Day forty-seven

For those of you just tuning in, "This Guy is Falling" follows the educational exploits of Mr. Birds-Eye, a high school teacher in his third year of teaching, traditionally the make or break year in the profession. Fearing that he has finally reached his wits end, Birds-Eye decides to write a blog in hopes that he can reboot his year by focusing on the positives of the profession.

And I'm happy to report that it's been working.


Kids are funny, man.


So my juniors are still reading Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy. If you haven't read it, talk about a harrowing tale!


By the time Richard turns ten, he's burned down a house, strangled a kitten, gotten drunk, he's been abandoned by his father, jumped by a street gang, been sent to an orphanage, the list goes on and on.


So finally after all of this, he's sent to live with his grandmother who's a seven day adventist, a real fire and brimstone christian.

When Richard gets to his grandmother's place, one of the stipulations is that he has to go to her church to worship "her God." The minute he attends his first service, Richard starts running down what he's supposed to believe. He talks about the sun exploding in a pool of blood, bones turning to dust, demons coming out of the ground to rip the flesh from your bones, men walking across water, people being risen from the grave, etc.


PAUSE. 


A little information on my kids, most of them are Christian in one form or another.


Now the reason we went over this section of the book was to demonstrate that as frightening as all this stuff sounds, it's got nothing on Richard's life. I mean, this kid has literally lived through hell already, right?


This is all standard Book of Revelations, armageddon stuff. It's in the Bible, the Christian Bible, which for the record I have no problem with. To each his own.


So I run down this frightening list for the class and I ask them what religion does Richard's grandmother worship and this one kid raises his hand and in all sincerity says...


...Satanism?


Priceless.


And that in a nutshell is why I still like teaching.


Signing off.


Birds-Eye