Losing Me

I was a substitute teacher in Chicago public schools. Believe it or not, the students and in-class work really weren’t that bad. You hear “Chicago public school,” and I know you are thinking terrible scenarios, but it wasn’t the kids who gave me trouble—it was my fellow substitutes.

When there were more teachers out than there were subs to cover, one of the schools I worked at would put all the subs they had in the auditorium and turn all the students loose to sit in sections by class. As for my co-workers, there was this ancient guy who came off like a weather-beaten Chicago mafia grandfather and three young women about my age. I naively bounced into the auditorium thinking “Oh yay! Three new friends!” I sat down, smiled, did the “Hi I’m Christine,” and they all kind of scowled at me. The old guy scowled because that’s just what he did, but I had no idea my cohorts would be Negative Nelly’s too. They wouldn’t look at me, talk to me, or sit near me, and I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let me fit in. I couldn’t see that we were so different.

I overheard them complaining about no money, shitty jobs, too many student loan bills, and credit cards, and I thought, “I have those problems too… why aren’t they talking to me?” For whatever reason, I was just not invited to the in-club, but I so desperately wanted to join. I came up with a strategy, next opening I got, I’d pretend like the world was crushing me with debt and joblessness too. I mean, it was, but if I dwelt on it I’d be too depressed to move. Moment came, I laid it on.

“Yeah, I don’t make hardly any money here, especially since they don’t call me every day.” They rolled their eyes and groaned, sympathizing.

“I mean, I have crazy student loan debt that I have no idea what to do about. And my credit card? I used that just to survive college, now I have to seriously pay it off? With what?”

“Oh yeah, me too,” one of them said. “I mean, you pay so much for school, then, this is what you get?” We nodded and mm-hmmed.

And then, I felt horrible. They were finally talking to me, but as we continued commiserating, I felt the pull of the credit card and the crappy unreliable job and my rusted-out car.

I was miserable. I went from naïve, cutesy little, “Hi! I’m a teacher!” to an amazingly unhappy depressed person. I would get the morning phone call, “Can you teach today?” and my heart would sink. “Oh great, another day of misery to trudge through.”

Those young women didn’t become my friends. We may have reached a sympathetic level of communication, but they did nothing but bring me down. When I was around them, my world-weary miserable-with-life self would come out. Around them, I became less myself because I had traded in my happiness for acceptance into a tribe of petulant twenty-somethings.

It’s hard to look back at the simpler Christine and not regret the way life’s grind wears out a person’s childhood presumptions about the future, but I can’t forget the learning opportunities I’ve had along the way. The public school triumvirate taught me that sinking to the lowest common denominator just to ease loneliness really isolates you from yourself. I don’t think I’ve lost my naivety completely, but I know I’ve gained maturity from all those hard lessons earned at my innocence’s expense.