As I’m writing this my computer reminded me that tomorrow is Flag Day. I often tell my students Flag Day is my favorite holiday because it’s weird and I like seeing their reaction. When I began teaching high school seniors two years ago, I relied on being both weird and sincere rather than being authoritative and serious. I suppose I decided to do this because I am neither concerned with control or punctuating knowledge through driving home a topic’s severity. Student’s these days see too much hollow authority through their parents, and teenagers have a penchant to steer most of their situations to the dramatic and catastrophic. I’m no stranger to this. 

I was born without the ability to remain calm. My issues with anxiety are perhaps genetic, or more likely learned. They are for sure environmental and have plagued me for the better part of my existence. As a preteen, teen, and twenty-something, and a thirty-nothing I used substances, relationships, and a strange obsession with both politics and professional baseball to both mask and ironically build my anxiety into a fortress of sustained self-emulation. I can collectively describe my fascination with the above, as akin to a madman frantically betting on the ponies with other people’s money to climb out of debt. At some point, usually when I’d have an “episode”, I’d run off with the money and burn down what remained stable in my life. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a game the desperate play when they try to outrun one stressor by suppressing that stressor with another. It’s like a psychological speed ball. When I’m high I am not anxious, when I’m hungover, I am anxious. Let the wheel keep on rolling and watch the horses run. 

Approaching 40, I realized that I can usually be funny whenever I want. I’m even funnier when I drive over myself with the funny bus. I realized by being myself I can make people laugh and I can purposely direct people to laugh at me. For example, I made a big deal about believing that my strep throat was likely cancer, and I juiced it to its full extent. Obvious to everyone else, I did not have a life threatening disease, but when I went as far as promising away my belongings to my students and coworkers, it became a sort of game. We all knew it was bullshit, but it was fun for some macabre reason. It was the absurdity of the whole thing that turned what would normally be a tragic or bizarre escapade into a collective joke shared by my students and colleagues. I even had a teacher hand me a rebate on having some local law students draw up my last will and testament. My anxiety about my health didn’t go away but turned into something else. I turned it into a punchline, a joke to ridicule and brush aside. Self-effacing humor works way better than fucking up your life by burning bridges. It took me 40 years to just be brave and let it all go. 

The Jack or all trades has commitment issues. I often use my frenetic and bi-polar resume to impress people about all the shit I’ve done in my life. Yes, I’m proud of all the risks I’ve taken, how a guy like me went from an academic and traveler, to a cheese monger, to a carpenter, to a business owner, to a volunteer fire fighter, to an author and educator. Yet, I leave out the self-harm, the self-pity, and the inability to commit to a path. I did these things because I was lost and searching for external answers to internal struggles. I did these things because I was always anxious and fearful. I ran at my fear as if I were suicidal, bravery by bailing out before I could fail. I suppose that was a poor attempt to control what cannot be controlled. Change. Therefore, fuck control. 

All this is why I teach and why I give my student’s another way to learn and be successful. It helps being a narcissist without control issues, but even more useful is not forgetting what it’s like to be a teenager. Especially a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old. In some respects, you could argue that I grew up in some areas, but not in others and I’d agree to that. You could say that I sustained a healthy amount of childhood and adult trauma, which has sustained me through life, but has kept my memory sharp, like how traumatic experiences becomes oral traditions to murders of crows who roost in golf courses, constantly under siege by stray golf balls. I don’t know why I respect teenagers as much as everyone else. I don’t know why I let them fail and then give them a chance to make it right. I don’t know why I love them. I don’t know why exactly I see myself in every student, especially the one’s wide-eyed and morose. I suppose it’s because I don’t believe in a plan. I don’t believe in being one thing. I don’t believe in perfection, and I certainly don’t believe in pushing young adults to the brink of an anxiety attack because they don’t have their shit sorted at eighteen. They’ve watch most of the adults around them struggle and the thought of growing up terrifies them. 

One of my mentors at my high school told me that she respects me because I’m battle tested. She knows I can survive. She sees that life doesn’t scare me. I’ve got the scars, but along the way I’ve freed my spirit by making them available for mockery. I make fun of myself, of my journey, of my failures and triumphs, and there in front of the class I’ve broken down the invisible wall that separates educator from student. Perhaps they trust me, because I’ve entrusted them with all my failures. I can only imagine what a relief that must be as a graduate to get some honesty. 

Happy Flag day.