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The Real GOOD Loser, A Story That Could…
Chapter Four: 1% Pirate
“The world is changing. Truth is vanishing…. War is coming.”
— from the film Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part 1
This Covid Pandemic had teachers and students sent home in March of 2020. We stayed home the entire last three months of the school year. I never thought it would happen, but it did: Remote Learning became the new normal.
Committees across the country have argued both publicly and amongst themselves whether it’s safe for students to go back to school for In-Person Learning. One of the many debates is this: Are kids more at risk of this disease or suffering long-term emotional trauma by staying isolated in their homes?
Despite society’s need for strenuous debate, fear most always wins in situations like this, and fear is at an all-time high…again. While I do hope memories of this time will unite us in the future, I find myself more and more impatient for better days.
Summer vacation came and went, and this new school year is only a few days away. Two weeks ago, our district announced its decision to start the year remotely. All educators were told to expect an in-person meeting with their supervisors. I am about to have mine. To discuss “Expectations and Requirements” according to the email I received from Principal Sam.
Driving in for this meeting I stopped at my regular spot to grab my 5-hour energy drinks. Like many, I work more than one job to survive financially. My side gig is construction. I grew up building houses with my dad and over the summer he and my brothers did a garage addition for a friend. That’s when I picked up this stupid 5-hour habit again. I hate drinking them as I’m pretty sure they make me more tired, but I continue to be an addict and find myself doing a lot of stupid things out of habit.
I’m gonna stop—tomorrow…always tomorrow.
The boy at the gas station where I can buy two of these 5-Hours for five dollars and fifty cense is from India. I drink two a day, so we sort of know each other at this point. He was watching a Mission Impossible movie on his phone this morning and told me they love Mission Impossible movies over there.
The grant I got to teach this class funds it for one year. That one year ends in January. Like Tom Cruise in one of those movies, my mission—should I choose to accept it—is to convince the district to extend funding for this program through the end of the school year…and then beyond hopefully.
Prior to this meeting, I submitted my curriculum outline by email to Principal Sam. There are no national standards to consult for my course, so sitting here now I can only hope that what I provided appeared structured and logical— Fake it till you make it, right?
“I don’t get it,” Principal Sam begins our conversation.
Before I can respond the cellphone lying on the desk between us lights up with an incoming message. As its recipient’s eyes look down at it, I immediately feel like an unwanted distraction in the room.
Principal Sam and I are both wearing masks and sitting in a stripped-down office that smells of some cleaning supply. Bleach maybe. I expected some small talk before discussing business, but the fact we are only allotted fifteen minutes to meet in person must mean there is no time for such subtleties.
Everyone is quick to say “I don’t get it” to me. I don’t like it, but I’m used to it.
A sprinkle of rain taps on the window behind Principal Sam. With those eyes no longer focusing on that phone, I ask, “What don’t you get exactly?”
Three pieces of paper are thrown on the desk in front of me and I can now see what Principal Sam doesn’t get. I can’t reach down to grab the papers because “person-to-person contact is not permitted” but see my article titled 1% Pirate staring up at me.
I spent the summer assuming we wouldn’t be back in the building to start the new school year. Trying to think of ways to do my class remotely, I set up a blog page: RecoveryHighSchool(dot)com. Where I plan to post an article each week for students to read and reflect on.
In the curriculum outline I submitted to Principal Sam I wrote:
Each week I will write an article and ask students to answer a Question for Reflection in a journal provided to them. Besides chronically their personal development, one of the purposes of this will be to increase a student’s cognitive ability to interpret stories. Rather than simply “watch and believe”, this class hopes to teach students how to “watch and decipher”. In class we will refer to this ability as an individual’s C.S.I. Score: Common Sense Intellect: one’s ability to separate truth from fiction when presented a piece of entertainment in the real world.
“How does this fit into the objectives you set for your class Jose?” Principal Sam asks.
“We’ll be talking about social media our first week. This will tie into that,” I reply.
“Well,” Principal Sam says after a moment, “it seems to me like you might just be testing out your creativity on my students Jose.”
Principal Sam was not a welcoming figure last year and I quickly realize things are not about to change. What was said to me in our first meeting plays like a recording in my head: “This school is designed to fill in the many gaps these students have from years of neglect, mismanagement, and laziness. And I take my job of getting them to graduate seriously Jose…you need to know that.”
After another painful pause the dementor across from me continues.
“Your friend, Mr. Bernard, pulled a lot of strings getting you into my school Jose. I appreciate your intentions, but question how well this program will work here. It’s only earning students one credit as an elective and filling your class roster wasn’t easy obviously.”
Principal Sam slides out the third piece of paper buried beneath my article on the desk in front of me. I see that tattoo on my principal’s wrist and think of the story told to students about it last year. My eyes zoom in on my class roster—a roster with only four names on it.
“But anyhow,” Principal Sam continues, “we still need to discuss what I expect from you on a weekly basis…”
I was hoping the roster I was given last week was a work in progress. But this confirms it—I will have only four students in my class this year.
Not listening to what will be expected of me, I begin to hyper focus on the problem of getting additional funding with only four students enrolled in my class. I was in that halfway house only three years ago and so I know I’ve come unbelievably far, but I still feel like this world is conniving against me somehow—Was all that work I did to get here a waste?
The doubters sitting on their comfy recliners in my head are always feeding me questions like this. They’ve made their home up there and I fear I might never get rid of them.
When I was in that halfway house I began filling one page of a journal every night. That’s where I got this idea of having my students keep one themselves. I started to keep a journal a year or so before that fire; when all that other stuff happened, but didn’t write in it regularly until I found myself in that house. It really helped. That’s why I’m trying to pass it on to these kids—they’ll probably think it’s stupid though.
A year before that fire is when I started keeping my entertainment journal as well. That’s where I write quotes from shows and movies that speak to me in some way. Like the one of Flik in the Disney movie A Bug’s Life I’m remembering now: “Nothing I ever do works,” that dreamy big-eyed ant says dispiritingly; conceding another failed invention, “I’m never gonna make a difference.”
Sitting here listening to Principal Sam, it’s clear to me this is not to be a meeting but a lecture. Whatever I want to say won’t change anything. I’ve been in this position a lot lately and could compare myself to little Matilda in her movie if I wanted…
“Listen you little wise acre,” her father growls and pokes at her in the scene my mind imagines, “I’m smart—you’re dumb. I’m big—you’re little. I’m right—you’re wrong. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I’m only half-listening to Principal Sam when the alarm on the phone sitting on the desk between us chimes marking the end of our fifteen-minute meeting.
“I know you have experience teaching Jose,” Principal Sam says looking up after touching that phone, “just have something I can document by the end of day on Fridays. The new district guidelines for lesson plans and progress reports are online. Miss Lily can help. I’ll mention it to her when we meet next.”
“That would be awesome,” I say, “Thank you.”
I’ve found that surviving this world often requires making people believe we are more confident than we are. I don’t like playing this game but know how to when I must. Pretending to be grateful for the extra help with the busy work teaching requires wakes up the frustrated me.
Getting kids to pay attention for an hour at time is difficult enough. Spending hours explaining what we will be doing, how, and why is just an extra kick—No wonder people aren’t dying to be teachers these days.
I know every job has busy work; a result of others justifying their existence and their jobs, and that I shouldn’t complain. But it’s just too easy. I might be good at acting like nothing bothers me to people like Principal Sam, but I do truly hate all this acting life requires.
If this program doesn’t work maybe it won’t be such a bad thing?
It’s just like those doubters to have me rationalizing quitting on myself at the first sign of trouble.
“They’ll be watching us closely this year Jose,” Principal Sam says standing up in front of me. “Let’s make sure we’ve got each other’s back okay?”
Principal Sam gives me a look I semi-understand. “No problem,” I answer standing to meet my principal’s eyes.
Saying goodbye, I leave Principal Sam’s office; relieved to be done this obligation and looking forward to my escape back to isolation. That’s been one of the few benefits of this pandemic for me.
Feeling overwhelmed, a caving sense of doom begins filling my chest— What should I worry about first, I wonder.
Lost in my own personal world of worry, I see Miss Lily speed-walking towards me.
She’s the guidance counselor here. We talked virtually almost every day last year to help students cope with the difficulties around Remote Learning. Principal Sam made it our job basically. With all that is going on in my head, seeing her is a pleasant surprise.
Getting closer her appearance has smiling to myself. She has a mask on—which is normal now—but her eyes are covered by sunglasses; making her entire face a mystery. “You’re running late I’m guessing?” I say coming together.
“As usual,” she replies stopping next to me. “How’d your meeting go?”
“It was fine,” I answer with a half-truth. Turning my head slightly I ask, “Are you smiling under there? … I can’t tell.”
“Sorry,” she replies. Freeing a hand, she pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head. “I just bought ‘em. Do they look okay?”
Presented with this question I can’t help but wonder why pretty girls are always wearing sunglasses. I like to look a person in the eye is all. I might also be struggling with some trust issues at the moment.
“They look fabulous!” I answer her question hiding my scarred ego behind a satirical voice. Knowing she needs to get going and is just being polite by stopping, I push her on. “Go to your meeting,” I say, “We’ll catch up later.”
“Alright,” she says, “I want to hear about your summer though. Make sure you come see me.”
Miss Lily presses one finger into my chest and turns to leave. Watching her go I can’t help but toss a teaser in her direction. “Hey,” I say down the empty hall, “Did you get that ring yet or what?”
Stopping to look back at me, Miss Lily raises her left hand into the air. “Don’t get me started,” she says wiggling naked fingers at me before turning to continue on.
That quick hello gives my worrying self a break by waking up my critical and judgmental self. I try not to say my critical and judgmental thoughts out loud, but the editing that goes on in the short distance between my brain and my mouth has increased exponentially over the past few years…I know I can’t be alone.
In the movie A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga sing that song Shallow. “Are you happy in this modern world?” they ask— No, Mr. Cooper and Ms. Gaga, I am most definitely not.
I’m reminded of something Lauryn said to me last year. “FAF is everywhere Mr. J.” FAF was a word she needed to explain to me. It stands for Fake As…that word she uses too much.
I’ve been using that word myself more than I should admit lately. Watching all these already attractive people on television doing all these things to their faces it’s hard not to. I taught my twins what it means and now they’re using it too. While I might be justified in some of what I think and say, that doesn’t make it right. And it definitely isn’t healthy for me.
When it comes to appearances I know things are harder on women today. If a guy has a thin upper lip like me he can cover it up with some facial hair. I’m not sure what annoys me more, FAF eyelashes and FAF lips, or a college kid trying to look like Goose from Top Gun with one of those silly mustaches on his face.
This FAF world might be harder on women, but it affects us men too.
Does size matter? As a boy that question has you worrying about the size of your equipment. As a man you realize its more about the size of your bank account. I was recently told I have nice calves—Who the hell cares about their calves, I thought hearing that.
That compliment reminded me of an episode of the show Entourage where Johnny Drama debates getting calf implants. That show was supposedly based on Mark Wahlberg’s real life. Focusing only on the females featured in the background however, it’s clear it could not have been based on his real-REAL life.
When you take the time to study entertainment, it’s not difficult to piece together why “FAF is everywhere”.
I believe people today are mistaking how we behave—OR ACT—for who we are, and these people we see on screen are fighting the same battle as the rest of us. They deal with a lot more opinions so things might be harder on them actually— I wonder if them having to worry less about money makes us even?
If everyone is in recovery, so are all these people we see on tv. “Wealth, fame, and success manipulate the ways in which a person interprets reality.” I read that somewhere so it must be true… Maybe that’s what some of them are recovering from?
Entering my car, the reality of my situation again hits me: How am I supposed to get additional funding for my program with only four students enrolled?
It won’t be easy, but it’s doable: To solve this problem, I must reverse engineer an outcome—I am the Master Strategist…you can do this J.
In situations as dire as this, confidently deluding myself seems rational. If my class is to be a success however, it’s crucial the few students I do have understand what I’m trying to do with these articles I’ll be sharing with them each week.
The first one—that will be shared with them on Friday, September 11th—plays in my head as I start my drive home.
*
Article Titled: 1% Pirate
Dated: Friday, September 11th, 2020
“Great men aren’t made great by politics. They aren’t made great by prudence or propriety. They are, every last one of them, made great by one thing and one thing only: the relentless pursuit of a better world.”
—from the show Black Sails: Season 2, Episode 1
I think of entertainment as a universal language that connects all people and consider talented screenwriters some of the great communicators of our age.
We have a challenging year ahead of us with this pandemic, and in this class we have some serious issues that must be addressed, but before we get into all that I would like to start here by telling you a silly story about me…your teacher.
This story starts with a text message I overheard my dad reading to my mom: “I went on Ancestry.com and found out we are 1% Pirate today.”
That’s what I heard my dad say to my mom. I then watched my dad hold out his phone and show her the text message he had just read to her from my Memere.
Memere is what we call my grandmother from Canada by the way. My dad’s mom. Am I the only one that gets confused with all these names we have for grandparents today? I have a hard time with names already.
I’m getting distracted. Sorry. Back to my story.
I saw my mom laugh at that message on my dad’s phone but didn’t give it too much thought as I was just walking through their living room. That same day I was watching the show Black Sails; the drama series about pirates in the early 1700’s I quoted to begin this article.
“They won’t believe until it happens,” that show said, “but when it does they’ll say it was inevitable.”
That show had me hooked. The desire of these people to live a life where they were not governed by rules and expectations they disagreed with really spoke to me.
Watching that show the captain was talking about the men of the island: “They’re not animals,” James Flint said, “they are men starved of hope. Give that back to them and who’s to say what could happen.”
Inspired by what this captain said; and what I heard my dad say to my mother, I paused the show and found this YouTube video titled “James Flint X so far from who I was”. The title and image alone were just the right amount of interesting for what I needed it for.
Jumping on Facebook I wrote: “Happy Sunday everyone! I’m excited to announce I just found out I’m 1% Pirate…ARGHHH!!!”
I posted my message with that video and resumed watching my show while at the same time checking Facebook for reactions of course. One LIKE. Then a few more.
Why don’t people LOVE the stuff I post? I wondered.
I’m new to this whole Facebook thing. My wife didn’t want me using it before but even she uses social media to Snap and Instagram the story she wants people to see today.
Did I use those terms correctly?
Being a newbie, I’ve experienced a few learning curves. For example, I’ve learned that “Loving” everyone’s posts makes it look like I’m “creeping on people”. I’ve gotten better at choosing my reactions more carefully but still tend to love something when I don’t think it will get me in trouble.
A LMAO face. Another laughing face. Soon an OMG reaction was thrown into the mix—making me feel better about myself.
Then my post received its first comment: “U serious bro?” it asked.
Not recognizing who this person was, I constructed a simple response: “Yeah,” I wrote, “it’s amazing how Ancestry.com can tell you this stuff.”
My pirate post was losing steam and not many more reactions were being made. At that point I think I had about twenty likes: “But who cares…I wanted more.” That’s a line from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid by the way; Ariel is singing about forks.
“Are u an idiot or is this a joke?”
Just when I had stopped checking my phone every three minutes another comment made my phone ding. The question was from the same person as earlier.
Annoyed at being called an “idiot” by someone who wrote the word you with just the letter u, I again clicked REPLY: “Just thought it was cool. No need for name-calling.”
I know——What a dad thing to say.
Then it began. This Facebook friend shared my original post; allowing all his followers to see it. With it this Facebook friend wrote: “He thinks he’s a pirate. LITERALLY!!!”
Immediately comments started blowing up my feed. A full out assault was underway, and I was at the center of the attack. The hits came fast and furious:
“How stupid,” someone wrote, “A Pirate. Some people should not be allowed to bread.”
This person meant to write “breed” with an e, but instead wrote it with an a, making it bread; the stuff you eat.
“Time to jump ship you moron!!!” wrote someone else.
“I’m 1% Alien,” wrote another. “You don’t see me posting that on Facebook…Maybe I should?”
There were so many comments I couldn’t believe it. As the day went on, I couldn’t help but read each person’s creative way on how to spew hate. My post was like a pinata on a string at a party. Put up for people to hit with their words.
Inside that pinata was my heart: Who was going to hit it hard enough to smash it open?
Taking a closer look at the original antagonist’s profile, I realized that this Facebook friend had over ten-thousand followers. I couldn’t recall when or how I had become this person’s friend but that no longer mattered as this social media “troll”; I’m told they’re called, had me in their grasp and there was nothing I could do about it.
Eventually I turned off my phone and went about the rest of my day; still not understanding why everyone made such an issue of me saying I was 1% Percent Pirate.
Was it like saying I was 1% Native-American or something? … Was it because proving you’re 1% anything is impossible?
Even if I knew why these people were making fun of me, who would let themself become upset over something so stupid? ——Unfortunately…I did.
Feeling down; frustrated with people and their ability to be so hurtful, I joined my parents later that night for dinner. In their kitchen my dad was pealing some potatoes, and my mother was browning some meat on the stove; she’s the cook, he’s just hired help.
How did I let that post from earlier turn my day into such a miserable one?
I watched as my parents laughed at something. Hoping that whatever it was might snap me out of my funk, I asked what they were laughing at. Unaware of what was going on in my head, my mother smiled and answered my question. “Just that picture from your Memere’s surgery,” she said.
“What picture?” I asked.
My mother then stopped what she was doing, wiped her hands on a cloth, and grabbed my dad’s phone off the counter. Punching a few buttons, she handed the phone to me.
On my dad’s phone I saw a picture of my Memere. She was smiling and beautiful as ever. But there was something about her in this picture I had not expected. In it she was wearing a black eye-patch over her left eye—the one she had surgery on the day before: “1 % Pirate.”
Dammit…I’m an idiot.
WEEKLY QUESTION FOR REFLECTION:
Is virtual socialization (aka: social media) bringing people together or tearing them apart? In your journals, list examples of both the good and bad it’s doing and state why you believe one is doing more than the other.
The Teacher’s Playlist:
7 Years by Lukas Graham
“I know the smallest voices they can make it major.”
(End of chapter 4)
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Recovery High School 