Holding on for one more day

Waking up in that apartment was never easy. Mice scattered across the room as my feet hit the floor, and before I could muster enough courage to see if the bathroom was free of crazy people I'd already decided I'd be better off staying in bed. But then again, that would be no prize either. Only if I could get to sleep quickly, ignore the fact that the broken spring protruding from deep within that smelly, urine-stained mattress was bruising my back, could I find any pleasure in staying at home. No, it was better to force myself to that shower, so I tippy-toed on my flip-flops across that dirty shag carpet and stepped into the grimy, once-white but never clean bathtub and closed the mildew-stained shower curtain behind me, trying with all my might to keep my backside from touching it or the scummy walls.

I was always scared one of my Section 8, loony-bin reject neighbors would come barging in that warped-wood door that never seemed to latch just right. But today I didn't think of it. It was too cold, and parts of my skin not touching that lukewarm water were shivering in the chilling breeze that passed through the cracked window pane, which was only loosely covered with plastic and patched up with masking tape. So when Jerry walked in and started screaming at the sight of me I didn't have time to be surprised or angry. I was just glad my time in that place was done, at least for today. I grabbed my towel, wrapped it quickly around my waist, and jetted back to my room as fast as I could.

How had this life happened to me, I thought. Only a little more than a year had passed since I was living in the veritable lap of luxury at my father's suburban Washington, D.C., home, taking showers in a clean, blue-tiled stall with beveled glass doors that looked out a small window onto a lush green golf course and the tree-lined road leading up to the club house. What had I done to deserve this exile? And more importantly, what could be done to get myself out of the mess and squalor that now surrounded me?

For now, I was going to have to work. I had quit high school in my senior year in order to free myself from the perceived oppression I'd felt at the feet of tired, underpaid, bureaucratic educators. And I hadn't been happy at home. I did all I could to get kicked out. I know now it wasn't so bad, but somewhere between the bourgeois existence I'd been living at my dad's house and the working middle-class life I'd experienced for years living with my mom I'd never gained a real perspective of what life could be like without such amenities as a split-level ranch or colonial revival home could provide.

My rebellion had gotten me here. But it was hard work, I would learn, that would get me out. So as I picked my clean clothes out of the laundry bag to get ready for the mile-long walk to work that night, I was keenly aware of the even longer road that lay ahead of me if I was ever going come out on top.

I was living in an old house, or rather in a small room in an old house, on the edge of a tiny town that was on the far edge of an only slightly larger town, called Hanover, where my mom still lived in one of the better neighborhoods. I remembered with a laugh how my friends used to refer to it as the "richie" section. There, I had lived on a quiet bend of a road lined with fruit trees, calm sidewalks and two-car garages. Where I lived now, houses had been built smack against thin sidewalks separated from the street only by a crumbling curb. And tractor trailers spit their exhaust fumes into the air and splashed puddles onto passing pedestrians, if there were any pedestrians, as they raced to nearby factories.

I usually walked to work with my headphones on, listening to well-worn tapes by R.E.M., Depeche Mode, Sinead O'Conner or the Ocean Blue. I would sing and walk to the beat, and somehow push out all thoughts of the misery of home. That night was no exception. Mine was the midnight shift, so it was dark as I made my way down that long stretch of roadway to the one traffic light in town, where I'd usually get my dinner at Hardee's before clocking in at the convenience store across the street. Taking over from a fat lady named Sue, who barely had more teeth than the number of letters in her name, I put on my smock, found the bucket and mop in the storeroom and started to clean up before I started on the sandwiches.

We'd get a rush somewhere between three and four in the morning, as bread, potato chip and pretzel truck drivers would be making their way from the factories out to Baltimore, Harrisburg and Washington. These places seemed so distant as I stood there behind the counter making hundreds of hoagies, wrapping them in wax paper and cellophane, and labeling them one by one. How I wanted to be in D.C., hanging out on the Mall amidst all the monuments and museums, soaking in all that culture, like I'd done so many times before when I lived with my father and would sneak away on the Metrorail afternoons after soccer practice. But here, in McSherrystown, I felt like I was in a jail of my own making, one I felt I deserved.

It may seem trite, but music helped me through those long, cold months, which fortunately turned out to be a purgatory rather than a hell, as I'd started to believe. That night, as I mopped the floor in the early morning, listening to the radio while so many others were asleep or on the road making their deliveries, I was open to change. I was close to the phone as the announcer said he'd give away tickets to an upcoming Sinead O'Conner concert in Washington if the next caller knew the answer to some easy trivia question. I called in. And I won. I remember that moment so clearly, although the question and answer escaped me almost instantaneously. But that wasn't important then, and it isn't now. Because at that moment I realized I was finally going to escape from that small little town after all. I realized I had luck on my side; I'd always known I had the drive.

I got back to work. Happier, but still miserable. Some drunk rednecks had come in an made a mess of the place. And as Wilson Phillips crooned to me in the background while I mopped up some jerk's puke, I heard them singing the mantra that would help me make it to the next phase in my life. "I know that there is pain, but if you hold on for one more day you'll break free from the chains."

In the morning, I stopped at Hardee's again, downed a chicken-fried steak biscuit, and started back down that sidewalk toward home. As I walked up those creaking steps and put the key into the lock, I held my breath for a moment knowing my mood might be broken by the sight of mouse droppings in my bed. I tried to be optimistic. But even optimism couldn't make my situation better, so I marched back downstairs, headed back to the convenience store a mile away, where the only working pay phone in town was located, and called my mother to come pick me up.

Mom helped me find a better place to live that day, and I stayed in Hanover for another month or so. Then I was off to college, and my life slowly started to take shape. That was twelve years ago, but I've never forgotten the experience of living in that hole. And I'll never forget that night when I gained the courage and the insight to get myself out of it once and for all.

Guide me, but don't lead

I've said before that I hate to follow. I would like to qualify that statement. I'm not opposed to seeking guidance. But when you follow a leader, you allow that leader to make decisions of where you can and cannot go. Leaders, in my opinion, should be more like guides, rather than gatekeepers. In fact, we should all look to ourselves to lead, and seek guides along the way who will help us reach our desired destination and not try to take us to theirs.

As a teacher, I try to adhere to this philosophy. My students are not here as pawns to be placed into a course of study that I know will ultimately take them to an understanding of English as I perceive it. I am here to guide them on the path to understanding the English they encounter in their world. This will ultimately be more fulfilling for them, and the experience will be more rewarding for us all.

I've had language teachers along the way, especially in French, who set forth a plan of study that started with one point of "simple" grammar and continued down a linear direction to a place of more "complex" grammar. They intended for me to become fluent in the language. And when I say they, I mean all of my French teachers, who had learned to instruct in this way from others who had learned to instruct in this way, and so on. Following their lead, I eventually learned to read and to write, but I was never able to speak until I was put into a real world scenario, until I had to rely on my own instincts.

When it came to Spanish, I was my own instructor. I plotted my course, traveled the road in my own way, bouncing from complex to simple structures and back again without regard to the proper, established rules of how one learns Spanish and its grammar. All the textbooks I looked at were slow and artificially based on an author's invented contexts, as my French courses had often been. After learning the sounds of the Spanish alphabet and its pronunciation, I decided I wanted to study verbs first. Then I looked at the nouns that were present in my world, and I started to build a real understanding of the language. I became fluent rapidly, and didn't have to wait for someone to test me and tell me if I was ready or not. I spoke, and I was understood. I listened, and I could understand.

I know there are obviously moments in time where following a leader is the only good option, but I think more often than not I am my own best leader. I trust my instincts and am skeptical of those who say their way is the one and only option. Even I don't think my way is always the best way, but I do know I am capable of making good choices by researching and investigating, and most importantly, by following my heart.

There are many out there who have taught me, and there are many others from whom I will learn more lessons in life. But rather than leaders that I follow, I consider them guiding partners, just as I consider my students to be partners with me in their education. I am available to help them at all points along the way, but I encourage them to seek the answers themselves, and not to be arbitrarily lead by me or by any other teacher. By leading themselves through their studies they are more likely to be satisfied and to not only accomplish what they set out to do but also reap all the fruits of their efforts.