Hard Times

Today I was thinking about a time that most would find to be very difficult but looking back it was so rewarding.

Back in 2011 I worked for a guy who thought he knew it all and I have quite often been accused of knowing it all as well. After 7 years he decided he knew way more than me and could do it better without me. I tried to make sense of a person that honestly a PHD  would study for years and not be able to make much more sense of him but this isn't about him. It never is.

This is about my favorite time in my unemployment. I have always thought that people that are unemployed should do something more productive than watch Oprah and Judge Judy and I had never watched these shows before I wasn't going to start now. I decided I would make myself productive and volunteer at my nephew's school. I did lots of things I enjoyed that year, I worked in the library and I would eat lunch with my nephew which then turned into tutoring other kids in math during their lunch time. I got to play teacher and bring pencils and erasers and give them away like bars of gold to kids that solved problems they couldn't the week before.

Kids enjoyed my math lunch table so much they would bring their friends and we sat outside in the sun and did flash cards and solved all kinds of problems. I wish I could remember some of the names like I remember their faces and their stories. One told me of her illegal parents and how she was scared of being sent to a place she had never lived. These kids all had a place in my heart and I was the proudest volunteer when they would tell me how they got a 100 on a quiz. But there was this little girl that moved me the most. She was horrible at math. She couldn't add or subtract and not even counting on her fingers. She was always distracting everyone and she climbed on me like she had never gotten any attention before in her life and I was the only one that ever noticed her. The teacher told me one day as I tried to figure out how to get this little girl to focus on what we were doing that if she was too big of a distraction that we could remove her and add another child that would behave better. I said the words before I even thought about them. I would sooner give up all the others because she is the one that needs my help.

That day I watched her and what she did and again an epiphany of sorts. I watched her look under the table I assumed at her fingers to try to figure out the problem. I immediately said, show me your work. The kids all looked at me like what is she talking about. I said, if you are going to count on your fingers I need to see your work. So from that day on no one ever hid their hands under the table when they counted on their fingers and we started from scratch and that little girl learned to not only count on her fingers but to add and subtract. I remember her hugging me one day on the way to lunch telling me that she only missed one on her math test. I had never been more proud of myself or probably not since. Like I said I don't know her name but since I thought of her this morning I thought she is probably about 16 years old now and I hope that that year that I was unemployed it was not punishment for me not doing a good job it was actually the opportunity for me to work with some great kids for a short time and maybe I made a difference in some of their lives as they did for me.