CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Where’d you learn to ride like that?” the dying wasp on my helmet asked me, after I unbuckled my strap and removed the device from my head. I was uncomfortable with the little fellow’s interest in my life but I did appreciate the supportive coaching he had just provided me. As I stared down at him and he waited eagerly for my response, I couldn’t help but pity him, for I knew he couldn’t survive much longer. The fact that he was still alive at all was a miracle in and of itself.

As I stared down at him, I flipped my visor to the “up” position and turned my helmet sideways, so I could see his face, through the inside portion of my visor, without having to put the helmet on my head. Had I not done so—had I viewed the helmet straight on—all I would have seen was his splattered body, pasted to the outside of my visor.

“Who… Who are you?” I finally managed to ask. “And how did you know those bikes were going to come after me? Come to think of it, how did you even see anything at all, other than my face?” I knew it was rude to answer a question with more questions but, in this particular case, I felt it prudent.

“Thomazzz,” he buzzed. Then, with a bit more clarity, “Thomas. Thomas izzz my name.”

Thomas’s broken body was barely moving. His eyes seemed to be staring off into nothing, rather than focusing on me. I wasn’t even sure how he was communicating at all. I wanted to ask him but I decided against it.

After coughing weakly and subsequently clearing his throat, he then cryptically explained, “I can see much in your eyezzz. I can see the confusion. You think I’m juzzzt some strange wasp but I know much more than what you give me credit for, Jamezzz Zzzinger.”

“You know my name?”

“I do.”

“How is that possible?” I asked the mangled insect, as it clung to life on the surface of my face-shield.

“When it’zzz time… When it’s time, you’ll know.” Then, trying to sound a bit more upbeat, he sighed and said, “I can’t seem to pry myself off your helmet. Could you give me a hand?”

I didn’t want to deliver any dismal forecast concerning the remainder of his life but I also thought it was incumbent on me to not lead his hopes astray. In truth, I really didn’t know what to say so I simply let, “You might want to stay put for now, Thomas. You don’t look so good,” spill out of my mouth.

Instantly, I regretted my phrasing. In such a delicate moment, however, I tried not to let him see that regret. I figured that would only make the situation worse.

Though he tried to hide it, I heard a faint tremble in his voice when he then asked, “Is it bad? Is this… Is this the end?”

As I considered how to best answer his question, I placed the helmet inside of my tail bag, on its side, with the visor still flipped up, so that Thomas’s face remained pointed toward my own, in a stable position. I purposefully pretended that achieving this goal was more difficult than it actually was because, in doing so, I was able to stall my response a bit. I continued this tactic when I slowly and deliberately took a seat on the curb that formed a barrier between the parking lot and the empty field behind us—so that he and the helmet that contained his body were close to my eye level.

I could stall no longer and I still didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t want to give him false hope but I didn’t want to crush what little spirit he had left either. His eyes… His eyes were so fragile; they were so desperate. They made me wonder: is he asking about his life because he has something he needs to say—something he’s been purposefully putting off until the last moment?

I’ve heard it said that people often know when they’re close to death. They can feel it—just like a sick animal who purposefully wanders off, to secure its final resting place. Surely, then, he must feel it too, right? Why is he asking for my confirmation? Is it because he wants me to lie and, if that’s the case, should I? Would doing so keep him from speaking whatever words I assume he wants to speak? Is impending death less obvious to him because of how sudden all of this was? Would he better accept the situation if he had been given more time to prepare for it?

I’ve always wondered what that would be like—to know one’s natural expiration date. Would I want the stress of knowing (and all the emotions, thoughts and responsibilities that come along with knowing) or would something more sudden—something more like this—be better? In a sudden, unplanned death, people are robbed of closure but, in my own experiences, a longer, more drawn-out sentence doesn’t typically yield it either.

In the movies, when people are on their hospital deathbeds, they usually get that closure. They’re always imparting some kind of last wisdom to their family and/or friends and their “words to live by” are often accompanied by some sad but uplifting melody.

In my own experiences, though, that’s rarely the way it goes; quite to the contrary, we don’t usually get those moments at all because we’re constantly pretending that it’s not over—that there will be another day and so our loved ones’ words don’t have to come out now; in fact, if we do actually admit that they need to come out then, at that moment, we are subsequently admitting that the end is here. Now. Right now. And we no more want to face that terrifying truth than we want to be responsible for admitting it and (we assume) burdening the one we love with the consequences inherent within that knowledge.

For many of us, honesty like that is just too terrifying so we ignore it altogether. We pretend—we pretend not only to our loved ones but to ourselves as well. We talk instead about the mundane because we prefer to delude ourselves into the belief that there exists more time. I, therefore, always find those deathbed TV scenes to be so unnatural.

To be truthful in those situations requires no small amount of bravery so it caused me great shame when I told Thomas, “You don’t know if this is the end. No one knows when his time will truly come.”

Anyone looking at him could see that wasn’t true though. I thought that virtually every uneasy breath, which somehow found its way out of his lungs, would be his last and that piercing truth sliced deeply into my heart. I didn’t know why but this tiny being who, in most respects was a stranger to me, had touched me deeply. I began to become overwhelmed with remorse for his situation and, were I able to barter with God, I would have gladly given some of my own life force to him.

As I was thinking that thought, Thomas broke the silence and asked, once more, “So where’d you learn to ride like that?”

“Well,” I began, trying to hide the fact that I was still a bit shaken but also grateful that he had moved the conversation over to something less ominous, “nobody taught me to ride like that but my dad is the one who taught me the basics.”

“Do you two ride often?”

“No. He passed away some time ago.”

“Oh.” he said but then stopped. I could tell he didn’t know what to say. People never know what to say. “Well, I’m zzzorry… I’m sorry to hear that,” he then offered as sympathetically as he could.

“It’s okay,” I tried to assure him, touched that he was somehow more concerned with my own well-being than his own impending fate. “It was a long time ago.”

It wasn’t okay though. It would never be okay and it didn’t matter how much time had elapsed. I just gave people that standard response in order to let them off the hook—so that they wouldn’t feel anywhere near as uncomfortable as I did, in those situations.

What can one truly tell someone who’s lost a father, a husband, a son, a mother, a wife, a daughter? I’ve heard it all and it’s never made any difference. I’ve said it all, to others in that position, and I doubt it ever made any difference to them either.

“Were you close?” he then asked.

I didn’t want to answer but I could see that talking about something other than himself was bringing him comfort and so, for his benefit, I provided the information. “Not really,” I said honestly. “I mean, he was my dad. He was always there; he didn’t desert the family or anything. He always provided. He was certainly a good and fair father but… we just kind of… butted heads for most of my life.

“The truth of the matter,” I continued to explain, “is that motorcycle riding was really the first thing we ever had in common. He taught me the basics, in a parking lot, and he even went on a couple short runs with me too—illegally, of course,” I chuckled to myself, “but that was it. He was too sick to do any more and, in all honesty, he was probably too sick to have even done that.

“He died shortly after that—just as we were finally starting to connect in a different dynamic. We were no longer rebellious son and stubborn, authoritative father; we were just father and son—the way he probably dreamed it up before he ever had me. It felt nice. It just… It didn’t last.”

“Well, it’s good that you had that time together, short as it may have been,” he explained. “I’m sure he wazzz grateful for it too.”

“I’m sure he was...” I trailed off.

“What?” the perceptive insect asked.

“It’s nothing. But don’t you think we should be tr—” Before I could finish my sentence, though, he cut in and told me he wanted me to finish my thought so, reluctantly, I obliged him.

“I… I was just going to say that I feel like I didn’t get a chance to ever meet his expectations—that he never got to see me ‘succeed.’ At the time of his death, I was an unmarried, recent college graduate, with a license to teach high school art that I hadn’t’ turned into a related job yet.

“Though I couldn’t admit it, or even realize it, at the time, getting drunk with my friends was the only thing that was important to me. Knowing that, I think he must have been worried about me and that, of course, makes me feel guilty.” I paused for a moment and then said, “I guess he probably felt unfulfilled, in that part of his life. If he could have lived only a little longer, he could have seen me ‘make it’—whatever that means.” Using my index and middle fingers, I made quotation marks in the air, as I was finishing my statement.

“What do you mean by that?” he coughed.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this?” I sheepishly asked, feeling guilty for speaking about myself, in a time like this.

“Yezzz… Yes. It’s helping,” he then affirmed. “What do you mean by him not seeing you ‘make it’?”

“Honestly,” I cautiously began, “it doesn’t even mean the same thing to me anymore so I don’t really even know why I keep saying it. I used to think that I wanted him to see I had secured a good job, purchased a house, got engaged. Just… you know: for him to have peace and security in knowing I wasn’t going to starve to death, alone in an alley somewhere. It’d probably be more succinct to simply say that I wanted him to know I was going to be okay.

“Funny thing is: I know now that everything is temporary. Regardless of what happens to me—to any of us—starving alone in an alley somewhere is always a possibility. We’re probably never ‘okay,’ despite what we might think about our circumstances at any given time. Everything is fluid. Careers are lost, empires fall, attitudes and priorities shift and our love for one and other diminishes but also expands—all at the same time. Even the Earth and the stars above are in constant flux. Over time, everything changes. Stability is a mirage.”

“With kids, all you can do is raise them, to the bezzzt… to the best of your ability, and trust that they’ll make the right choices—that they’ll make the best choices available to them, when those changes come.”

“You have kids?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I do,” he said proudly. “I have many zzzons and daughters alike and I don’t feel that way about any of them. Once I’m gone, if I could, I would tell any of them who feel as you do now that regrets are pointless. They don’t move anything forward. Follow your instinctzzz. They’re often God’s way of guiding us.”

“You’re surprisingly positive, Thomas,” I told him bluntly. “I have a lot of respect for that.”

“If you find comfort or meaning in my words, repeat them to others. Repeat them to your studentzzz… to your students, Mr. Art Teacher. The world seems more content than ever at crushing their souls.”

“The kids don’t stand a chance,” I mumbled to myself as I looked down at my boots.

“What?” the confused bug asked.

“I… I don’t have students anymore,” I then corrected, in a much more confident tone. “I wasn’t an art teacher for more than a couple years.”

“Oh. Well, that’s probably for the best. You know what they say: ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’” He was quoting George Bernard Shaw and, as he was doing it, it seemed like some intangible weight had been lifted off of him. Repeating that famous line almost seemed to energize him, despite his dismal state.

***

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’”

During my senior year of my college, I remember one of my professors reading us that quote and asking us to write a paper that would essentially stand as a defense against perceptions such as these. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember what I wrote. Being that becoming a teacher was, at that time, my only real goal in life, I would think I would have some recollection as to how I defended my career choice but the fact that I don’t probably points to a good move in distancing myself from that profession.

I’m sure I wrote something; I’m sure I argued passionately and I probably received an “A” but whatever it was, it was probably hollow as well.

“You don’t care for teachers?” I quizzically asked Thomas.

“Never found much of a uzzze for ’em, personally,” he answered.

I then thought carefully before saying, “I think there are a lot of great teachers; it’s the educational process that’s broken—especially in high school.”

That statement was only a half-truth though. That wasn’t the true reason I left education and became a cog in the corporate world. I had always had a great respect for everything teachers had to endure (especially in this modern age); after all, I had studied hard to eventually attain a piece of paper that stated I belonged amongst them and I knew—better than anyone outside of the education field—what the job truly entailed.

Still, I didn’t want to pontificate on the subject, for I knew this creature was dying. Experience told me he was probably satisfied in discussing the mundane but, for reasons I can’t explain, I tried to convince myself that he was holding onto some sage, movie-like final words that he would utter at just the right time. With that in mind, I decided to try and keep my responses short. I hoped that doing so would coax him to speak those words I only half-expected to hear.

Should I have decided to tell him the truth, though, it would have gone something like this: some people truly dream of teaching kids. I don’t. If I’m being honest with myself, I never really did, actually. I tried to convince myself otherwise and, to a degree, I did but it was all just an elaborate deception—a ruse designed for my own detriment. I see that now.

An inner-city high school teacher, whether he likes it or not, has to be more than someone who disseminates subject matter to his students. He has to live for his students. He has to advocate for their success and become obsessed with helping them unlock their potential. He has to develop into an agent of change in his community—to show his students there is a way out of the cycle of crime and poverty that plagues most of their lives. He has to open their eyes to the fact that education could be their way out of the only life they’ve known. That is the job of an inner-city school teacher—at least it should be.

It took me a long time to realize it but, if I’m being truthful, to the point of self-deprecation, I have to admit that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice for any of that—not for any amount of money, let alone my actual, laughable salary. I wanted my job to exist in a vacuum—one that didn’t go beyond the classroom and into my students’ real lives. I just loved art and I wanted a job where I could create and talk about it all day, with other like-minded individuals. That’s the reason I naively and selfishly became an art teacher and that’s the reason I didn’t last in that profession.

My real dream… my “true” dream—the one I was too afraid to admit because admitting it meant facing the possibility of failing in it—was and always has been art itself. I didn’t want to teach it; I wanted to create it.

But those voices… the voices in our heads—the ones that are so critical of us and all that we do—they would say things like, “Painting isn’t about how talented you are; it’s about who you know and you don’t know anyone,” or “Sketch artists are a dime a dozen,” or “No one is going to care about anything you would have to say through art.”

Eventually, I started to believe those voices. I internalized their message and let it guide my future. So, teaching kids art for themselves and teaching them about the works of other famous artists was simply a more realistic backup plan—one that I knew I could achieve without having to risk much or worry about actual failure in that well-traveled career path. Better to succeed as a teacher than to fail as an artist, I thought. Now, I’m not so sure.

“You’re quite a bit more forgiving than I am,” the little insect croaked, as he pulled me away from my own thoughts, “but you’re actually thinking along the same linezzz as me, in criticizing the high school itself.” He then coughed, took a deep, raspy wheeze of a breath and continued. “High school’s more of a socializing agent than anything, izzzn’t it? It’zzz… it’s full of adults with broken spirits—people who have just given up and are waiting for retirement. The more time that goezzz by, the more disconnected from reality they become.”

“That’s a pretty generalized statement,” I told him.

“Do you dizzzagree… disagree with it?” he moaned.

“A teacher’s job is to inspire,” I told him, after a moment of reflection. “‘Teaching’ is more like a side effect of that process.”

“Then why don’t they call them inzzzpirers?” he proudly mocked. He seemed to revel in the possibility that he had stumped me and, for his sake, I wanted to give him a credible answer, as his life was only moments from ending and this conversation seemed to be prolonging it.

At that moment, I suddenly remembered my defense of George Bernard Shaw. It basically said that there are plenty of teachers who are lacking in real-world experience and, when we encounter them, we think thoughts like “Those who can’t, teach,” but there are also plenty of highly successfully “real-world” professionals working in schools—especially in colleges—that haven’t the foggiest idea how to teach. In their own way, those individuals can be just as detrimental to a student’s growth.

With that in mind, I believe that teaching is an art form—one that not everyone can do well—and that it would be more cogent to say, “It’s difficult to learn from good teachers with a poor grasp on real-life experiences but it’s equally challenging to learn from experts who don’t understand the art of teaching; however, when one encounters a teacher who excels in both pedagogical practices as well as proven success outside of education, one ought to pay attention.”

Of course, I don’t remember if I wrote that verbatim but I’m sure it must have been some derivation of the argument I just laid out. The only difference between now and then is the fact that I had convinced myself I was going to be that rare teacher who had mastered both sides of the coin (teaching ability and real-life knowledge) and I now know I never was.

That’s not the argument I articulated though. Instead, I simply said, “You’re right: schools are full of terrible teachers who care more about their tenure than they do about helping students. They’ve given up and they’re just holding on for retirement. You’ve also got the teachers who just want to talk about their subject matter and try to ignore the world outside the school. They want an eight-hour day with no curveballs. I myself am guilty of being one of those.

“Then there’s those who aren’t masters in their subject matter. I used to think, ‘Why would I listen to the English teacher who has never published anything or to the economics teacher who can’t afford a new car?’ I took everything too literally and I think you are too.

“Teachers shouldn’t be expected to show you the way to success in every single individual facet of life. If that’s your barometer then, yes: a lot of them are substandard. If, on the other hand, they imbue their students with the confidence and the basic skills to achieve their own individual goals, so they can figure out their paths for themselves, then I’d say they’re succeeding as teachers.”

I then waited for a moment but Thomas said nothing. After more silence ensued, I said, “Thomas, you said that, when the time was right, I would know—I would know how you knew me. I don’t… I don’t know how to say this; in fact, I’ve been avoiding it but I think that now is the time for you to say what you need to say.

“The truth is: I don’t think you have much time left. I’m sorry it took me so long to be honest with you but you deserve to know. Is there anything… Is there anything at all I can do for you? Is there anything you need to say?”

After a few more seconds of silence passed, I softly called his name but I already knew he was gone—that he wouldn’t answer. Ashamed of the way I handled the last moments of my disfigured friend’s existence, I silently lamented his death, in the abandoned parking lot.

From out of my tail bag, I removed a bottle of water I had packed for the journey. Holding my helmet out over the somewhat verdant but still mostly white field behind me, I solemnly let the water run out, over Thomas’s body, until he slid off of my helmet and disappeared into the snowy weeds below me. By the time I capped the bottle, only a few small, caked-on spots remained on my helmet. I didn’t mind their presence though; in fact, I actually experienced a sense of relief that I had not removed him completely.

Though the chaos of our short relationship didn’t grant me the opportunity to know him in a way I would have preferred, I could already perceive that, for the rest of my life, I would always be extremely grateful for his tutelage—for his instructions that got me here, away from the danger that had nearly engulfed me. I didn’t know exactly where he had taken me but I knew I wasn’t lost. I knew that simply retracing my steps and following the route he had just created would eventually get me to a point where I would recognize my surroundings and safely forge my own way home.