Like most right-thinking people, I don't much like graduation ceremonies. I didn't like any of mine.
I suppose I should feel guilty about not paying closer attention at my college and law school ceremonies given what it cost to get me out of Hendrix and Tulane. But I don't. I feel very little guilt over events about which I have but the dimmest recollection.
I do remember that a rabbi gave the invocation at my Tulane commencement. I remember him because the gentleman, instead of addressing the Almighty in semi-Shakespearean English as we like to do it around these parts, went off on some mystical parable about two people walking along a path in the woods.
Suffice it to say, Robert Frost he was not. And I wasn't following him at all.
I turned to Andrew Braun, who was sitting next to me, and asked him to translate from the Jewish Apocrypha, or whatever the hell was going on up there, into Methodist. He confessed to being as lost as I was.
And that's all I remember. Really. Andy Braun and me.
One of the things I enjoy most about being semi-retired from the practice of law is that I get to spend time with the kids at Catholic High. I like it over there and the kids seem to enjoy having me around. The faculty has always accepted this stranger in their midst and I consider them to be my friends. I think the feeling is mutual.
For the most part I sub here and there. And I help out with the Schola Cantorum, which is Latin for "Rehearsal Beats Study Hall." But three years ago, I was thrust by exceedingly exigent circumstances into teaching American history for juniors until my friend Steve Straessle could find a replacement.
I think I did OK. But let me tell you, teaching is hard. At least it is if you care. Which is about all I had going for me other than being a pretty good amateur history person.
But nothing is like you think it's going to be before you do it. Not work. Not a new job. Not marriage. Not divorce. Not retirement. And certainly not teaching.
I had days that I wished would never end. I had days where it was all I could do to climb those stairs to my classroom. There were times, especially during lectures on the Civil War (which is all I really know about), that I could sense them hanging on my words. There were times after bad days when I would watch them scramble to their cars in the parking lot below my window after school and I would wonder if I would ever be any good at this.
It was amazing, it was wonderful, it was awful and exhausting all at once. And I will never forget a minute of it.
I'm content to just be subbing nowadays. My colleagues give me the opportunity to be a "real teacher" enough to keep that monkey off my back. I actually enjoy trying to turn study hall escapees into singers. I hang around in Theology Club where I sometimes hear the voice of Dr. Christie at Hendrix, from whom I learned my Bible, back in my head again. And, although I prefer not to practice law in this fashion, I've written many a pleading in the faculty lounge. I work fast. It's all good.
Lucky me, I have three high school graduations to attend this year. And despite my abundant and abiding love for the three knuckleheads in my life being honored this year, the odds are pretty good that I won't pay any more attention to the solemnities of these three respective ceremonies than I did to any of my own.
But when I watch the long purple line walk out of the annex for graduation at Catholic High this year, I will recall the names of my history boys because they are engraved on my heart. Each and every one. The ones in the class of 2017. My one class.
The only class that I, God help them, bear any real responsibility for their training before they were sent out into the world.
The class that it was my privilege to teach. I will remember them.
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Arthur Paul Bowen is a writer and lawyer living in Little Rock.
Editorial on 05/18/2018