Can't Figure It Out

I used to pass a student in the hallways of academe and I’d call out “How ya doing, Red?” and his stock reply was “I can’t figure it out.” Good answer. I can’t seem to figure it out either.

Here we are in 2007 and I’ve had one problem or disappointment after another. On the second of January, with the year still in diapers, I was making the bed, reached down to pull up a corner of the mattress to tuck a sheet under, and I felt something move in my back. The pain was excruciating. I was stuck in this half hunkered down position, neither quite upright, nor quite quadrapedal, totally unable to move, and in indescribable pain. The best I could do was roll onto my back on the bed with feet and hand sticking straight up in the air, looking something like a cockroach who’d just lost a draw-down with a can of Raid.

I had thrown my proverbial back out.

Squeeze was leaving that very day for a two-year visit to the Congo and the Sudan (she says this is the busiest time of the year for her, but she says that twelve months a year). Thus, I had the prospect of freezing and starving in the dark as I regularly fouled my bed. THIS is how my year began.

Then there was the ice storm. Worst I’ve ever seen. It’s been over four weeks ago and there is still an icy patch on my driveway, this in spite of temperatures routinely above freezing.

I found out yesterday that I was passed over for promotion at work. This is the first year that my college is promoting to Associate Professor. In coming years they will allow Associates to apply for Full Professor positions, the highest available. There were 50 slots available and I got none of them. I was good enough to be a Full Professor at a university in Texas, but apparently not good enough to be an Associate Professor at a community college in Oklahoma.

It’s politics of course. I’m not so good at politics so I guess I’ll just have to accept the way it is, rather than the way I wish it to be.

My son broke up with his girlfriend. My friend Kevin is on the outs with his. Jess and Drew are splitting the sheets, and Bry is taking a hike from his ol’ lady too. Must be something in the air.

Plus it’s been dark. Really dark. Depressingly dark.

Every morning I have to ask the same question. “Do I get up and go to teach today, or do I take a sniper rifle up on the roof and commit suicide via SWAT team?”

Well, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day. It’s my favorite holiday, next to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Fourth of July, President’s Day, MLK Day, Arbor Day, and Guy Fawkes Day.

I been screwed over way too often on Valentine’s Day.

Bummer.