The Mob

Today I was finishing up teaching one of my classes when an assistant principal came in and asked me if I had work I could send home for one of my students. "Where is he?" I asked her. I expected her to tell me he'd gotten the flu or something, because sometimes kids whose parents are with it call in and report their kid is going to be out for a few days and ask us to send work so they can stay caught up. This boy is like that. He lives with his grandparents, whom I met at Open House. Actually, I met his grandmother, grandfather, little sister, little brother, and his father. His grandmother talked to me for fifteen full minutes about what she wanted for her grandson. I could tell in those fifteen minutes that this woman was serious and that this sixth grader had a stable situation at home, even if it wasn't with his dad or mom. Something wasn't quite right there, but I could tell that his grandmother was ruling that roost pretty well.

Another clue about this boy's life was his lunch pack. Not many other kids bring their lunch to school. Many qualify for the free or reduced lunch. Many have a buck or two to spend on the vending machine garbage and eat potato chips or Cheetos for lunch, and they throw away the "nutritious" cafeteria one that's provided. This boy had a velcro lunch pack that he brought with him every single day. I never knew what he brought with him, but in my years at the school, it was the first little lunch pack I saw. Someone, his grandmother I had learned, made sure he had a lunch with him every day.

I liked this kid. Anyone who teaches who tells you they don't have favorites is either a liar or a robot. It's just like anything in life - sometimes you click, sometimes you don't. Some kids you find endearing, others are annoying. This kid came in and I noticed right away that something was endearing about him. When I called out attendance, instead of saying the usual "Yeah" or "Huh" or "Here," he said, in a very clear voice, "Present." It was a slight difference, but it stood out to me.

He did his homework every night. He made sure that he was trying his best to do his work. When I read outloud, he was one of the kids that showed he was actively engaged - he would smile or laugh or get big eyes at exciting parts. In short, he was a pleasure to have in class. In fact, when I would tell people about the kids this year and say how they were a tough bunch, I would always come back to this one as one of the saving graces. He wasn't a teacher's pet - we have those - or a perfect student - we may have one or two of those a year - but he was just an all-around nice kid who wanted to be there and wanted to succeed.

Anyhow, so I thought that I'd hear that he was sick with the flu and his grandmother was sending for work. I was wrong.

"He's in the hospital," she told me. When I asked why, she shrugged. "He got jumped at the bus stop yesterday."

"And he's in the HOSPITAL? Is he okay?!"

"I don't really know. Can you get me some work to send for him?" She turned and left to go ask another teacher to send work and to tell them that one of their sixth graders was in the hospital because he'd gotten jumped at the bus stop. In that order.

I had been talking to his grandmother off and on for the past month, so I looked up her phone number. I had my twenty minute lunch in a few minutes, and I would call her to see what the story is. On my way to lunch though, I found out that his grandmother and grandfather had come up to the school and were in the conference room. I made my way there.

I was upset by the news initially, but I wasn't prepared for the conference room. His grandmother was in tears the whole time as she told us about how he'd been jumped by seven or eight other kids. She always walked him to and from the bus stop, every single day, but he had wanted to start going by himself. He was in middle school now. He was becoming a big kid. So she let him walk home alone on Monday. She kept saying over and over again that she would never forgive herself for that, after seeing him come home with his eyes swollen shut, his shirt covered in street dirt, blood all over the place. She would never forgive herself for having to take him to the emergency room and file a police report and have her younger grandchildren scared shitless by the sight of their big brother so badly beaten. As she talked, his grandfather's eyes were all watery too. He just kept shaking his head. "He's a nice boy," he kept saying, like he couldn't understand.

He's out of the hospital, but he's not talking too much. He won't talk to anyone about anything. He talked a little to the police, but that was it. His grandmother worries about getting counseling right away for him. I'm telling you, I knew that woman was on top of her stuff. So we talked about getting that set up, and then we talked about whether he should get a safety transfer. Basically this is what happens when you think your kid is unsafe at school: you get him transferred. We talked about the merits of this.

And here's where I have a major problem with what I am doing with my life: why are we transferring the victim? Why are we sending him away from our community rather than make our community safe for him by sending away the animals who did this to him?

We found out a few of the kids who did this to this boy. A few of them, I taught last year and the year back. One of them is a current sixth grader. When we rounded them up, they started to talk about choices and being leaders. It was outrageous to me. Here we are, talking to them with respect like they're actual little adults. All the administrators and teachers went around in a circle sharing what they had to say with them, saying that they were old enough to know better and that they were setting examples for the younger children on the bus. When they got to me, I didn't have it in me to give a constructive talk. I didn't have it in me to see the good in them. Maybe I just liked this kid too much. Or maybe I was too upset by seeing the grandmother, distraught over what had happened to her grandson. But whatever it was, it made me sick to have to sit in front of these kids - and I hate even using that word - and have to speak to them.

So I told them that. "It makes me sick to be here," I told them. "It makes me sick to have to think about a scenario where six kids gang up on one kid and beat him senseless. It makes me sick to look at you right now."

I've never said that to a kid before. I've said I've been surprised, shocked, angry, embarrassed, and disappointed by behavior. I've told kids that they were good kids who were making very bad choices. I've told them that they should be ashamed of their behavior. But all of those comments leave a slight sign of redemption for them, like they should know better than to do this because they are better than what they just did. That's pretty much what I base my entire professional life on: that there's some redeeming quality in every kid, and I just have to be patient and determined enough to find it. Find and love the good in everyone. That's what I try to do. I really do.

And yet, as I sat at that table, the very same one where I'd sat across from the kid's grandparents who were bleary-eyed from a sleepless night of crying and fear and guilt, I couldn't find anything redeeming in any of them.

"What can you do to fix this?" one of the administrators asked.

"Apologize," one of them answered.

I don't remember the next few minutes of the meeting, because I was going insane in my head. Apologize?!?! APOLOGIZE?! For what? What, exactly, are they planning on apologizing for? For beating up a kid who just wanted to get off the bus and go home? For ganging up on him - six versus one - so he wouldn't even stand a chance? For not just punching him a few times but beating him so badly that he needed to go to the hospital to make sure he wasn't going to die from bleeding in his brain? Because needed seven stitches in the side of his face? Because he has to stay home for a week until he gets physically strong enough to come back to school? Because it's going to be a whole lot longer before he isn't afraid every stupid second of his day? Because he might not want to take a school bus for the rest of the fucking year? Because every time he walks by that spot on the street, he's going to think of this? Because he's going to have a scar on his face that will be a permanent reminder of him being beaten?

And who, exactly, are they going to apologize to? Just to him? Or are they also going to apologize to his little brother and sister who had to see their big brother stagger home with his eyes swollen shut? Or his grandmother who broke down when she came to the door and saw him? Or his grandfather, who wants to know why such a nice kid would have this happen to him? Or to his parents who had to go to the emergency room to get medical tests done on their son so they could be sure that the beating he took on his skull didn't cause internal bleeding in his brain that could be fatal?

Or are they going to apologize to us, the adults sitting there around the table with them, who are supposed to be invested in making sure they become productive members of society? Are they going to apologize to us for wasting our time?

The thing is, I can't say all of this to them because they're kids and I'm the adult. They have to go through procedures. You can't just expel six kids, even if that's what I want to do. They do have redeeming qualities, even if I can't find them right now. At least that's what they told me, when we debriefed the conversation and I was still visibly upset.

A few hours later, after school, one of the kids saw me again and I couldn't look at him. "You gonna hold it against me forever?" he asked me.

He wasn't being nonchalant or anything, but he also didn't get it. How could I get over something in a matter of hours that is going to take this little kid possibly forever to get past? I was tired though, and I couldn't really explain it to him. What was the point anyhow?

I shrugged.

"You seemed real mad," he said. "Madder than I ever seen you. All of us was saying how you kept glaring and your eyebrow didn't even move, but you seemed madder than ever."

I looked up at him. He's thirteen. "I keep picturing him. I keep picturing him, knowing what a nice kid he is, and I keep seeing him be real afraid of you guys, because you're bigger and older and there are a lot of you. And I keep seeing him being so afraid and then I get this awful feeling in my stomach, like this dread when I think about how afraid and hurt he must have been when you kept beating him. I just keep thinking that."

Maybe it was mean to tell him that, but it's what I did. Because that was the truth. Even now, I keep thinking about it and I get really upset.

"We're gonna apologize," he told me. He shrugged, like that was all he could do. And it probably is, at this point. I don't think anybody's going to learn any huge lesson. These kids will probably beat up another kid soon. This kid will probably transfer because it's going to be safer, or so they hope.

It just breaks my heart. I hope - I really really really hope - that somehow, he's okay in the end. But I just don't know how he could be.

Glad You Could Help

I've been trying to change my address for my full time employer since the first week in July.

Yes, you read that right.

It has taken me three months to get my address changed in all computer systems so that I now receive my paycheck and any important documents from my employer at my "new" address. It has taken me literally 46 emails (I counted) to the same office. It has taken me dozen of agonizing phone calls. The time data is downright depressing.

You might wonder: why would it take this long? I mean, why would it be so difficult? Haven't people moved for centuries - and haven't people moved further than ten minutes down the road - and haven't their addresses had to be changed? And I have to believe that it's been done with success.

So today, I got tired of wondering all of these questions and spending all of the time telling the same story over and over again to the same incompetent people ("I moved. I need to change my address." "I moved to a new apartment." "I moved about three months ago." "Address is no longer valid." "I need to change my address." "I don't live there anymore." "I live here now." "Donde esta mi casa?!") and so I decided that today, whoever answered the phone downtown at the national headquarters for bureaucratic bullshit, well, that person was going to change my address. No excuses. Burn the goddamn boats.

I called up Human Resources. The woman who answered sounded unfamiliar to me. This I took to be both a good and bad sign. The good sign was that there was a slim chance she could actually help me. If that slim chance worked in my favor, there was a slim chance then that she would help me. And if she would help me, there was the slightest of hope that I could get my address changed. The bad sign was that we'd heard HR was going through tons of turnovers, so that put slim chance #1 at increasingly low odds, no matter how much a newly minted HR guru wanted to help. But I was undeterred.

I told her my story. She was properly outraged. "You HAVE to change your address, honey! You have to! I mean, what if we send out important documents?" (What IF?)

"Exactly," I sighed. She seemed upset, and not just jaded and accepting of HR's consistent failures, like the cohorts before her.

"What about your paycheck? Or your W2? They will hang you for not paying taxes. I know it! Let's get this fixed. I gotta transfer you to the helpline. They'll help you."

Sccccccccccrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

"Is there any way you can log into the system and change the address?" I asked this even though I had been told several times, on several different occasions, that they could not. (My previous favorite: "It's on a different network." Really? Human Resources doesn't have access to my home address? What kind of bunk HR department are they running down there?)

"I can't, honey, I'm sorry."

"I guess I am confused as to why. This isn't my first call, as we talked about."

"I understand that, sweetheart, but I gotta tell you, I can't change addresses. It's just not allowed."

"So, as a human resources employee, you are unable to log into a system and change my address."

"Well, it's not quite that simple."

"Apparently."

"You need to go through the helpline. They give you a work order and then they go through work orders and they solve problems that way."

"Actually," I interrupted her, "they don't. Because I have done that, I have several work numbers, and none of them have been resolved."

"Well, that might be because you have multiple work numbers for the same work order."

"But that's what you are suggesting I do right now. Transfer me to the helpline, they will ask about my problem, I will tell them it is an existing problem, and they will give me yet another work number."

"But it is a different work number because you are complaining about not having a problem solved." I can only imagine that this woman is sitting in a cubicle with stupid koosh balls or something, with a completely straight face as she says this bullshit to me.

"I'm complaining to you - "

"Which is a work order problem."

"Which is secondary to my main problem, which is that I need to change my address and the system continues to have problems updating."

"I see."

"So, I am wondering, can you please log in and update my address for me? I can verify any information for you."

"It doesn't matter. I cannot update your address."

"Okay, may I get your name please?"

"Why?" No more smiling at koosh ball cubicle.

"Well, when you inevitably have to transfer me to the helpline, I would like to reference that you could not change my address on the system, and that I did speak to you, and that you told me these people could help me. It is best, I find, if I have a name. Though it hasn't served me too well so far, I have to admit."

"So my boss is gonna see this?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

What planet am I on? Who do I work for? "No. I am not going to use your name to get you in trouble. I'm simply using it for my records." The truth is, I want to put a little pressure on this dink. I mean, right now, she could be doing her nails and looking right at a screen that says "Would you like to update address? It is easy, please click here" and just deciding to fuck with me. So I want her to have some accountability in this whole dialogue. People - especially salespeople and customer service motherfuckers - get really nervous when you suddenly want their name. They might actually start to do their job. She didn't know that I was thinking, "Hmm. If I write about this clusterfuck situation, it might help for clarity purposes to be able to have a name for this HR woman rather than continuing to call her HR woman." Still, she wasn't quite biting. "I mean, you have my name, so you know who you are speaking to, and if someone asked you if someone called about an address change, you could tell them. I'm just asking for the same thing. If the helpline asks if I spoke to someone already, I'd like to be able to give them specifics."

"Fine, since I know your name, I guess it's only fair." (Oooookay.) "My name's Sharleen. S-H-A-R-L-E-E-N."

"Thank you, Sharleen."

"You're welcome, honey. Now, I am not trying to be difficult. But you have to understand, honey, I cannot change your address for you. I just can't." This Sharleen chick was making me laugh. She had a really nice voice, and she kept saying "honey" and "sweetheart" all over the place, like she was trying not to be a complete loser but couldn't help it. I almost liked Sharleen.

Almost.

"Okay, well, I guess I'm just wondering, since nobody can give me a straight answer, why can't you change the address? I mean, Sharleen, doesn't that make no sense to you? You work in HR!"

"Well, honey, I'll tell you what. You have to get a work number so they can track everything."

"Yes, I get that. But what's the harm if I don't get a work number? Just this once, please, I am asking you, can we skip the work number? Please. I won't tell anybody."

"You need a work number, honey!"

"But I have about seven of them! I really do. I can give them to you. All I do is get another one, which tells me that nobody's tracking anything, or else you'd be concerned that you have at least seven unresolved work orders about the same thing - something as simple as changing an address."

"We have a very specific system for changing an address."

"I realize this. But whatever it is, it isn't working. I have asked whether I can fax - "

"No faxes."

"Right. So I've asked if I can come down in person - "

"No, we don't do paper changes anymore. Nothing in paper, because paper just gets amassed and then lost."

"Agreed. Except that at this point, I feel like a message in a bottle would be more effective than your current system."

"A message in a what?"

"Nevermind. I guess I just do not understand how I can have called Human Resources several times, and all I want is my address changed, and you cannot do it. That's just unfathomable to me. Human Resources is all about employee records. I just don't get it. I mean, really, as a human resources employee - "

"Manager."

"Manager. As a human resources manager, you do not have the ability to log into my profile and change my address."

This struck a nerve with ol Sharleen. "Oh, honey! No, I CAN do that. As a manager, I have access to all employee records."

"Right!"

She talked right over me. "It's just that I won't."

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

"What?"

"Well, we can't be handling all of these paperwork - or what used to be paperwork - details. Database updating has to go through another department, like that helpline. If it didn't, I'd spend hours of my day just updating profiles."

"So instead, you are answering my phone call about not being able to update my profile."

"Exactly, honey! My primary focus is on customer service!"

Good to know. Good. To. Know. So I got transferred to the helpline. I was ready to give up on changing my address - either just accept that I was going to have to order another copy of my W2 or move back to my old apartment - when I ran into a colleague and relayed my story. "Had the same thing," he said. "When you log in, it gives you that error message, right?" I nodded and asked him if he'd spent hours dealing with insane bureaucracy like I had. "No," he told me. "I just tried this lame computer trick I learned in college. You hold down the shift, control, and alt key or something like that while you enter everything. I can't remember it exactly but I can show you." So he did. We went back to my laptop and he shadily hit several keys while typing in my address, and it worked.

Incidentally, the helpline sent me an email with the following message: "Due to the high number of work orders identical to this issue, you are no longer eligible to receive a new work order number for this issue. Your work order is still: open/unresolved. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue."

Someone oughta tell Sharleen she's got a big job on her hands.

And So It Goes

Yesterday, the Red Sox season ended in fifteen minutes when what seemed to a sure win suddenly turned into the end of summer. And even though nobody - myself included - really expected this team to make a true run at the World Series, it seemed like we weren't quite ready to shut it down for winter, either.

A lot of people have been asking me what I think about the Sox loss. I tell them about the mood at Fenway - how everyone was excited that they were going to win the game, but nobody really thought this meant they were going all the way - a key difference from the wins in 2004 and even the ALCS win in 2007 - and then sudden mood shift as the eighth inning happened and then the pure anger at Papelbon when he was booed out of the game in the ninth after giving up the winning run. The range of emotions that the fans went through - relief to tension to anger to just dejectedness - seems to be what people are after, but it's not really what I think about the Sox loss.

I think about what happened to me yesterday. See, I had this plan about yesterday. I was sort of worried that it would be the last game of the season, and so I had a mental list of things I wanted to do and people I wanted to make sure I saw. I wanted to make sure I walked up on the Green Monster and right field roof. I wanted to take tickets. I had to see a few of my favorite guys around the park. I also wanted to hear them sing Sweet Caroline, since that used to be my favorite part of the game, pre-Neil Diamond concert when he played it literally four times in a row and made me want to forget that the song ever existed. I thought about wanting to hear the anthem, but that didn't top the list. I wanted to watch some of the game. Basically, I wanted to do what I often forget: I wanted to enjoy being there.

The thing about working a job is that it becomes monotonous, no matter what it is or where it is. You get all wrapped up in the day to day responsibilities and bullshit, and it's easy to forget to remember the big picture. That happened to me. When I was younger, if you had told me where I would work and what I would do and what I would get to see, I would have thought I would be the luckiest person alive. And yet, I don't remember feeling that much at all this season.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't enjoy a lot of my job, it's just that the focus changes. When people first asked me about it a few months into my first season, I told them that I really liked my job and it had nothing to do with where I worked. "If I did the same thing for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, I would still love it," I said. And that was the secret to it: if you like what you're doing and who you're doing it with, then the background doesn't matter so much. The opposite is true, of course too. IF you don't like what you're doing and who you're doing it with, the background fades as well. And, as with most jobs, the more you're there and the more you invest, what you do and who you're with becomes so important in your life that sometimes, you forget about the background altogether.

So that had happened to me. This season more than any other, I hadn't seen much of any games. I hadn't seen many ceremonies or special moments. I don't even know that I watched a complete game while the team was away. And as with all things, I realized that I had missed the season - not just like "whoops, I missed that," but more in the sadness of missing something sense - when it was almost over.

This Sunday, since I knew it could be the last game, I wanted to try to get back some of what I was missing. I began my day trying to do as much of my list as possible. I took some tickets, but not nearly as many as I would have liked, and I watched an inning and talked to some of the guys. And then the team went ahead, 5-1.

I didn't make it to the Green Monster, or the Right Field Roof. I didn't think it mattered though. When they pulled ahead and took that lead into the seventh, I started to think about making plans for tomorrow. Tomorrow, I thought, I'll make it to the Monster. Tomorrow, I'll come early and watch batting practice. Tomorrow I'll take some of the pictures I had been planning to. Tomorrow I'll take it in more.

Well, as we all know, there was no tomorrow for baseball. As I watched Papelbon implode in the ninth inning, I realized that there wasn't going to be a tomorrow for me, either. I thought about how it was just like many things in life: it doesn't matter if you're ready or not. It just happens.

Today I woke up and thought I should be, and wished I could be, going to work tonight for just one more time. And when I drove my brother home tonight, as we passed over the bridge, I couldn't help but take one more look at the park. Fenway's lights were dark.