Once upon a time, approximately six years (or seven, I can’t figure the math out) I was sitting through new teacher orientation at my very first big girl job. Now, this group of teachers hired by Kitty Hawk that year was impressive, of the approximately seven of us, four of them are still working there and if I hadn’t been so completely over Texas, I’d probably be there as well. I do love middle school and punk Hispanic boys…but I digress. At this particular meeting, which I was actually paying attention to, a function of it being the VERY FIRST teacher meeting I’d ever been to, the man running the meeting, and in charge of getting the new teachers settled in the building was a practicing Buddhist history teacher who wrote a book about something Texas related. I’m digressing again. I remember him talking about being new to teaching and new to the building and how the relationships we’d form would probably grow to be the best friendships we had, built on the commonality of this crazy job.
With all of my 23-year-old sense of superiority, I scoffed at this idea. I had friends, thank you very much. He told us to look around, I looked around, that maybe one person in the room would prove to be among our best friends.
I looked around and wasn’t impressed. I did have, the immense luck of getting a job with someone I had gone to undergraduate and grad school with. I did not know her as an undergraduate, but with seven of us in a program we definitely had spent some time together over the course of my master’s year, but I was much closer to other people in the program. She was okay, a history teacher from a small town in south Texas, I imagined that we had very little in common. I couldn’t foresee becoming friends.
Of course, I was wrong.
Ed Miller, Buddhist history teacher, turned district office worker, where ever you are, you were right. This picture is proof of my wrongness and how right he really was. I made a small tally every time I talked to Erin this summer. I started it when my year was over and stopped when I started up again. I can’t be sure it is correct, that I recorded every two minute call, or call I received when a certain someone was driving north or southbound 35 (because really, is there a better time to call someone?). But, it’s roughly correct, and amuses the shit out of me.
So, here’s to be wrong, especially when it means I got a crazy wonderful friend out of it. And here’s to another school year, my seventh. The plan is to post once a week. Here’s also to grand ambitions.
