It Hurts

I had big plans to write a blog about the disgusting dinner I attempted to eat last night, but then, lo and behold, something way more interesting happened. So here comes different.

Today at school, one of my students stole the iPod touch that I've had for all of about four weeks (I said interesting, not good-interesting). I was listening to it during my planning period like I often do, turned it off when third period started, and some time between then and the end of the day, it was taken.  When at first I didn't see it in the spot I had left it, I didn't think it had been stolen; instead, I thought that I must have moved it without realizing it, and I searched absolutely everywhere in my room that it possibly could have been. I moved piles of paper, books, folders, and legal pads, and then I moved them again. I looked in all of my desk drawers, I looked in my closet, and I looked in my bag, and then I looked in my desk drawers again, I looked in my closet again, and I emptied out my bag.  And then I realized that I was wasting my time looking for my iPod because my iPod was nowhere to be found--it was absolutely, positively gone.

So now I'm out an iPod--a really nice one, too--but the iPod I can get over. What I can't get over is the sense of violation and invasion that I feel. What I also can't get over is the sense of betrayal.

You know, I'm a more-decent-than-not person, and anybody reading this who actually knows me knows how much I love my students. Anyone who knows me knows that they're not just my students to me, they're my kids--I cry when they cry, I get excited when they get excited, I believe in their dreams, and I cry with happiness and pride when those dreams are achieved. More tangibly, if I'm eating and one of them asks me for food, I give them some. I give them money if when they ask for it I have it (albeit in small, dollar-or-less amounts), and I let them wear my jacket when they're cold. I've baked my students cookies, I've made them cakes, I've brought in Halloween candy, and I've spent several painstaking hours writing out personalized Valentine's Day cards to each and every one of them. I give those kids absolutely everything I can.

And this is what they give me.

They give me the feeling that I'm an idiot. They give me the feeling that, despite what I'm always telling Glenn, my kids can't be trusted, and they're not really good, nice kids. They give me the feeling that I'm stupid to care so much--to do so much--to give so much.

They give me the feeling that I shouldn't trust.
They give me the feeling that I shouldn't care.
They give me the feeling that I shouldn't love.

They give me the feeling that the world, even with its angelic tow truck drivers and its random-act-of-kindness-exemplifying women who let me cut them in line at Starbucks, is ugly.

They took my new hope, and now it's gone.