The Drama Teacher Part Two

 

 

This is me with some of the cast from The Clumsy Custard Horror Show - Jason Chachula is on my right and Mark Nixon is on my left.  I have facial hair because while I was directing Clumsy Custard I was also in a community theatre production of Man of LaMancha

I ended up directing a number of plays while teaching drama at George Jenkins High School.  

• Whodunit
• The Nut Factory
• The Mouse That Roared

Then I came to the best play I ever directed:  

• Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite.

God’s Favorite was a retelling of the Book of Job by one of America’s most competent playwrights.

One thing I learned from directing God’s Favorites is that directing a good play is better than directing a bad play.  

So often, when you put on school plays you get the Samuel French or Dramatic Publishing catalogue and study it before selecting the play or plays you intend to produce that school year.

While most of these companies have some classic, famous, excellent plays, they also might charge more for the rights to those “good” plays.  These companies also have tons of plays written specifically for high school or middle school drama programs.  Those plays are cheaper to put on, the authors usually know to limit the set to one location because having several locations is just more expensive and harder to do.  I put on some of these cheaper plays and they were OK, but when it came to God’s Favorite the script was just so very good.

I had a lot of problems I had to address.

In one scene, the character that was sort of the “devil” or “protagonist,” enters the stage by busting through a fireplace and scattering bricks everywhere.  I got around that by building the fireplace but when it came to the face of the fireplace I purchased foam blocks used for flower arranging.  They were brick sized blocks.  I used white Styrofoam about an inch thick and cut it to make the mortar.  I used watercolor and a lot of water to just dirty the foam so it wasn’t bright white, it was mortar looking.  The planter foam blocks were green, but I painted them red and used a darker color of red to give each brick some depth.
 

This allowed the actor to bust through the fireplace and after that play was over I just restacked the foam bricks and reset the mortar foam.  

 

The big stage set issue with God’s Favorite was that there was only one set, a living room, but in act one it was beautiful, and in act two there had been a fire.

I went to Salvation Army and found two couches that were identical.  Now my first idea was to set one of the couches on fire, have the fire department put the fire out, and get the newspapers there to photograph the event to add publicity to the production.  The fire department was full of spineless weenies who did not bend rules for a higher cause.  

I ended up giving one of the couches a makeup job.  I used a chainsaw to rip up the couch and then I used black and gray spray paint to make it look like that couch had burned.

Next I had to figure out how to have the walls pristine and bright in act one and dulled by smoke damage in act two.  I bought yards of black filmy cloth.  I attached this diaphanous sheer black material to the top of the set walls.  The cloth hung on the back side of the walls in act one, but during the intermission we used poles to push the cloth over the wall and allowed them to hang on the audience side of the set walls.  Letting the cloth hang over the paintings I had on the walls just made it look like the pictures were smoked too.  During the intermission the backstage crew switched couches, knocked stuff over, covered the walls with the Smokey cloth, and we used a fog machine to fill the set with smoke.  

The actors had ashen smudged costumes and put soot-like marks on their faces.  

When the curtain opened for act two and the smoke was there, everything really looked like the aftermath of a fire and the first night I could hear the shock coming from the audience.

God’s Favorite was a fantastic play.  I take some credit for the set, but the cast was just incredible.  We ended up running the show six times which is a lot for high school.

The play not only earned me a lot of money for the program, but it brought me into my first conflict with administrators.

During the rehearsal someone in the cast invited the principal watch a rehearsal because they were so proud of the play.  After watching the rehearsal, I was called into the office.  One of Joe’s children had a drinking problem.  Joe was the name Neil Simon gave his Job character. I had collected a lot of empty liquor bottles, several were donated by my priest, and I filled the bottles with tea or water.  Several times in one scene between the kid and his father, the kid was pouring himself drinks and acting drunk.

The principal asked me if I thought showing someone drinking alcohol was sending the wrong message to the students?  

I was flummoxed by the principal’s concern.  I explained that what is there does not matter.  What matters is what the play is saying about what is there.  You could show someone stealing something, but if the point of the play is that stealing is wrong, then it would not be irresponsible to have a play about stealing.  If the play was about a rape, but the rape was depicted as a crime, and that it was shown to be a criminal act, then wouldn’t the point of the play be good, even though there was something bad within the story.

I added that I had money invested in the play, that the cost of the set was pretty high, as far as high school plays go, and the students had rehearsed for many hours and their families were anxiously anticipating this play.  I had about 50 students involved in the production.  

I prevailed, and the play went on and was wonderfully received by virtually everyone who saw the play, but the experience was off putting.  I could not believe the fake drinking in the context of a play could be seen as risky and perhaps a promoting of immoral behavior.  It was a freakin’ play and we were not putting this play on in church.

THE COMPETITION

Lakeland had an Arts High School, and the teachers there were fantastic.  There was no way I could compete with The School of the Arts magnet school, but I did try to have as excellent a program as possible.  I started putting on two, then three plays a school year and one talent show.  

I found out about an organization for drama students called The Thespian Society.

Back in my days as President of the Putnam City teachers I was one of the people defending an orchestra teacher who was losing his job.  The district fired him because he had lots of complaints about his program and the numbers of students in his program was falling.  Plummeting is perhaps a better word.

It was a sad case because the man’s wife had cancer.  His wife was at the hearing before the school board.  His wife had a scarf covering her chemo-bald head.  We lost that hearing and it was devastating to the man and his dying wife.

One thing I remembered about that case was that if you are an electives teacher, and if you want to keep being an electives teacher then your kids have to like your class.  You have to do things to make the experience fun.  A dull electives class means the electives teacher is soon going to be reassigned or terminated.

When I found out I could escape teaching English and teach all drama classes then I was highly motivated to build my program.  At the end of each year I gave out engraved awards.  My drama club participated in Thespian competitions.  We always had cast parties.  I tried to make rehearsals as fun as that important work can be.

Another thing I tried to do is have at least one play that included a lot of students.  

I remember one wonderful effort with a play called The Competition.  I built some big square boxes on rollers.  I think there were four groups of kids competing in a one act play contest.  One group was preppies, one group was like Rock Metalheads, one group was doing King Lear as Kabuki theatre.  

It was the Kabuki part that got me in trouble.  There was a place where the stage directions said that King Lear was saying the words, “Let copulation thrive.”  Since Kabuki is silent, the actor delivering that line was to make hip thrusting motions.

Apparently one of the kids in the play when home with the script, and because literacy is so weak in this country, the student did not know the word copulation.  The student asked a parent what the word copulation meant.

So during rehearsals I hear an announcement [school was out so this was just a lazy way to contact me] saying, “Mr. Norman please report to Mr. Flander’s office.”  Getting called to the principal’s office is just as unpleasant for teachers as it is for students.

I found myself sitting in a chair and the principal sitting on the edge of his desk appearing to be casual, while being sure he was higher than me and sort of looming over me.

“Now tex, why would you put on a play like this?  Can you imagine how embarrassed that mother was to have her little girl asking her to explain what the word copulation means?”

“It was a line from Shakespeare's King Lear?” I thought that should be enough to defend the play.  I mean what was Flanders going to do, censor Shakespeare?

Apparently just saying it was from Shakespeare was not going to be enough.

“I just don’t know why you selected a play that uses a word like copulation in the script.”

“I didn’t, and it doesn’t,” I countered.  The line is in the Stage Directions.  The word copulation is never said in this play.”

Reluctantly I was allowed to return to the theatre and continue with the rehearsals.

I thought all was well, but all was not well.

The following day, yes, the very next day, I hear an announcement echo through the mostly empty school, “Mr. Norman, please report to the principal’s office.”

This time I’m told that the mother was not satisfied with his decision to allow the play to continue, so she had called a school board member, and the school board member had called him, and now Mr. Flanders was wanting to kill the play.  Again.

“The school board member wants some justification for why we would select and present a play to students that contains the word copulation.  What would you have me tell him?”

Well I was steamed about this.  I felt hassled.  I collected my thoughts and presented my case.

“First of all, as I told you yesterday, the word copulation is not uttered on the stage, not even one time, the word is in the Stage Directions that the audience never ever hears.”

“But,” Mr. Flanders said in a way that looked like he had just hooked me and was about to reel me in, “the actor makes silly fake Japanese sounds and  then they make thrusting motions with their hips.  Why would you let that happen in public?”

“Have you seen the cheerleaders perform at a pep rally?  They not only do thrusts with their hips, but they get on the floor and make humping motions.  They look like they are practicing for a career on a Strippers Pole.  And almost every student watches the cheerleaders gyrate in a provocative manner, and far more students see that that see the school plays.”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

“Secondly,” I continued, “the line Let Copulation Thrive” comes from the play King Lear.  They study King Lear in advanced senior English.  If the line in stage directions is so outrage to you and the school board, then why do you allow King Lear to be studied in a classroom where the line is not in stage directions but is part of the dialogue and it is said outloud if the play is read aloud, and it is certainly heard if they watch the play on film or in an actual performance.  You know Advanced English has done both.”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

Finally I just put it to the guy.  “What do you want me to do?  I work for you.  Do you want me to kill the play?  Then I’ll go down to that theatre and send the cast and crew home and we will cancel the play.”

“No, don’t do that,” he said.

“Well am I going to be called down here every day or two to justify the offensive word in the stage directions?”

Mr. Flanders was silent.

THE CLUMSY CUSTARD HORROR SHOW

The Clumsy Custard Horror Show was a fun play.  The main character has these special shoes that cause him to go into happy feet dances.  I cast the happy feet character with this kid I’ll call Gryphin Parks.  Gryphin Parks was the son of the Sheriff, or Chief of Police, or maybe he was a local National Guard Brigadier General.  Whatever, Gryphin’s father was a humorless tyrant who barked orders and expected perfect responses from his son.  I am not sure what happened, but Gryphin, like many oppressed young men, had a tendency to rebel.  His father got pissy about something and as punishment made Gryphin resign from the show two weeks before the show was to open.  I was upset, but I had a very talented kid that hung around and he was willing to take the role of Happy Feet, learn the lines, the blocking, and wonderful, wonderful:  his feet fit the shoes.  I’d taken some cheap pool shoes from Walmart and, in my almost negligible spare time, I had sewn silver sequins all over the shoes giving them the sparkly look from the audience point of view, that the shoes were made of pure recently polished silver.

Things went well, for a couple of weeks of rehearsal, but then the snag came.  

Then Gryphin was so upset about losing the lead role in the school play that he did something to convince his politically powerful father to lift his punishment back when his father made him quit the play.  Naturally I felt sorry for Gryphin.  But I had already given the role to Buz Rockford.

I met with Buzz and asked him if he would consider being the lead in two shows, and allow Gryphin to play the part in two shows.  Buzz agreed.  

I brought Gryphin back in and would have scenes with Happy Feet rehearsed twice:  once with Buzz and once with Gryphin.  I thought Gryphin would appreciate being able to come back into the show, but I was unwilling to jilt Buzz who had worked hard to come up to speed basically in a few days.  I was especially unwilling to give the role back to Gryphin totally, because, well, his father had pulled him out once -- so what’s to say the father wouldn’t pull him out of the play opening night.

Things did not go smoothly.  The two leads did not get along and most of the friction was coming from Gryphin who has some of his father’s asshole personal traits.  During one rehearsal the friction was so bad that Gryphin wanted to fight and threatened Buzz saying, “I’m going to break your fucking arms.”

For that remark, and the fact that friction is not what you need just days before opening night, I kicked Gryphin out of the play a second time.

The following day something familiar happens.  In a mostly empty building I hear on the PA system, “Mr. Norman.  Please report to Mr. Flander’s office immediately.”

Called to the office.  Again.  

I trudge down to the office and Mr. Flanders tells me that Gryphin’s politically powerful father has called him, the principal, and asked him to talk to me, the teacher and get me to change my decision to kick his son out of the school play.

I refuse to change my decision.  I could see Mr. Flanders squirming.  I could tell he felt pressure to do what Gryphin’s father was wanting.  

Now when you are in a position where you do not have the majority of the power, or, as in my case, hardly any of the power, the thing to do is to use your power to persuade through stunning rationale.  I turned on my persuade and rationale skills.

“Mr. Flanders,  Gryphin used the F word and threatened to break another student’s arms.  If this had happened in a math class what would you have done?  Wouldn’t you have suspended Gryphin for a couple of days or given him 5 days of In School Suspension?  Shouldn’t he have some punishment for his actions?”

Obviously I was right, and Flanders knew I was right.

He pressed me anyway, to relent, to allow Gryphin back into the play.  We were just a few days from opening the play.  When I could see Mr. Flanders was not going to stop pressuring me, I pulled out the only card I had left.

“I am not willing to let Gryphin back into the play, but if this matter will not go away, then I am willing to cancel the play.  But IF I cancel the play I will have to tell the cast and parents why I am canceling the play.”

Flanders could see that if the play was canceled three days before the play was to go on that he was going to get heat for his role in the cancellation.  So I won.  Temporarily.

The following day, during rehearsals, Mr. Flanders shows up at the theatre and pulls me away from the activities.  Mr. Flanders tells me that Gryphin’s father wants to talk to me directly.

I guess the idea was that if Mr. Flanders couldn’t get me to change my mind, then perhaps a direct conversation with a powerful elected leader would be just the kick in the crotch to get me to relent.

Gryphin’s dad:  Mr. Norman, this is Sheriff, or General, or Judge Parks, and. . .

Obviously I can’t recall the exact conversation, but Daddy Parks said he had gone too far pulling his son out of the play, that he was wrong about that, and I should not punish his son for something he the father had done.

I explained that I agreed he had been excessively harsh, and that he showed no regard for the ramification his actions had caused the drama department in our efforts to produce the school play.  I said that I had no way to know if Gryphin might upset you [his father] again, and you might pull him out of the play an hour before opening night.

Daddy Parks countered with an emotional punch.  He said his son was so depressed that he was suffering .   He reminded me that Gryphin was a senior and this was his last chance to be the lead in a school play.

I reminded Daddy Parks, and I used the language to make it clear WHY I had kicked his son out of the play, “Gryphin threatened another student and said, ‘I’m going to break your fucking arms.’  I can’t just ignore that sort of behavior.”

Daddy Parks would not relent so I resorted to my old broken record method when dealing with someone who will just not give up.  I had to wear him down.  The broken record method works this way.

Allow your loony upset person vent.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

Loony person vents some more.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

Loony person vents more.

Then say, “I hear what you are saying, but I am going to stand by my decision to kick Gryphin out of the play.”

If you can stay the course the loony venting jerk will eventually get frustrated and give up.

It took awhile.

Part of me loved teaching drama.  Dealing with a principal whose main concern was looking good and having the school look good, well, that part was the opposite of fun.

This was the cast of the Clumsy Custard Horror Show.  
 

This was Happy Feet, the good guy one, with the imprisoned Princess in Stage Lip Lock.

PCACT

I ran unopposed and won the position of Putnam City Association of Classroom Teachers.  I did get some negative remarks handwritten on two of the ballets, something like, “Anyone but Tex.”  I was excited.  

You see, at this point, I really believed that the administration was the enemy, that they were there to keep teachers cowed down, afraid for their job, and willing to work for low wages and to put in whatever hours and extra duty the principals wanted from them.  The yahoos sitting across from the teachers at the negotiating table were arrogant, ill-mannered, insolent and contemptuous.  They treated us like we were too stupid to understand the complexities of running a school district, they acted like we were children they were forced to babysit until mother would show up and take us off to the nursery.

I was not longer the ignorant and frightened teacher facing Don Hoover and the school board.  I was more prepared.  I understood the role of contract negotiations and that we had a right to ask probing questions, to check their answers, to demand rights and protections for the membership, that we were advocates for the classroom teachers.

One of the proposals was to take Elementary Teachers off the playground.  The teacher complaint was that they did not have enough time to prepare for their classes and to grade papers.  The teachers told us that standing out in a fierce, icy Oklahoma wind drained their energies, and they returned with the children rushed to get their other duties done, hair blown, often their clothing would be wet, and they were just frayed by the outside duty.  Our suggestion was that the teacher aids do the outside duty.

The board position was no, and their reason for saying no was because they said so.  They gave us no rationale other than to say it was just not acceptable to the board.

That seemed to be the general approach the board had on every proposal coming from the teacher’s association.

***

I had numerous experiences coping with teacher problems.

One day a frail lady in her fifties showed up at the PCACT offices.  I’ll caller Bess Myerson.  Bess was about 5 feet tall and she looked like she was all bones one balanced on top of the one below.  A breeze looked like it could topple her like a Jenga tower on a card table.  

Bess explained to me that she had been forced to resign three years and one week ago.  It turns out that that Bess was not that tightly wrapped mentally, and she was an extreme germ phobe.  I later learned that at lunch Bess would come with her food in sandwich bags.  She would take a fork, stab a piece of celery, or something, and then hold the the tined piece of food under running water for a few seconds and then put the food in her mouth.  She kept the tap running throughout her lunch.  

Apparently, one day Miss Myerson came into class and one of her second graders sneezed into a tissue, wadded it up, and put it into Miss Myerson’s hand.  I am told Miss Myerson screamed dropped the tissue and when running down the hall as if she were being pursued by a contract killer.

 

Why had this troubled woman come to see me?  Under our negotiated agreement employees and former employees had a right to purge their files of anything placed in their file by administration if it was three years old, or older. Miss Meyerson wanted to purge her file of the negative stuff since she had been off work for three years and one day as of our first meeting.

I contacted one of the assistant superintendents, explained what Miss Myerson wanted and set up a meeting for the three of us.  

One the day of the meeting Miss Myerson brought with her, to the meeting, a 30 quart black plastic trash bag.

We sat down.  Mr. Bill Withers, the assistant superintendent, sat down and placed Miss Myerson’s file on the table.  He was very gracious and calm in tone.  He opened the file and slowing looked at each page, noted the date on the document, if it was three years or older, he placed that document to the side.

Slowly we made our way through Miss Myerson’s entire personnel file.  

Just when I thought the meeting was wrapping up, Miss Myerson held open her black trash  bag and said, “Just put those papers in here.”

Mr. Withers made a face like he’d just taken a swig of spoiled milk.  “I can’t do that Miss Myerson.”

“The contract says I can have these documents removed.”

“Yes,” Withers agreed, “but it does not say I can just turn the documents over to you.  I will have the documents destroyed.”

“How do I know you won’t just put them all back in my file after we leave your office today?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Withers, “you have my word.”

“But I don’t trust you,” Miss Myerson said.  “I don’t trust anyone in administration here in Putnam City.”

“Well I cannot just hand these documents over to you,” Withers said.

“And I am not leaving without the documents,” Miss Myerson said.

It seemed that just like teacher contract negotiations was often at impasse that this little meeting with Miss Myerson was also at an impasse.

I came up with an idea.  I suggested that they allow me to take the documents right then, and I would tear the paper up into small pieces.  Then I would miss the torn pieces of paper up so that it was thoroughly mixed, then I would divide the paper fragments into two piles.  Withers would keep one pile, and Miss Myerson would keep the other pile.

The two parties agreed to that, and that is what we did.  I have to admit that I was thinking of King Solomon and that story where he offered to split a baby in half to give each putative mother one half of the baby they were claiming.  There is nothing new under the sun.

***

One year we went to impasse, and it was the second impasse I’d been through with the board’s negotiators.  Oklahoma was a Right to Work state.  We often called that a Right to Work for less.  The way the law was written, the board had to allow us to negotiate if we had a sufficiently large membership [51%], but if we could not come to an agreement, and if we went to impasse, the most we could hope for was for a Special Master to come in and attempt to draw the parties on to the same page.  If the Special Master could not get the two sides to voluntarily agree on salaries or other language in the contract then, well, the school board could just impose their will on the teachers and we had no recourse.

I’d already seen how the teachers just did not have the power to win in negotiations IF the school board dug its heels in.  That was when I came up with my theory of how to cope with a dictatorial school board.  I decided we had to make things so uncomfortable, and so embarrassing for the school board, the Superintendent and his administrative team that next year, if they were thinking about screwing the teachers again, maybe, just maybe, they would think, ‘do we really want to go through that mess again?  Maybe we should try to come to an agreement.’

The year of my last impasse I pulled out all the stops.  

We had the fliers with the home phone numbers of the school board members on it, and we put them out everywhere.  The Superintendent, Ralph Downes attended Bethany Nazarene Church.  One Sunday morning I took a team of teachers out to the Nazarene Church and we put those fliers under the windshields of all the cars in the church parking lot.

I leaked that we were putting out a bumper sticker that read:  Putnam City suffers from Downes Syndrome.  I never would have done anything like that, but I was OK with Ralph Downes thinking it might happen.  I made t-shirts and drew a picture of a classroom door open and children jammed into the classroom.  The words on the t-shirt read:  WE STACK THEM DEEP AND TEACH THEM CHEAP.

At the school board meeting where the Board was going to impose a contract on us, I had a jazz funeral.  I had someone make a black casket, the old fashioned kind like you’d see in the ole West.  I hired four guys from Bethany Nazarene to play music like you’d hear at a real New Orleans jazz funeral march.  The Warr Acres police were having their own contract negotiation disputes so they offered to lead our parade with police cars, “to keep us safe.”

We carried that casket around the block which required us to be on 39th Expressway for part of the trip, and we were doing this about rush hour.  One lane of 39th Expressway was blocked off.  The president of the state organization, the Oklahoma Education Association, showed up to speak to the crowd.  I spoke to the crowd.  I could see the administrators standing off a half block away watching this fiasco.  I stood on the casket to address the members who were there, and talked about how we were burying the board's respect for teachers this day when they were going to ignore us, refused to negotiate with us, and instead they were going to impose a contract on us that did not provide raises or working condition improvements.  The event was on all three television local news stations, it was covered in the Daily Oklahoman, and several radio stations covered the event.

The following school year we had very smooth negotiations, teachers got raises and the language regarding conditions improved.  The only power the teachers had was to make the experience so unpleasant for the school board  that they would not want to repeat that misery.  It seemed to work.

***

I remember once there was a sudden interest in cracking down on drugs.  The Reagan,  just say no, war on drugs was being waged across the country and Ralph Downes wanted to be apart of it.  In this same year when teachers did not even get their previously negotiated step raise, we found out that the school board had paid $46,000 to get a drug sniffing dog and handler that could sniff out drugs in the schools.

I drafted a document and sent it to Ralph Downes.  I asked in my letter if teachers personal property, their purses or cars were going to be a part of the dog’s duties?  I asked what would happen to students or teachers if the dog found drugs?

I got no reply.  

A week later I was at the school board meeting and I stood and voiced PCACT’s concerns about the drug sniffing dog.  I could not believe, in a year when teachers not no pay increases at all, that the school district was going to pay $46,000 for a drug dog.

In my newsletter I drew Mr. Downes with a box of puppies and a little boy asked how much were the puppies, and Mr. Downes say, “They’re $46,000 a piece.”

Again this was me, trying to make the school district leadership squirm because they had so completely disregarded the interests of the teachers.

In one school one of the science teachers thought they would “test” the system.  The teacher had some pure grain alcohol that was used in the chemistry labs.  The teacher put the grain alcohol in a locker, put a combination lock on the locker and left a note that said something like, “Just checking to see if the dog has any sniffing skills.”  

The dog did alert on the locker, the alcohol and the note were found.  The administration was steamed about this stunt.  I am not sure why, since the dog did what they were asking the dog to do.  At this stage in my life I prefer dogs to most people.  There was some talk of disciplining the teacher.  I told Mr. Downes that we would grieve such action.  Nothing happened.  This was just like many administrators, they started something complex and had not considered the ramifications nor had they prepared any policies to address matters that might pop up.

I went to one training where I was told about a district where the administration wanted to drug test bus drivers.  I had no objection to this since bus drivers are carting children about and it does not seem unreasonable to expect the bus drivers to be sober.  The school board in that district wanted to start with a voluntary program, and then make it mandatory the following year.

In the voluntary drug test, nine bus drivers tested positive for drugs, alcohol, or both drugs and alcohol.  When the drug positive drivers were interviewed they were, of course, asked why they volunteer for a drug test when they knew they would fail the test. The answers were varied, of course, but the general answer was that they knew they had a drug problem and thought being caught might get them the help they needed to stop using drugs, or getting drunk.  

The drug problem was off the lease during the 1960s, and alcohol has been the number one drug problem for the world for a long, long time, perhaps for all time.  It was under the Reagan Administration that there was a cultural and governmental war declared on drugs.  The results were that a lot of drug users were given stiff prison sentences, and the money makers of the illicit drug business were rarely held accountable.  Many CEOs of the drug business were not even known to those who declared war on their product.

***

I was contacted one day by a company that did mobile mammograms.  They wanted to provide their services for a fixed sum of money, and they took our health insurance.  I talked to the Head Shed people at the Administrative Offices and got their OK.

I started promoting this with our membership through my newsletter, and I put a funny declarative sentence on all the posters and newsletter blurbs that I wrote:

LET PCACT BE YOUR BOSOM BUDDY.

It turns out, when I was elected President, I really liked contract negotiations, grievance processing, writing the newsletter, and visiting the schools and talking with members.  It was the first job I felt I did well.  If you knew me at all you would know that for me to suggest I did something well is, well, HUGE for me.  

I was elected for a second term, but I found myself with a clash of emotions.  I was terrified to go back into the classroom, but I was term limited as the Association President, and, to be honest, as much as I liked the job, I believed it was better for the Association for new people to take on the leadership.

My second emotion was about my family.  I had a little boy and a wife that I loved, and we were living in a dump.  I saw an opportunity for me to stay out of the classroom and earn more money.  I applied for an opening with the Oklahoma Education Association, which would also make me a UniServ Director paid in part by the National Education Association.

I thought I could earn more money, I would be in a better position to provide good things for my wife and son, and I would continue to do some of the same stuff I did as a teacher union president.

I applied.  My previous OEA organizer was Laila Odom and she had been promoted to the position that hired union organizers, which did not hurt my chances.

Long story, short, I was hired.  There were several positions close to PCACT including the position that would have made me the UniServ Director for the district where I’d served as President for the past two years.

Lela didn’t think it was a good idea for me to be the union guy for the same district where I’d been President.  Lela had just pushed out a UniServ Director who’d been working with the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, and she felt I would be the best choice to go there.

This is the place where I started making very selfish and foolish choices for myself and my family.  

I took the job.  That meant that Ryan had to change schools.  He’d just started first grade and I was making him move to Tulsa and change schools.  Why did I do that?  If I could point to one thing I hated about my childhood was how frequently we moved.  We moved a crazy number of times.  I never had friends that I knew longer than a year.  I was always the new kid.  I never knew what to expect and there was confusion, and danger, and pain that followed me from house to school to new house to new school.  

Now why was I doing the same thing to Ryan.  When we moved out of the log house, in Wewoka, the last thing Ryan did before leaving the house was go over, kiss on of the logs and he said in his sweet fiver year old’s voice, “Goodbye house.”

The thing is, I was so selfish, I didn’t even think about what I was doing.  I didn’t hurt Ryan on purpose, I hurt him without thinking about it, and it was a sin that I should have thought about.

And I was doing something similar to my wife Kathie.  I did not realize at this point in our lives that Kathie was such a frightened person.  Kathie had been protected to an extreme degree.  Kathie had lived in two houses when I met her.  At this point in our married life I had already moved her eight times.  For a person who is super sensitive to stress eight moves was way too many moves.  Now I was insisting that we move a 9th time, and this time it was to Tulsa.  Tulsa is a long drive to her mother and father’s house.  

The old saying, “Happy Wife/Happy Life” was not what I was doing.

I was so afraid that IF I returned to the classroom the Putnam City people would target me, hassle me, and eventually fire me.  I had a crisis of imagination.  I could not imagine what else I could do to earn money.  I thought I had two choices only:  teaching, or the Executive Director of the Tulsa Classroom Teacher’s Association.

I wonder how our life would have been different had I not drug my family off to Tulsa.  It is what 65 year old guys do:  they rehearse their regrets.