The night before, I was just putting my head down to sleep comfortably on my pillow, dreaming of when I would travel the world and be a beach bum.
I woke up to find myself in a strange land, where the smell of fermented food accented the air and the sounds of crazy drivers screeching their tires on the street as they drove like wildmen.
I got out of my bed, and found that I was already dressed in a nice shirt, a pair of jeans, my tennis shoes. You know, the usual dress for a guy like me. I decided that I was going to go for a walk, but when I opened the door, I didn’t see a hallway to an apartment, or an entry. I saw…classrooms.
I walked down the hallway with classroom doors, and I found one with my name on it. Curious, I opened the door to see what awaited me. It was a man, a few years younger than me but who looked strangely like myself.
“Ah, good! You have arrived! I was hoping that you weren’t going to be delayed by any issues. So all you need to know for this job is to keep the kids happy, teach them something educational for a bit of time, then play with them the rest.”
I looked at this young punk with a strange look and my face twisted into a mark of frustration and worry.
“Job? What job? I’m supposed to be awake and working on my applications for college.”
“Oh, aren’t you the guy who signed up to teach a whole bunch of students who may not really care about you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh. Well, here you are. You get to do the job, because I have to catch my flight out,” he said, as he put the clipboards and the colored pencils in my hand. He grabbed a big rucksack, put it on his back and started out the door.
“By the way, your class starts in five minutes. Have fun with the elementary kids!”
I looked at him, incredulously, as I saw him trundle away to a waiting elevator. As the elevator door closed, my classroom door also slammed shut. I tried to open it, but there was no escape.
“Teacher! Teacher! English-ee!”
I looked behind me and saw a great number of students rushing into the classroom, all of them screaming “English-ee”.
There was nothing I could do. I am now their teacher. A teaching monkey. Lord help me.
She didn’t know what exactly prompted her to go to the roof of her apartment building. All that she knew was that she had to get out of that apartment. She was too closed in, too shut in when sitting in that place. She wanted to break free and not have to worry about that situation.
As she looked out onto the city, all of the pain and the stress in her life simply melted away. The view of a darkening sky, the lights of the tall buildings near her own, all of it was simple. It made sense to her. She loved the simple things in her life, though today she had another that was invading her life.
She thought of a man that she had never met. She felt his presence in his mind when she was in trouble, when she was stressed. She felt him in her mind at that moment, as she was looking over the city.
It was a long time since she had been held by someone, since she had been able to allow her entire being to melt into the heart of another. She wanted to catch that feeling again, especially with all of that stress and hardship she had to endure. She wanted that comfort, that warm blanket feeling of care and love that would be there. The simple things in her life would help her to continue doing her work, as stressful and sometimes as thankless as it was. Being a teacher was not a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but she did not know how to deal with the young hellions that were running all over her during the day. She got used to it a bit, but halfway into the new semester, she was being run ragged. She was not ready to teach young ones.
The thought brought her back to the roof, to the beauty of the city skyline. She was brought back to the comfort of her space, and it calmed her. She loved all of it, all of the space outside of where she was. It reminded her that there was more to life than just the work she did and the toughness of her job.
Her mind drifted back again to the unknown man of her visions. The man standing on a hill in a faraway city, doing nothing but making her weak all over without even being there. She wanted to have that feeling, that weak-in-the-knees feeling again. As she stood there, leaning and looking at the rapidly darkening sky and the increasing number of lights turning on, she knew that one day she would be meeting that mysterious man. She would have her dream career as a professor, and she would be able to be wrapped up in the arms of her mysterious man.
Music and Fiction 