Well, the day after Memorial Day, yesterday, unexpectedly turned
out to be memorable.  When I wasn't looking, I found another another word
to send to Kenny:  righteousnes.  It's a word you don't hear in the
intellectual halls of ivied academia.  Nevertheless, it fits.

        It all started yesterday morning as I was working in my front yard,
feeding the grass with a nourishing and natural liquid concoction of
cheap--very cheap--beer, ammonia, and sugar.  A car stopped.  The driver's
door opened.  My garden is beginning to feel like that fountain at the
University!   To my surprise, out jumped Karl (not his real name). It was
four years ago that he was in one of my first year history survey classes.
Many was the wall he drove me up. Fought me tooth and nail.  Could never
get through to him to believe--so I thought at the time.

        "Hey, Dr. Schmier.  Haven't seen you in a long while.  Guess what?
I graduated?

        "Congratulations!  "Knew you could do it, but I wasn't sure you
would."

        He came over.  I stopped intoxicating the
grass. We sat down and small talked.  Parts of our conversation went
something like this.  It's very close to verbatim.

        "Now what's in store for you?"

        He didn't answer my question at first.  It was as if he was
building up the suspense before he hit me with a broadside.

        "Hold on to your draws. I'm going to be an elementary school
teacher!"

        "You've got to be kidding."

        "Nope.  It's true."

        "Damn, that's nice to hear."

        "Surprised?"

        "Yep.  No, not really.  Are you?"

        "Kinda.  Would have been when I was in your class.  Not now,
really.  No, still am.  It's all your fault. Remember how I used to write
all that dark stuff in my journal about myself being warty and pimply
because of all that shit I went through?  .....I want you to know that
even though I wasn't very nice to you, you
helped me start getting pass all that I believed about me being ugly.  So,
yeah, I'm kinda surprised. I didn't think I had it in me, but something
you said really got to me and got me going.  Bet you don't remember what
you said."

        "That you were beautiful inside and you had the cure to your warts
and pimples if you kept asking yourself the same four hard questions I had
asked myself after my epiphany to get rid of my....?"

        "You remember!  You called it the 'acne on your soul.' That
started me going.  I was just too angry inside at you at the D in the
course to tell you.  That grade and what you said really ate at me that
summer. So--and I never told anyone until today.  Now, I want to tell the
world--the next semester, I started to see that if I could breakthrough
that ugly crust and find what you said you saw.  Don't know why. Maybe, I
was just tired of being nothing and figured I had nothing to lose to see
if I was something like you said I was.  So, I started hoping that I might
have it in me and asking me those questions.  Yeah, you got me to start
looking."

        "Asking the questions was hard?"

        "Hell, no.  It was coming up with the answers that was
tough."

        "Just the answers?"

        "The honest answers."

        "Just the honest answers?"

        "Well, it was really tough honestly acting on those honest
answers. It was like I found a real spiritual 'clearsil' that started
cleaning up that acne on my soul.  Then, I found that beautiful something,
sort of got what you would say was a clear spiritual complexion. You know,
I never knew how heavy all that baggage that I was carrying was until I
started to stop carrying it.  Thanks."

        "What you just said was nice, real nice.  Better than I could.
Thank you. I really appreciate it. You made my day. Remember, though,
before you thank me, it was you who did the looking.  You asked yourself
all the hard questions of yourself.  You got to the tough answers.  You
did all the breakthroughing.  You made it happen.  All I did was ask you
to have both the belief in yourself and the guts to search.  You took the
chance.  You took on change.  You opened and squeezed your own tube of
spiritual 'clearsil' and kept applying it.  So, thank yourself first.
Remember what you just said, help your students to start opening and
applying their own tubes, and you'll be a fine teacher. No, you'll be a
great teacher."

        We talked some more, and then he asked, "So, tell me.  Help me
some more.  What's the most important thing you can tell me that I need to
be a teacher?"

        "You just said it yourself."

        "What did I say?"

        Suddenly that word rolled off my tongue as if it was sucked
out by an unseen vacuum.  I don't know why.  I never thought about it
before.

        "Righteousness. You have to become a righteous teacher.  Unless
you struggle to become a righteous teacher, you'll always be trying to
start a fire inside someone--and yourself--with a wet match."

        "I said that?  I didn't say anything about I gotta go to
church to be a good teacher."

        "No, you didn't.  Wouldn't hurt you though.  No, the righteousness
I am thinking about means to go beyond yourself, to do good, to make a
difference, to make the world a better place.  Being a righteous teacher
to me means the most important thing I can do as a teacher is to teach for
a purpose more important than myself. It will give you one great benefit
like it gave me."

        "What's that?"

        "Struggling to become a righteous teacher will help you overcome
your greatest weakness as it helped me overcome mine."

        "And what's that?"

        "A lack of faith in yourself.  It's that ugly 'it's not me" and
'oh, I can't do that' and 'what will others say' and "I'm warty and
pimply' stuff. In the ole days, until about eleven years ago, it was so
easy to let myself be pessimistic and easily distracted and side-tracked
and way-laid by all that negative stuff.  It's like everything else.
Reality isn't what happens; it's what you perceive happens; it's the
meaning you give to what happens.  You get what you want to see. Whatever
you truly believe, you'll be determined to make it so.  When you decide
that something is truly true for you, you'll do everything in your power
to make it come true.  If you are a righteous teacher, you will believe
that you have the ability to truly make a positive difference in the
world, you'll go out to make a difference. Finding and following a
positive purpose, I found wasn't easy. It took work and focusing.  Still
does.  A lot of it can be unexciting.  But, the results will be exciting
as nothing else can, and your eyes will open to see what you otherwise
would have missed.  You've discovered that."

        "It's that 'if you want to do it, it can be done; and if it can be
done, you'll do whatever it takes to do it' stuff you always told us--and
especially me--in class."

        "You've got it.  When you believe in something, you'll have a
sense of justice in your beliefs and will try to make decisions which are
morally right.  Being a righteous teacher has nothing to do with words and
appearances.  It's all about doing with an earnestness, committment, and
authenticity.

        And we talked some more.  Then, he asked, "So, what's your
purpose?"

        "What I said.  You!  To be righteous.  Wherever I am, I want to be
that person who helps another person help him- or herself become whomever
and whatever he or she is capable of becoming. I want to make a difference
in somebody's life. I want to make a difference in this world.  As a
teacher, I ask what is it to be a human being. How does what I do help
move me and others into a place where we all become more beautiful as
human beings? That's the teaching I really want to do and try to do.  If
you treat people as if they were what they ought to be, beautiful, if you
are a beautiful person and make the world around you beautiful, you'll
have a better chance of helping them help themselves to become what they
are capable of being.  Like you.  You know, a lot of teachers have
ability.  They have information and know methods.  The great teachers have
more.  They're optimistic searchers.  They have the desire to search for
and have the ability to recognize the hidden ability in others and help
them see it as well.  That search motivates me, drives me, pushes me,
pulls me, inspires me.  Read your Matthew. Thirst and hunger after
righteousness when you're in the classroom, and you'll have times when
you'll fly so high that you'll think you can't or won't get any higher."

        We talked some more about stuff.  Then, after a while we got up.
We hugged. He left and I went back to giving the thirsty grass a
nourishing libation.  I had a warm, inebriating glow inside myself.  I
knew what Matthew meant.  Yeah, "righteousness" is a very good word.

Make it a good day.

                                                       --Louis--


Louis Schmier                     www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History             www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA  31698                           /~\        /\ /\
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