Anything's Possible

Four months without writing a single blog post. Have I lost my mind, or found it? That is the question.

Alls I can say for myself is that it's super hard to be dumb when you're trying to be smart.


Wait, I take that back. Just last week I facilitated a brilliant discussion on Emerson and then drove straight to my twin's junior high to pick them up early from school. I signed them out, and even excused an absence from the previous day, while the attendance office called them down over the PA system. When my twins didn't come, they made another announcement. I thanked her kindly, then stepped into the hallway to wait. After a moment of staring at a Caveman sweat shirt hanging on the wall, a disturbing thought slowly dawned on me.

My twins don't go to this school anymore.

Maybe it's not that hard to be dumb when you're trying to be smart, after all.

I would say that I haven't written because my life is too predictable--that day in and day out all I do is stand at the front of a classroom, pouring knowledge and wisdom into the heads of a bunch of sassy-pants teenagers--but my life has actually taken some unexpected turns lately. For example, we bought our dream house, my son's high school basketball team won the national championship, and I quit watching American Idol.

I didn't see any of that coming.

Oh, and I'm a primary teacher now.

I didn't see that coming either.

It happened so fast. A member of our new bishopric stood in my foyer (my dream house has a foyer) and said "We want you to teach the five-year-olds."

"But . . . but . . . I . . . I . . . just moved in," I said. "How will I make friends if . . . "

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "And it goes against everything I believe in to call a new move-in into the primary. Believe me, I would never do this to anyone else, but we feel really, really strongly that you need to teach the five-year-olds."

There was a pause while I blinked and stared.

"In other words," he continued. "God NEEDS you to teach the five-year-olds."

So anyways, I'm teaching the five-year-olds.


I suspect I came into my new ward with a warning label. My old bishop probably called my new bishop and told him to keep me as far away as possible from all the sassy-pants teenagers, unless of course he wanted combined activities that included kissing tag and spin the bottle.

So anyways, Forrest Gump was right when he said life is like a box of chocolates. If you had sat me down last March and said, hey, at this time next year you'll be teaching high school AND primary, and you'll no longer be watching American Idol, I'd have poked my eyes out.

If you had also told me I'd be living in a house with a foyer and my son would be playing on the best basketball team in the nation, I'd have poked your eyes out.

Guess it's good we can't see what's coming, else we'd all be blind.

There's a moral here. There's a definite moral here. Dr. Seussical knew what he was talking about when he said anything's possible (especially if you have Nick Emery, T.J. Haws, and Eric Mika on your team). I'm in a whole new realm of possibility. And who needs friends when you've got five-year-olds? And who needs American Idol when you've got Duck Dynasty and Downton Abbey. And a foyer. And a garage. Our dream house has a garage too. And a shed. It also has baby blue carpet and wallpaper, and my boys bedrooms are pink, which just goes to show that even dreams need to be updated, if you get my drift.

Some people get to live a dream they never thought possible, and the rest of us get to live a dream they never thought desirable--someone else's dream, for instance. But hey, just because one man's dream is another man's nightmare, doesn't make it any less valuable to society as a whole. I mean, as long as you're living the dream you're handed to the best of your ability. I mean, my son never thought he'd be a national champion, and I never thought I'd be a high school teacher, and . . .

What was my point, again?

Oh yeah, my life is goooooood. My life is fantastic. I get to wake up every morning at 5:00 a.m. and make lesson plans. It is theee bessssst. I love it.




I am a dummy who is changing the world, one sassy-pants teenager at a time.


That being said, there was one time I thought I might be in the wrong profession. It was the day the yearbook survey came out and my students nominated me for class clown.