Archive

I was cleaning out some files on my computer, and found some e-mails I'd sent my mom a long time ago, some stories I'd started, and some papers I'd written as examples for my kids. I also ran across something I wrote in an attempt to calm myself. Some of it is interesting, so I thought I'd post it for everyone here. 

   Here I stand, in a shower 1975 miles away from my parents, and 300 miles away from my house, getting ready to wash my hair. I’m standing in a high school locker room, and it has a shower that’s nicer than most of the ones in my village back home.

   I reach for the shampoo, and suddenly remember who used it last. His name was Kevin Hunt, and he was a volleyball player visiting my school. He’d finished playing, and was getting ready to shower himself when he realized that he’d forgotten his own shampoo. I went to my locker and looked at my choices. I had half an inch left of my very girly, expensive shampoo, left by an old roommate, or a brand new bottle of the cheep, unscented, generic stuff. I took the generic stuff, and, on an impulse, grabbed the conditioner.

   He took them, but refused to use the conditioner. When he came back into the gym where I was talking to his coach, he had the goofiest grin on his face. “Feel my hair,” He said. I shot him a questioning look that he responded to verbally, “I used the conditioner.”

    We had a good laugh. I told him he could keep them. I always seemed to buy a set whenever I needed to make the last three dollars for free shipping on an online drugstore site. He laughed and said he had his own back at home. Then he helped me carry some boxes back to my classroom. A really classy kid.

    He went home the next day and killed himself. No one told me the details, and I didn’t push them. I’d known this kid for a day and a half; they’d probably known him their whole lives. I had no business to pry. It’s not uncommon up here, where the sun barely rises for weeks at a time, and fresh fruit is something seen on TV, along with tall trees and clean running water.

   I pick up the shampoo again, and continue on with my cold shower. I am only one of 350 teachers here for the conference, and all the hot water has been gone since we got here. I use the shampoo. It’s all I’ve brought with me to use. I watch the bubbles run down the drain and think about the kids up here in bush Alaska. What life must be like for them, cut off from everything they see on TV and think is how it’s supposed to be?

   I can’t ban them from watching television, and I can’t convince them that not everyone is like the characters on the OC, but maybe I can convince them that life is a wonderful thing.

    I rinse off and get out of the shower.