Losing Patients

Teaching in public schools is a lot like working in a hospital. Having worked in hospital ICU's and ER's, I can say that the stress is very similar to teaching - you are working to save a human life. You pour your heart and soul and sweat into doing everything you can to keep someone alive, and sometimes everything isn't enough. Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and it doesn't matter how much you care or how much you know. Those are exhausting days, because you are not only tired physically and mentally - you are also tired emotionally. Your soul is tired.

But there are moments that make it all worth while. Seeing a baby come off of life support and start to breath on her own is thrilling. It's an emotional high that makes all the stress, discouragement, tedium, and tragedy disappear - at least until the next crisis.

Teaching is like that, but on a much longer time scale. Instead of the minutes that matter in an emergency room, sometimes you struggle over the course of four years. And sometimes you lose.

Today was one of those days. Today I found out that another one of my students was pregnant. That makes four in less than a semester. I found out at lunch, and I felt sick the rest of the day. I never know what to say to these girls when they tell me the news. All that runs through my mind as I stare at them standing in front of me is that they just ruined their life, and the life of their child. All of my work and effort to try and get them out of this school and out of this town so that they can get an education has been for nothing. If we're lucky, they might finish high school. If we're really lucky, she might even make it through college. But the overwhelming odds are that she'll never go on - and neither will her child.

There are people in this town that know their great great grand-daughter. They had a baby when they were 15, who then had a baby when they were 15, who repeated the pattern until you have a 60 year old woman holding her great great grand-daughter. And they all live in ignorance and poverty in the middle-of-nowhere, New Mexico.

Perhaps I sound depressed and over-dramatic. Yes to the first, but not the latter. Though I don't usually talk about such grim realities unless I am feeling defeated. Tomorrow will be better. I'll continue the battle, and I'll keep hoping that my book has managed to help at least one girl and prevent at least one tragedy, because the success of others is what teachers live for.

Glee-fully Stupid

So my wife was watching "Glee" last night, and since I like hanging out with my wife, I ended up watching Glee also. That's how much I love my wife. Nothing against Glee - I love the music. But since I teach high school, I just don't feel the need to watch an over-dramatic version of high school in the evening.

Anyway, so last night's episode was all about Madonna, how powerful Madonna was even though she was a woman, and how the female characters in the movie were trying to empower themselves. At one point in the episode there are three different female characters that all decide they need to have sex with their partner in order to empower themselves in the relationship. One girl even states that the way to get control over a guy is to take his virginity.

I was livid. This is exactly the sort of glamorized garbage that leads to all of the problems that girls have with relationships. Having sex with a guy does not give you power over a guy. The guy WANTS to have sex!!! How does giving someone what they want give you power?

I would like to point out that all of the writers and the director of the episode are men.

I have two daughters - ages 3 and (almost) 2. They are constantly trying to empower themselves in our relationship. They are super cute, and I love them to death, and they try to use this to their advantage to get things that they shouldn't have. The other night they wanted to lay in our bed to go to sleep instead of their beds. They were just cute enough (and I was just tired enough) that I was tempted to let them. But I had to consider the ramifications of giving them what they wanted. If I let them go to sleep in my bed, their demands would be met for one night only. Having set the precedent, they would undoubtably make the same demand in the future - and with more force and conviction because they would have a greater expectation of getting what they wanted. Not only that, but if I refused them later, their protests would be much more vehement - screaming, crying, kicking - because their higher expectations would lead to greater disappointment. I knew that if I gave in that night, it would only get harder to not give in, and I would end up with two little girls squeezed in between my wife and I every night for the next several years.

My daughters, Bethany (in red) and Claira (purple) reading books in their pj's.

It was obvious to me that if I gave them what they wanted, it would empower them - not me. I also want to point out that I wanted to give them what they wanted. I love to cuddle them, and I was really tired, so letting them lay down with me would let us all get to sleep earlier. But it would have been a dumb move. And I knew that as much as I wanted to give in right then, I would regret it later.

Same thing with women and sex. Giving sex to guys does not give women power in the relationship. It gives the power to the guy. And a girl saying that it's okay because she wants to have sex, too, is definately not a good enough reason to give that control away. Teenage girls are not mature enough to make that big of a decision, which is why so many of their relationships turn into tragic failures.

Women have got to wake up and quit getting their information from shows written and directed by men if they ever want to understand how to make the relationship work for them instead of the guy.

Do women really care what nice guys have to say?

So, out of curiosity, I did a few google searches on things like "nice guys", "finding nice guys", and "men are scum". What I found was that if any woman was actually googling those things looking for real answers, they probably weren't going to find anything. Mostly it was a bunch of women who were asking those questions, not anyone really giving answers. But I had to wonder: If a nice guy actually got on the internet and tried to answer those questions, would women actually listen?

Actually, I don't blame you that much for not listening. Most of the supposed "nice guys" on the internet are either A) not really nice guys, B) real losers, or C) all of the above. For some reason everyone thinks the definition of a nice guy is a guy that can't get girls. A porn-surfing, pervert-minded geek that is awkward around girls isn't a nice guy, he's just a jerk that doesn't have game. But that's the type of guy that gets on the internet and whines about how nice guys finish last, and how shallow girls are for not being interested in him just because he's unattractive. But he's just as shallow for only wanting the type of girls that are not interested in unattractive guys like him. But those are the guys that post the most stuff about "how to find a nice guy" on the internet.

(A quick warning to any girls still reading this: if you just go after unattractive guys thinking that they are nice guys, you are going to end up with a lot of stalkers)

Then you have the Jerks/Players posing as nice guys giving totally bogus advice just to keep girls confused and steer them into their traps.

So who do you trust? How do you find a nice guy to give you real advice about finding nice guys? It's kind of a catch 22. But you're in luck. You found one.

Me.

Here's how I'm different, and why you can trust me: I'm not in the game any more. If girls wise up or not, it doesn't affect me because I have already found my one and only true love. I'm not going to whine about how nice guys always finish last, because it's not true. I got top prize - true, everlasting love. I get to spend the rest of my life with her. Not only that, I have three (well, three in July, anyway) beautiful daughters that are the world to me.

So, if you want to know about "happily ever after", I'm living it right now. And it's awesome. And just like when you see a good movie or eat at a great restaurant and you want to tell everyone about it - I want to tell everyone about how great it is to be where I am right now.

I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. I don't want it to. I can't take much of the credit for where I am now. I got here because a lot of people that had written their own "happily ever afters" gave me a lot of great advice on writing mine. That's advice I would love to share with anyone searching. So if that is you, I hope you'll find this useful. And feel free to email me or leave comments if there are specific questions you have or things you would like to know about.