Those who can't do

Do you remember the movie, Coal Miner's Daughter? Do you remember the scene where Loretta Lynn is about to have a nervous breakdown on stage? Just before she collapses, she gives a little speech about how her life has always moved too fast. She tells her fans that her daddy told her that she had to run her own life and if she didn't, her life would run her. She tells everybody that one day she was just a little girl in the holler then she was married at 13 and then she started having babies and now she's up on a stage talking to her audience. That's just like my life except for growing up in the Kentucky Hollers, being married at 13, having four babies by the time I was 20 and oh yeah, I don't sing.

But I fear my life is running me right now.

All I know is that I was driving home from the beach last Sunday when I got a frantic call from a teacher at our local community college saying they were desperate for a remedial English comp teacher. She asked if I would like to jump in and start teaching the following week!!!

I have never wanted to teach. Never. Ever. Never!!!! I think teaching is a noble, high minded profession. It's just not anything I ever felt compelled to do. And now Mississippi Delta Community College is enlisting me to teach college students the basics of English Composition and by the way, could I do another class? It's reading. Reading - for college students!!!! What the hell?

After much soul searching and screaming to Super Steve that I can't do it. I relented and said I would because (a) it's only two half days a week in Greenwood;(b)it's more than double the meager money I made at the book store for 4 half days a week and (c)it's a challenge and I'm a sucker for ways to make myself crazier than I already am.

I don't know the first thing about teaching and I certainly don't know the first thing about teaching college students who didn't get the basics of English in the first place. I want them to love the power and beauty of a well written sentence and I want them to understand noun / verb agreements and what a preposition is and that it can't end a sentence. I want them to want to read for pleasure. I know that won't be the case. Even I never wanted to read required reading books. There was just something in me that rebelled about being told I had to do something.

Wish me luck. I hope I can find a way to make the classes palatable and interesting. I hope they don't eat me alive and call me a fraud. I start tomorrow.

Next entry: I will discuss why I went to NYC. Bring your notebooks because there may be a quiz.