I had turned 22 the day before.
I had recently taken my first real job. It was going to be fabulous. Amazing. Awesome. Too good to be true. (I had also talked one of my very best friends into taking the exact same job... she's still 'thanking' me to this day. Ha.)
This 'amazing' job was in Creston, Iowa.
Creston, Iowa. Population 7,596 (make that 7,954- but I'm jumping ahead).
None (okay, hardly any) of them my age.
I walk into the first new teacher work day. It was warm (it usually is mid-August) but I was wearing my new aqua-khaki Gap pants with the cute wooden button anyway. Paired with a plain white 'dressier' tee and a tie belt, I looked dressy, but not too dressy, right?
As I walk in the front door, I get the odd sense that I'm being watched. Nerves, maybe?
I sit in the cafeteria. I choose a table in the middle, sitting with the only person I remotely know. A college classmate. As the principal starts talking, I try as hard as I can to pay attention to every word.
That doesn't last long.
Soon I start scanning the room. In the very back was a table of guys. I guess right away that they are the PE teachers. One in particular, leaning way back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, was wearing shorts and a red with black pin-stripes polo. Shorts? I'm way overdressed. I immediately think the dressy pants were a bad choice. (I later find out, he doesn't think they are a bad choice, as he watched me walk in the front door in them from his car.)
I realize I'm staring and quickly turn away.
Later that afternoon, Mr. McCracken leads me to my classroom. Well not technically my classroom. But a classroom I'll be sharing for part of the day with, you guessed it, a PE teacher.
Have I mentioned I wasn't quite a rockstar PE student? Okay, I didn't even really like it. Mr. Dean would roll the softball to me to hit golf style and Mr. C sent me to his classroom to grade papers. I was that good.
Ahem.
So he introduces me to the PE teacher. I don't remember what was said. I remember I was nervous (I never get nervous!) but I immediately felt better because as nervous as I was, this red headed guy looked way worse. He had been working in his room with Mr. Clark. Dick Clark. And Dick's dog. He was an obvious dog person. Dog people are good people, right?
Later that week, we had our first picture together (a group shot of new teachers for the local newspaper), our first out to lunch (a group lunch with the new teachers), and our first time together in the backseat (just kidding. well not really, we rode together to some of the new teacher events).
The next week, a guy friend from college came down to visit. We went to the local hangout hot spot. You guessed it, Super Wal-Mart. We were shopping in the shampoo aisle. Red headed PE teacher walked by. Saw me and smiled. Saw him and looked disappointed. He walked away without saying a word.
I told college guy he couldn't come back to town.
PE teacher and I talked. We shared rides back to Ames. I fed him.
It was the first time I felt like someone got me. It didn't matter that we were in a town with nothing for people our age to do. We could eat cactus bread and check out Dan McCarney's newest Nike shirts during the Cyclone games on tv and it was the best night ever. We didn't have satellite. We didn't have a dog. There was nothing to do in our town. And we had no money. But we did have it all.
I'll never forget August 15, 2005 and the year that followed. I'll never forget waking up to my alarm with a note leading me on a wild goose chase ending on a park bench. I still get chills coming around the I-80/I-35 curve. I can close my eyes and be standing against the cleaning closet door in the kitchen of that first place. Once in awhile I crave cactus bread and the memories that come with it. I'll always be his favorite stat girl. And he'll always be my best friend.
Thanks for five years of laughs and love. You are too good to me.
