Friday, Apr. 07, 2006
4:26 p.m.
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"Do you like your job?" I ask, and after that we talk about what it's like being a teacher, why he chose this line of work, how he used to work in the grocery industry before this.
"Twenty years," he says, "I was stuck there."
He's smiling and not yelling at us for not working, explaining that he really does love his job and that's why he does it. He asks if he seems unhappy and I tell him yes, I tell him that I am so used to people in my life staying in situations they hate.
See also: my best friend. See also: my entire family.
He talks about going back to school and studying English, reading Shakespeare on his back porch while smoking a pipe and watching the sun set, and I think we are so similar. He and his sunsets and pipes, me and my city lights and cigarettes.
When we leave, he smiles, almost gently, and he is less and less like my teacher and more like my father, my brother, my friend.
These days I am giving my life meaning by filling them with interactions.