When People Reject You

Thus my afternoon started, being kicked out of the meeting solely because my presence was a nuissance--an invisible and inaudible wraith of presence like something stuck in your teeth, an itch at the back of the brain, a tiny splinter in your conscience. While I am paid for these hours of studying and writing, for my otiose performance of this daily tragical farce, I see that perhaps if I were to act more vigorously at the spur of conscience, by reason's whip's sharp sting, I would pull myself up by my own bootstraps and redesign the curriculum for our school's Oral Communication class. However, I don't see how teachers who fail to communicate among themselves can teach communication to others. It is a dangerous business, the language business, for it has the potential to lead kids down the path of having everything put into a controlled system, English in little vaccum-sealed packets that they can open at any time and savor as much as they like. Lighten up, Jeff, right? Don't worry if you are doing nothing now and getting paid for it, you are learning something, even if it is the retrograde lessons of anomie which give you less job skills or tangible assets to parade around for job hunters of every degree. Now I have only one more thing to say, which is that every time I sit down at this computer, I realize how much I need something else to do besides sit, read, and write. They are all good skills, things which we need but which cannot sustain us in our days. There is something else we need. Out there, it is life. Isn't it a bit paradoxical to be kicked out of a "meeting"? Of course they did it so politely and with utmost respect to form, as if I was having a tooth pulled out, or was bullied at school and deserved tender, loving care.