More Honesty

Their honesty is brutal but, all at once, it’s invigorating.  I teach middle schoolers, and one of biggest perks is the honesty, the truth they can’t help telling.  Just this week, my 6th graders came in from lunch recess, and they were getting settled while I turned on the document projector and prepared to start the lesson.  Before I could officially begin, a sweet, young lady in the front of the room looked at me with concern and asked, “Mrs. Laaksonen, how did you get that black eye?”

I stopped everything I was prepping, reached up to touch my eye and responded, “I didn’t. Does my eye look black?”  She nodded and continued studying my new “black eye.”  I began guessing what could possibly cause a sudden appearance of black under my eye.  I supposed out loud while the kids all looked up at the eye in question.  “Maybe I had pen ink on my hand and rubbed my eye?” or “Perhaps, I rubbed ink from the copies I made at lunch on that very spot?”  My out loud pondering prompted the kids to start their own hypothesizing.  I heard one boy say, “Maybe you ran into something and just forgot.”  Another young man then responded to all the conjecture with this, “No, you guys.  She doesn’t have a black eye; it’s just the way the light is hitting the bag under her eye.”  The bag under her eye!  I couldn’t contain myself; I started laughing and chided, “Hey, I’m still right here.  Let’s not talk about the bag under my eye.”  The boy blushed– sheepish but grinning from ear to ear.

I love every minute of this special brand of honesty.  After twenty seven years teaching in a middle school, I’ve grown quite fond and accustomed to this straight forward, no-nonsense style of communicating.  I’m so drawn to this way of relating, however, I now have trouble being a grown-up because I find it increasingly difficult to make small talk or polite conversation like adults in “the real world” often do.  Instead I long for the surprise and invigorating spark of thoughts spoken without censor.

I recently went with my husband to a social gathering at his workplace, and I did my best-really I did.  I smiled and greeted each person to whom I was introduced.  Polite conversation followed.  And there were no problems, but it was excruciating.  Oh, how I longed for the lively banter of a group of twelve year olds.  I wanted the surprise of not being able to predict, without fail, what would be said next, and I longed for the real laughter that erupts in conversations with kids.

All of this has made me grateful. Grateful I’ve spent my adulthood with young people and their brutal ways because, truth be told, I prefer my days filled with their honest commentary and uncensored insights.  It keeps me young, even if it doesn’t diminish the apparent bags under my eyes!