Introduction: It's a Carnival...

What was your high school like? If possible, picture one of the hallways you frequently traversed during your ninth-grade year. There are likely rows of lockers (are they green, blue, red?) lining the walls, broken intermittently by classroom doorways. It's passing period--students are leaving class and heading toward lunch. Teachers are standing casually in the doorways. Do you have the picture? Is the schema intact?

Yes? Good, let's wreck a bit, shall we? Are the lockers neatly painted? Are they in working order? Let's take a big hammer and mess around with that bit. How's the floor? Carpeted? That's no good--tear it out, reveal the discolored tiles beneath. And what is that I'm seeing? Didn't they have spray paint where you came from? And Sharpie markers? And various etching tools? Well, take up such tool's in your mind's steady grasp and wreak some havoc, why don't you.

And the students, are they progressing in an orderly manor? Nah, they're high school kids, bound to be a bit rebellious. But wait, they're not stampeding? There isn't utter din, unbridled chaos? Better fix that--we're trying to get into the right frame of mind here.

Okay, we've got disrepair. We've got disorder. We've got utter, screaming, senseless mayhem. I think we're in essentially the same place now. We're at the undisclosed inner-city high school where I happened to teach at the undisclosed time when our story takes place. We're me. We're an English teacher, one who is paying some colleagues on the third floor a casual visit. The chaos doesn't phase us. It's part of the expected scenery.

And yet, our esteemed colleague's comment still strikes us as appropriate: "It's a carnival, Mr. Lewis!" This is what Ms. ________ shouts to us from down the hall. She strolls through the chaos. It morphs around her to make room as she walks toward us. Her smile is bright, but her eyes are glazed over with fatigue from the daily grind. And yes, what an appropriate metaphor she has provided. It's wild, full of illusions and games which we all know are rigged, and while the whole thing may be a bit of a wild ride, it's ultimately pretty expensive--possibly not worth the cost. Yep, this job is a carnival. We say as much.

"Oh, yeah, it really is, Ms. _________. I can't believe how wild it is up here." We say. We smile, and we imagine our eyes have the glaze over them, too.

"No, Mr. Lewis. It's a carnival this weekend. Up at Security. In the mall parking lot. We should all go on Friday!"

Pause. Mental pathways reconstruct themselves to allow for the functional shift. Correlation to prior experiences, mostly from our students: "It's a mouse in the room, Mr. Lewis;" "It's always somebody trying to play me, naw'saying?" Etc. Meaning found.

"Oh, there is, is there?" Emphasis added. At the time, no sarcasm. No being smart. Just reaching out a hand and finding mutual understanding.

See, as I see it, it--the greater it, namely life--is quite like a carnival. And the mirrors likely show you something other than what you first expect. You have to examine closely to figure out what's really going on. I'm tempted to prolong the metaphor, but I'm tired just thinking about it.

Oh, and we did go to the carnival at Security--a mall named for the nearby Social Security Administration--and we had a blast. Killer time.

Hope this blog is a good fun-house mirror for the world we live in. It's really just a bunch of my perceptions--and, of course, you're own interpretation of them. Maybe it'll be fun.