow who has willingly taught more than his share of lessons about how to avoid sentence faults, I'm good with that, not that you need my permission.
For myself, so much of it came down to what we learned from work (and lives) like O'Neill's, specifically as seen in Long Day's Journey Into Night. While he had to suffer terribly for his art, and no one can know how fiercely he did or did not love his life when all was said and done, it's hard to believe he didn't feel a certain gratitude in having gotten that far, after all. Which is what I would say to all who listened to my monologues, "engaged" with random Thoughts for the Day, or shared their dogs in FHS 2803: thank you for coming with me on the journey to the point where we can say it's someone else's problem now.
“The most valuable things I had to teach my students did not have anything to do with parts of speech or the theme of The Great Gatsby so much as they had to do with modeling for them what it means to be someone who has been through the shit and loves his life all the more fiercely for it.”