I knew this fall would be a huge undertaking in terms of scheduling and manufacturing time (as if it's some ore you can mine, polish and keep forever). I signed up to coach my son's baseball team, my daughter's soccer team, teaching a Wednesday night Bible study, work of course and perhaps making a day trip to see my daughter play softball at Malone. I must have been thinking there were extra days on the calendar for Christians.
School has been a litany of meetings and proposals, plans and imperfect management. I have 35 students this year, the most I've ever had and 5 over contract. I keep telling people the number as if miraculously it would diminish into something like they show on tv. Didn't Mr. Kotter have like 6 students?
The kids from last year who have looped with me are comfortable in their surroundings. They want to eat lunch with me, have no shame in asking and know I hate to say no. Testing all of them has taken weeks. The district finally decided to join the digital age and bought iPods. Awesome, except they are used for testing purposes only. The kids reads three passages, they retell what they've read in broken phrases and run-ons, and some computer database assesses colors, levels and kids who need intervention. One of the kids thought the "pitcher and the crow" was the "pitcher and the cow."
My mood has gone from positive to exhausted melancholy to frustration, and that could be all before lunch. I attributed much of my bad attitude to my lack of Bible reading and devotions. This week they picked back up and I've felt more relaxed. By the end of the day, I'm talked out. No wonder my voice has trembled into a quiver this week. Hoarse and broken.
The last time my numbers were high and my attitude low was about 6 years ago. I had 31 to start the year, and the year before I had requested to leave but was denied by my principal. My teaching partner went to fifth grade and I felt working with a veteran who was moving up into 4th was beneath me. By the end of the year, I remember her telling me we could have done so much more for the kids. She forgave me, I felt, with those words. She loved me the only way she could after an unsuccessful campaign. I felt young and inexperienced.
And that's what it really boils down to, the kids. My wife was in the stands for Cruz's baseball game the other day when the frustrations of a Dad were unleashed upon her ears. I was playing favoritism, mocked for not knowing the kids' names on the team (I had two very similar names), other verbal taunts. They questioned my parenting after Cruz threw a royal meltdown at a practice and was still able to play a few days later.
I responded the only way I typically do, I killed him with eloquent words of an email. The end result was a "sorry", and, "it would be awkward for me to help" when I called for him to act instead of talk. Of all the teams, I am stuck with one assistant. Every team has 4. I'm leading a men's Bible study, trying to dangle rewards in front of church-going men to find something more significant in their lives and secular men can't even come and throw ball with their boys.
I make phone calls when I can to parents. They want homework explained, why their son was sent to PEAK explanations, why their son isn't getting tutoring explanations. I always want to ask, "Does your kid ever get punished at home," or, "does your child sleep enough or have some bed time?" and "did you know your child needs supplies?" The common excuse for their children is medication, apathy and boredom. I think, not enough (medication), "you think you have apathy" and "they must have been too bored to finish their work." I pepper kids with calm-downs and redirections.
The GT teacher comes to speak with me at the end of the day. We talk strategies and way she can help. Seems their directive is different from the past pf pulling kids out for one on one time. I like talking about my best practices, the books and lessons that have favorably showcased my skills. It's not so much the implementation of tools and strategies, it's having the time to reflect and track their learning somehow. I told the kids that I will hound them all year for their very best. I hound myself.
And at the end of the day when the looks on my colleagues faces mimic a series of sarcastic, defeatist mimes, I wonder if I've lost some perspective. My wife got a new kid today. Poor girl slept in class. Imagine her first day. Or the girl who is moving today to a new city. Completing her homework must be the last thing on her mind. She's already left.
I think I know how she feels.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The Sigh of Pauses
Communication has always been my greatest strength, and my biggest nemesis. When I was younger, I could pen stories of adventure and daring, labyrinthine plots and dastardly villains. I could wax poetic about most subjects given the right audience. I would have gladly placed an article posted in the high school newspaper in anyone's hands in high school.
And then came college. My first semester in community college, we had the simply assignment to introduce the person sitting in front of us. Easy. Except the pressure to be funny, to be unique, to speak eloquently about the lineage of the stranger before me. And then I bombed. And I never went back to the class.
The warning signs had been there. The girls who I never spoke to and asked out. The times when I was sarcastic with a teacher, stubborn and adolescent. Even as a child, the way I communicated with the arrival of my step-dad was noteworthy. I asked my mom who was the man eating all of our food. I banged on their door at night refusing to sleep. I'm pretty sure I told him I hated him in the looks I gave him, even if I did say it in words.
And I let myself stumble through the relationship with my father. I ask questions without any confidence, feeling that the answer I get must be filtered through some bitter-Mexican man translator. Even today, we talk about surface issues. There's an emptiness at times. The sigh of pauses.
And then there's home. Early in my relationship with Delcina I probably should not have spoken at all. I don't want kids. Yeah, that one worked out. Or the times I tried to break up with her when all I really wanted to do was tell her I was scared of my future. Women know when our communication needs professional development.
Work communication is cyclical. When I was a young teacher, I spoke loudly to the kids. I used my size to win the proximity wars. My crazy stares had been well trained driving the streets of Houston where even the snow cone vendor in the suburbs gave you dirty looks. I didn't ever want to be a mexican until I moved away from Texas, and then the lowrider was all I used to assert authority. Do your work, holmes.
In staff meetings I was bored and twitchy. I made jokes and undermined the authority. The attitude of a room of teachers after a long day with kids is not one that would be likened to nurturing. We were wolves.
My spiritual communication was void of substance. I didn't pray. I lashed out at others. I mocked and rarely apologized.
There then becomes a conversion period in a man that either kills him, narrows his path or ignites the fire. The narrow path is narrow for a reason. I don't think there's a line for the sarcastic belly-scratchers in heaven. The ones who play with fire eventually lose. And the ones that die? Maybe they are the unlucky ones who failed to choose a side before it was too late.
And I tiptoe around a room of children. How many aren't used to hearing the voice of man with conviction and sternness on his voice? How many look upon disdain upon their own fathers, the step-fathers who bark from their x-box-but indented couch from blocking the television as they walk past? The principal who awaits my misstep lurks behind the door. There is no safety net. I walk around as if someone is following me with one of those annoying interview mini-recorders I used to carry as a budding freshman journalist. I would rewind it and listen back, edit the questions and answers like I was some big shot. Somehow, that tape could capture the essence of speaking to someone live, when in reality you can't catch the looks, the pauses, the sighs.
Today was voice was hoarse. I struggled to communicate. I stuttered too much in class like some robot that needed more oil. In my first Bible study class I didn't have enough eye contact. I feel like a young, inexperienced man in a room full of gentleman.
Son, you have no idea.
And then came college. My first semester in community college, we had the simply assignment to introduce the person sitting in front of us. Easy. Except the pressure to be funny, to be unique, to speak eloquently about the lineage of the stranger before me. And then I bombed. And I never went back to the class.
The warning signs had been there. The girls who I never spoke to and asked out. The times when I was sarcastic with a teacher, stubborn and adolescent. Even as a child, the way I communicated with the arrival of my step-dad was noteworthy. I asked my mom who was the man eating all of our food. I banged on their door at night refusing to sleep. I'm pretty sure I told him I hated him in the looks I gave him, even if I did say it in words.
And I let myself stumble through the relationship with my father. I ask questions without any confidence, feeling that the answer I get must be filtered through some bitter-Mexican man translator. Even today, we talk about surface issues. There's an emptiness at times. The sigh of pauses.
And then there's home. Early in my relationship with Delcina I probably should not have spoken at all. I don't want kids. Yeah, that one worked out. Or the times I tried to break up with her when all I really wanted to do was tell her I was scared of my future. Women know when our communication needs professional development.
Work communication is cyclical. When I was a young teacher, I spoke loudly to the kids. I used my size to win the proximity wars. My crazy stares had been well trained driving the streets of Houston where even the snow cone vendor in the suburbs gave you dirty looks. I didn't ever want to be a mexican until I moved away from Texas, and then the lowrider was all I used to assert authority. Do your work, holmes.
In staff meetings I was bored and twitchy. I made jokes and undermined the authority. The attitude of a room of teachers after a long day with kids is not one that would be likened to nurturing. We were wolves.
My spiritual communication was void of substance. I didn't pray. I lashed out at others. I mocked and rarely apologized.
There then becomes a conversion period in a man that either kills him, narrows his path or ignites the fire. The narrow path is narrow for a reason. I don't think there's a line for the sarcastic belly-scratchers in heaven. The ones who play with fire eventually lose. And the ones that die? Maybe they are the unlucky ones who failed to choose a side before it was too late.
And I tiptoe around a room of children. How many aren't used to hearing the voice of man with conviction and sternness on his voice? How many look upon disdain upon their own fathers, the step-fathers who bark from their x-box-but indented couch from blocking the television as they walk past? The principal who awaits my misstep lurks behind the door. There is no safety net. I walk around as if someone is following me with one of those annoying interview mini-recorders I used to carry as a budding freshman journalist. I would rewind it and listen back, edit the questions and answers like I was some big shot. Somehow, that tape could capture the essence of speaking to someone live, when in reality you can't catch the looks, the pauses, the sighs.
Today was voice was hoarse. I struggled to communicate. I stuttered too much in class like some robot that needed more oil. In my first Bible study class I didn't have enough eye contact. I feel like a young, inexperienced man in a room full of gentleman.
Son, you have no idea.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Squandering the Gift
Motivation.
When I was in high school, my step-dad would pop the leather belt he wore to hold him his work pants on the route and say, "When you think about doing something other than school, remember this." So motivation to succeed was felt upon the lashes of a belt and the worrisome notion that the most sensitive skin was found on your behind. It kept me straight most of the time. I still hung around idiot jocks, laughed to impress and searched for meaning in poems, action-hero short stories and the in the eyes of pretty girls.
In college, it canyoned during stress and cascaded with specific professors. My freshman year in college, the professor who assigned Babylon AD and Ethan Fromm will forever be remembered as the year I realized I could back out of something and momentarily feel no consequences, rebuke or shame. Backing out of college the way I did after my first year was a work of art. Waking every morning, driving to an undisclosed parking lot, park or abandoned road, reading the paper, daydreaming, people watching. Spending money on lunch, then driving back home in a rush as if I had homework to do. Eventually I think I wanted someone to notice I wasn't in class. Community college registrars don't call when you're absent. It was a friend of mine who eventually turned me in, albeit he was an unwitting accomplice in my demise. He called looking for me after weeks of ditching class. At least someone was worried.
The summer I met my wife I dedicated myself back to studies. It's not like I had another choice. When you have a proficiency for laziness and your hands are too soft for work, going to school is the next best thing. Getting a degree was always ingrained in my life. My parents spoke of it often, it's just that I hadn't quite seen it being worked out in the lives that were closest to me. The struggles didn't hit home, the speeches about being more than your parents. The struggles I saw around me were from people's own abuses, addictions and fear. What failures did I really have at 20? A bad break up with a girlfriend? Being fired at Target for throwing away merchandise I refused to bag and tag for returns? A flat tire on a broken down Delta 88?
Even being in college was different in every form. Culturally, there weren't many people of color. I held college at bay like some preppy white-boy fantasy Hispanics could only see in movies. I thought toting the books across the quad would make me better. Get me laid. Get me appreciated. I failed to realize the hard work that went into it.
So that summer I had a lady who read over our compositions with a fine tooth comb for erroneous colons and wayward apostrophes. I worked hard, I read Faulkner, I turned in 12-paper essays when the assignment called for 10. By the time I moved to Ohio, I again found myself in familiar territory. The people who looked like me were not here to remind me the struggle it took to get me there. I felt at home actually. No one pressured me into spanish guilt (on the contrary, it was cool to be different. To be brown. To be unique), no one wondered why I wasn't hanging with the chucos and vatos.
When I entered the teaching field, the motivation to do well stemmed from the fear of failing. I was thrown into a rough class with 2 new teachers and one veteran. I only knew what the guides and books told me about teaching. The management and frustration of kids whose basic needs were not being met had not been taught. I screamed, I yelled, I erased so many mistakes on the chalk board my hands became ashy and gray. 9/11 happened my first year, too. I remember being on lockdown on a gorgeous September afternoon and ranting at a student who was pissed we didn't go outside to play. Like he understood anything I told him was beyond the moment. It was anything I could do to explain walking the halls with kids watching cartoons for recess juxtaposed with the rest of us watching the news. Ashes, paper, bodies. The things that fell that day were more than memories.
Four years later I was looking for reasons to give extra recess. I stalked the parking lot for the administrators SUV, and seeing none, knew that doing the minimal would suffice. There was no motivation. I took it for granted. I wasn't thankful.
Moving schools. Again, a change of venue leads me back to the beginning. New face, new opportunities. Fear motivates. Then God stepped in because He had enough of my ways. The fear.
And the blogs I have written since then have been a part of that transformation. Still new, still learning under the authority of the grand professor who goes through the compositions of my life with a fine toothed comb. I felt inspired not because I was scared for failing, but in letting Him down. In doing the minimal, I was inherently squandering the gifts.
And now this year. 34 kids. New curriculum. A desk of papers that need homes. Kids that need a home too. Last night, one of my students may have slept on a tile floor. I'm sleeping under a fan with a shitzu dog at my feet. And I'm the one that needs motivated.
Good conversations today. Sarcastic frustration. Eye rolling. There seems to be such a vast distance between the people who make educational decisions with the ones who do the grunt work. Do they know of the third grader who barely can write his name and leaves at 2 in the afternoon every other day? Where is the book about the helpless look of a girl whose mom could die any day from cancer? Or the kid from a tough city with something to prove? The girl who gets bullied?
This morning, the computers didn't work. My student teacher comes in, smiles and energy. The kids are eating mini-pancakes. Not one kid asked me to help open packages. Pancakes was the only motivation they needed.
And they didn't even have any syrup.
When I was in high school, my step-dad would pop the leather belt he wore to hold him his work pants on the route and say, "When you think about doing something other than school, remember this." So motivation to succeed was felt upon the lashes of a belt and the worrisome notion that the most sensitive skin was found on your behind. It kept me straight most of the time. I still hung around idiot jocks, laughed to impress and searched for meaning in poems, action-hero short stories and the in the eyes of pretty girls.
In college, it canyoned during stress and cascaded with specific professors. My freshman year in college, the professor who assigned Babylon AD and Ethan Fromm will forever be remembered as the year I realized I could back out of something and momentarily feel no consequences, rebuke or shame. Backing out of college the way I did after my first year was a work of art. Waking every morning, driving to an undisclosed parking lot, park or abandoned road, reading the paper, daydreaming, people watching. Spending money on lunch, then driving back home in a rush as if I had homework to do. Eventually I think I wanted someone to notice I wasn't in class. Community college registrars don't call when you're absent. It was a friend of mine who eventually turned me in, albeit he was an unwitting accomplice in my demise. He called looking for me after weeks of ditching class. At least someone was worried.
The summer I met my wife I dedicated myself back to studies. It's not like I had another choice. When you have a proficiency for laziness and your hands are too soft for work, going to school is the next best thing. Getting a degree was always ingrained in my life. My parents spoke of it often, it's just that I hadn't quite seen it being worked out in the lives that were closest to me. The struggles didn't hit home, the speeches about being more than your parents. The struggles I saw around me were from people's own abuses, addictions and fear. What failures did I really have at 20? A bad break up with a girlfriend? Being fired at Target for throwing away merchandise I refused to bag and tag for returns? A flat tire on a broken down Delta 88?
Even being in college was different in every form. Culturally, there weren't many people of color. I held college at bay like some preppy white-boy fantasy Hispanics could only see in movies. I thought toting the books across the quad would make me better. Get me laid. Get me appreciated. I failed to realize the hard work that went into it.
So that summer I had a lady who read over our compositions with a fine tooth comb for erroneous colons and wayward apostrophes. I worked hard, I read Faulkner, I turned in 12-paper essays when the assignment called for 10. By the time I moved to Ohio, I again found myself in familiar territory. The people who looked like me were not here to remind me the struggle it took to get me there. I felt at home actually. No one pressured me into spanish guilt (on the contrary, it was cool to be different. To be brown. To be unique), no one wondered why I wasn't hanging with the chucos and vatos.
When I entered the teaching field, the motivation to do well stemmed from the fear of failing. I was thrown into a rough class with 2 new teachers and one veteran. I only knew what the guides and books told me about teaching. The management and frustration of kids whose basic needs were not being met had not been taught. I screamed, I yelled, I erased so many mistakes on the chalk board my hands became ashy and gray. 9/11 happened my first year, too. I remember being on lockdown on a gorgeous September afternoon and ranting at a student who was pissed we didn't go outside to play. Like he understood anything I told him was beyond the moment. It was anything I could do to explain walking the halls with kids watching cartoons for recess juxtaposed with the rest of us watching the news. Ashes, paper, bodies. The things that fell that day were more than memories.
Four years later I was looking for reasons to give extra recess. I stalked the parking lot for the administrators SUV, and seeing none, knew that doing the minimal would suffice. There was no motivation. I took it for granted. I wasn't thankful.
Moving schools. Again, a change of venue leads me back to the beginning. New face, new opportunities. Fear motivates. Then God stepped in because He had enough of my ways. The fear.
And the blogs I have written since then have been a part of that transformation. Still new, still learning under the authority of the grand professor who goes through the compositions of my life with a fine toothed comb. I felt inspired not because I was scared for failing, but in letting Him down. In doing the minimal, I was inherently squandering the gifts.
And now this year. 34 kids. New curriculum. A desk of papers that need homes. Kids that need a home too. Last night, one of my students may have slept on a tile floor. I'm sleeping under a fan with a shitzu dog at my feet. And I'm the one that needs motivated.
Good conversations today. Sarcastic frustration. Eye rolling. There seems to be such a vast distance between the people who make educational decisions with the ones who do the grunt work. Do they know of the third grader who barely can write his name and leaves at 2 in the afternoon every other day? Where is the book about the helpless look of a girl whose mom could die any day from cancer? Or the kid from a tough city with something to prove? The girl who gets bullied?
This morning, the computers didn't work. My student teacher comes in, smiles and energy. The kids are eating mini-pancakes. Not one kid asked me to help open packages. Pancakes was the only motivation they needed.
And they didn't even have any syrup.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Snake Mazes
My biggest complaint of late has been the most regrettable. And like all complaints, there's enough of a glaring, piercing light on the deficiency that you carry that complaining about it only means you basically don't like yourself. And like all complaints, we shake our fists at God as if to say, thanks for nothing." It's as if we don't like our jobs, the days of the week, the food at a restaurant, our kids or the amount of time we squander everyday. We shake our fists and lament the traffic, the wasted time, the glitches in the system that keeps you from enjoying some selfish "me" time.
But we complain anyway, don't we?
This is the first year of teaching in many years that I can ever remember that could easily be May. Education has always been a rather fluid profession. I have never had the same management system or incentive program. What works for one group may not work with another. If you don't tweak something, you get labeled that teacher who everyone thinks they get from movies like "Waiting for Superman". Curriculum changes on a whim. New books get purchased, old ideas are given new names. I still have old files on disks of great tests questions for a basal reader kids use in Borneo now.
The numbers are always the enemy. Not enough of a percentage have passed a test--probation for you. You have a very high number of free lunch candidates--you get funding! Not enough kids in a classroom--you get staff reduced and sent to the place no teacher in the district even wanted to interview for. Too many kids in the classroom?--not a problem, we'll get back to you in a month.
I have 33 kids from my last count. One kid returned from being on vacation, missed the first 8 days of school, and has joined an already packed room. Getting to the front of the room requires a few stretches, some snake-mazing, a pole vault and some belly tucks. We're a jovial group. I have a combined fourth and fifth grade class, generally called a "split" among the people who work in Columbus. I say that word elsewhere to teachers in other districts and I get 200 tweets about calling my union. I'm trying a new management system, teaching math for the first time in 5 years and trying to implement a virtual bevy of materials and strategies to give them the best that they deserve.
Motivation comes in many forms, now that I've found ways to harness it. My wife, the pictures of old students on the walls, the looks of my future students who want to hi-five and hug me as I pass them in the halls. God should be my initial source of information. I want him to be. At times He is. At times, I'm just a fan (from a great book by Kyle Idleman). I have brushed past my newly purchased "Jesus shirts" in the closet during the weekends. I'm ho-hum. Lukewarm. While God is still close to me, I keep turning, asking Him, "Are you sure you want me?" I'm fickle.
And in the middle of a complaint, God spoke (again).
Recess duty is always interesting. I get to watch kindergartners shoot airballs, fifth graders double-dribble and girls who attempt to jump into a double dutch rope only to see it tangle in their braids. Some kids follow me like I carry bacon. Some come and want me to watch them run across the pavement in mach speed. Some dance and others even sing. The stories they tell are sometimes tragic, funny, fantastical and gruesome. They tattle too. They hate getting kickballs snatched from their grasps and they don't mind snitching on a fellow classmate if the degrading of moms break the rules of decency. Poor moms always get degraded on blacktop playgrounds.
So it is inevitable that kids become rogue investigative reporters. Crickets get thrown in kids, girls scream and fingers get pointed, water break. In the course of rounding up a suspect, I notice a group of about 10 girls seated around one of the tables. Their heads are down, holding hands, eyes closed.
Are they praying?
So I join in like the kid I am. And sure enough of the the girls says a prayer.
Dear Lord we're thankful for bibles and our friends and school. We're sorry for the bad things we have done and hope you forgive us.
That was a the short version.
In my quest to find my suspect, I rejoined the hands I was holding and left. (now, that story will have to be told another time. I'm not sure how lesbians, truth or dare, and spin the bottle relate to a group of praying girls, but there's no logic to blacktop freedom)
Coming back later, I see the same prayer girls crying. Like sobbing. I go over and they tell me they are thinking about all the bad things they have done and it made them sad. So here's the door I'm always praying about. Lord, I'm not always faithful. Show me a door, open an opportunity to show my faith.
Girls, there's no need to be sad. That's what prayers are for. We lift those concerns to Him. That's why He died for us, so we wouldn't be sad anymore.
I think they cried more.
One of my sidekicks begins talking again. I think they need their sins washed away.
Yeah, don't we all.
But we complain anyway, don't we?
This is the first year of teaching in many years that I can ever remember that could easily be May. Education has always been a rather fluid profession. I have never had the same management system or incentive program. What works for one group may not work with another. If you don't tweak something, you get labeled that teacher who everyone thinks they get from movies like "Waiting for Superman". Curriculum changes on a whim. New books get purchased, old ideas are given new names. I still have old files on disks of great tests questions for a basal reader kids use in Borneo now.
The numbers are always the enemy. Not enough of a percentage have passed a test--probation for you. You have a very high number of free lunch candidates--you get funding! Not enough kids in a classroom--you get staff reduced and sent to the place no teacher in the district even wanted to interview for. Too many kids in the classroom?--not a problem, we'll get back to you in a month.
I have 33 kids from my last count. One kid returned from being on vacation, missed the first 8 days of school, and has joined an already packed room. Getting to the front of the room requires a few stretches, some snake-mazing, a pole vault and some belly tucks. We're a jovial group. I have a combined fourth and fifth grade class, generally called a "split" among the people who work in Columbus. I say that word elsewhere to teachers in other districts and I get 200 tweets about calling my union. I'm trying a new management system, teaching math for the first time in 5 years and trying to implement a virtual bevy of materials and strategies to give them the best that they deserve.
Motivation comes in many forms, now that I've found ways to harness it. My wife, the pictures of old students on the walls, the looks of my future students who want to hi-five and hug me as I pass them in the halls. God should be my initial source of information. I want him to be. At times He is. At times, I'm just a fan (from a great book by Kyle Idleman). I have brushed past my newly purchased "Jesus shirts" in the closet during the weekends. I'm ho-hum. Lukewarm. While God is still close to me, I keep turning, asking Him, "Are you sure you want me?" I'm fickle.
And in the middle of a complaint, God spoke (again).
Recess duty is always interesting. I get to watch kindergartners shoot airballs, fifth graders double-dribble and girls who attempt to jump into a double dutch rope only to see it tangle in their braids. Some kids follow me like I carry bacon. Some come and want me to watch them run across the pavement in mach speed. Some dance and others even sing. The stories they tell are sometimes tragic, funny, fantastical and gruesome. They tattle too. They hate getting kickballs snatched from their grasps and they don't mind snitching on a fellow classmate if the degrading of moms break the rules of decency. Poor moms always get degraded on blacktop playgrounds.
So it is inevitable that kids become rogue investigative reporters. Crickets get thrown in kids, girls scream and fingers get pointed, water break. In the course of rounding up a suspect, I notice a group of about 10 girls seated around one of the tables. Their heads are down, holding hands, eyes closed.
Are they praying?
So I join in like the kid I am. And sure enough of the the girls says a prayer.
Dear Lord we're thankful for bibles and our friends and school. We're sorry for the bad things we have done and hope you forgive us.
That was a the short version.
In my quest to find my suspect, I rejoined the hands I was holding and left. (now, that story will have to be told another time. I'm not sure how lesbians, truth or dare, and spin the bottle relate to a group of praying girls, but there's no logic to blacktop freedom)
Coming back later, I see the same prayer girls crying. Like sobbing. I go over and they tell me they are thinking about all the bad things they have done and it made them sad. So here's the door I'm always praying about. Lord, I'm not always faithful. Show me a door, open an opportunity to show my faith.
Girls, there's no need to be sad. That's what prayers are for. We lift those concerns to Him. That's why He died for us, so we wouldn't be sad anymore.
I think they cried more.
One of my sidekicks begins talking again. I think they need their sins washed away.
Yeah, don't we all.
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