#17 – Beer in cans, the can is important

I got the job, signed my contract and moved within about 2 weeks.  It was August and I had no choice.  I was barely unpacked when I had to report for new staff orientation and then building orientation. As part of building orientation, there was a pizza & bowling night planned for staff and their spouses.  I elected not to drink alcohol around people who I had just met and my Sprite got lots of sideways glances.

Halfway through the pizza part of the night, the health teacher’s wife (who I later learned had just retired after 30 years of teaching herself) leaned over to me and loudly said, “You do drink, don’t ya?”  

“Oh, yeah, I do.  I have more unpacking to do after dinner tonight, and I wanted to remember where I put things.” (uncomfortable chuckle – some of the staff were already getting a wee bit loud)

“Well, good.  Because if you didn’t, I was going to tell you to start.”

(uncomfortable chuckle)

“Here’s my secret to making it 30 years in education:  Always have beer in cans in your fridge at home.  In cans, not bottles; the can is important.”

“Okay.” (chews another uncomfortable bite of pizza)

“When you have a bad day, come straight home from school, grab two cans of beer from the fridge and go to the bathroom.  Shotgun the first one while you’re waiting for the water to run as hot as you can stand it.  Set the second one on the side of the tub and drink it while you take a nice, long shower.  Stay in the shower until the hot water is gone and the beer is gone, too.  By the time you get dressed, you won’t care about your bad day anymore and you can enjoy your evening.”

“I’ll remember that.” (hopes my poker face actually works for once)

“You see why the cans are important?  Trust me – the last thing you want to do is clean up broken glass out of your shower when you’re naked and pissed off about some bratty kid.  I’ve done it and it’s no fun.  That’s why I switched to cans.”

“Gotcha.  Thanks for the heads up.”

O.o

She was dead serious.  I thought she had to be joking, pulling one on me (everyone thought I was a new, fresh-out-of-college teacher for some reason.  I didn’t think I looked that young, but I got tons of unsolicited advice from some of the people on this staff, specifically about teaching in this town – because they had their own set of ideas about what was good teaching and what wasn’t and those ideas weren’t universally acceptable.  More on that later).  But then she kept going.  At one point, her husband (my new colleague) chimed in and said he’s sure that canned beer saved their marriage a time or two and definitely got her to retirement.

By the end of my first year at School #3, I had learned that nearly half of the staff was on some sort of mood-altering medication (whether for anxiety or depression), and probably another third were self-medicating with alcohol.  A staff member told me, ‘look, if you’re going to stay here, you need to just go get some meds already.  That’s the only way half of us do it.  Or you can drink beer in the shower every night.  But you’ve gotta do something or you’ll lose your mind.’

I decided right then and there that if School #3, or education in general, was so bad that I needed chemical intervention to make it livable, I couldn’t do it anymore.

No disrespect to anyone with a medical or mental health condition that requires the meds.  If you need the meds, it doesn’t matter what job you do or where you live, you need the meds.  But to not have a mental health condition and /elect/ to take an anti-depressant to deal with my life?  Not acceptable to me.  Not at all.

By this point, education had broken my hands and my heart.  Going through life in a fog, too, so I wouldn’t care how much it sucked wasn’t gonna be the next compromise.