January happened but, at least in terms of the Time Machine, I completely missed it. I've been awfully busy. It's fascinating to me how many giant things in my life have been decided by coincidence and circumstance. If you had said to me 5 years ago that today I'd be happily married, living in Texas, working as an elementary school special education teaching assistant I would have said you'd gotten me mixed up with someone very very else. But, incrementally, it all makes sense, and here I happily am. Weird. My job is really great. I love it. About, oh, 65% of the time I am working directly with Alton (not his real name). Do you remember Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome? Well, there was this character Master/Blaster, who was actually two people -- a little guy who had a big giant guy who carried him around on his back. That's me and Alton. Only in our case I am pushing him around in his wheelchair. Wheelchairs, actually, because he has one that he uses when he is inside, a tall archaic looking wooden thing with small caster wheels that is very maneuverable (i.e. can move from side to side OR turn but is no good on anything other than flat smooth schoolesque floors) and another one that is sleek and black and looks like what you think of as a wheelchair (giant sturdy wheels, great for all-terrain but not as tall or maneuverable). Depending on what situation dictates I transfer him between the two chairs (or a chair and the floor and back, or a chair and some other thing and back) at least a dozen times a day. The other 35% of the time I am essentially like a student teacher -- I help out around the class, answer questions, help certain kids if they are having problems grasping stuff, grade papers, give lessons and spelling tests and the like and basically just help out. Again, I love it. I am pretty sure I am going to go for the certification and try to become a regular full-time teacher. And this position is such excellent experience for that because, unlike a regular student teacher, I don't shadow a teacher, I shadow a student. So I see a main teacher, and an art teacher and a Spanish teacher and a PE teacher and a computers teacher and a bunch of other special content teachers. It's really pretty mind-bending to be working with fourth graders. I think fourth grade was about when I really tuned out, or at least when I realized (accurately or not) that I didn't quite fit in for good reason. Third grade I was the new kid so it sort of made sense that I wasn't quite lined up with everyone, but by fourth grade the newness had worn off and I was still just as out of step if not more so. I was a different sort of kid. Not better and not worse -- just farther from the statistical mean (in ways positive and negative) in seemingly most categories. I wasn't different enough to get any sort of systemic special treatment but I was far too abnormal to get anything out of my classes. There are some different kids in Alton's class. I think schools have caught up with difference to a large extent, and (at least in our school's case) are making conscious efforts to evaluate and engage different types of learners and different types of personalities without just cutting them off. Alton himself is a perfect example: when I was in school there were absolutely NO kids who, physically or otherwise, lay very far outside the spectrum of normalcy. Those kids were, literally, squirrelled away in a big room in the basement near the loading dock. Alton, despite needing some pretty significant accommodation (read: me) is basically just another kid. Matter of fact Alton is an extremely well-liked kid. He has a knack for names and knows literally everyone, students, teachers and staff. Even the custodians. He is like the mayor of the school and everyone, including me, really loves him. He is crazy (CRAZY!) about sports, and every day at recess and the brief recess after lunch, he plays football. Playing football with him is a hoot. The kids pick captains (he loves to be a captain), the captains pick sides and says who on his team gets to be quarterback for what down ("Tommy is first down, I'm second down, Ron is third and Cameron and Hunter take turns with fourth!"). When we are on offense and it is our turn to be quarterback Alton yells "Hut!", hands me the football and scans the field, sees someone open and yells at me "Richard!" and I try my best to pass to Richard. I have a hard time with short passes (we use a little tiny football, maybe 7 inches long and I am just too big to throw it short with any accuracy) but occasionally we get a great loooong pass in. The other guys know when we are quarterback to go deep. When we connect on a pass everyone congratulates Alton for it. When we are not quarterback the kid who is yells "Hut!" and I push Alton as fast as I can (which is pretty breakneck) as far down the field as I can (we do not have the maneuverability for any running plays, except very occasionally to try and pull a trick) spin him around so he can see the field and he immediately hollers "TOMMY! TOMMY! I'M OPEN!" until the play is complete, regardless of whether we are open or not. He often starts hollering while we are still careening down the field. I think we get passed to roughly as much as anyone else, a bit less maybe, and it is up to me to catch the ball. They really have to get the pass right in our breadbasket for me to make the catch though. It's too unfair if I really range for the ball. On defense we usually cover the quarterback, I count five Mississippi's and we try our best to get in the QB's face. It's two-hand touch football but I only need to get one hand on someone for a tackle, so long as my other hand is on Alton. For the most part we don't fully rush, we just try and hurry the QB and I try and get my hand into the pass. I knock one down occasionally (a pass, not a kid), but I try not to do too much. I am literally three times the size of most of these kids and I think charging at them with Alton screaming is enough of a distraction. Let me tell you, I am in better shape right now than I have ever been. Running around a dirt field at full tilt for an hour a day, pushing a wheelchair full of Alton over rough ground, trying to keep up with a passel of 9 year olds is some serious business, especially when you add in all the lifting. I am looking forward to their baseball season. The other teachers say that historically after the SuperBowl they'll leave football more or less behind for a while. As you can imagine the kids are still all riled up about the Longhorns winning the Rose Bowl (we are a stone's throw from University of Texas and most of the kids folks are alumni), so it might take a while longer this year. I still like the coffee job too. More soon. Well, sooner than a month from now, anyway. Oh, and in case you got the wrong idea, it is me who is the titular nothing.