September 5, 1999
Labor Day, Sunday

Daddy would be amused by the irony, I think…his daughter as the embodiment of the joke that got him into trouble twenty year ago.

Back then, I taught junior high English.  While it was lots of work, it was also loads of fun.  There is an energy in junior high schools you don’t find anywhere else.  This also goes a long way to explain why many people refuse to enter such a campus while the students are there.  But if that kind of thing turns you on, there’s no other place you’d rather be.

Junior high teachers are…taken in the best light possible…a weird breed.  They can laugh at things regular people aren’t supposed to laugh at because it might damage the child’s self esteem.  This is what allows them to remain sane.  This also explains why, even as I was a teacher myself, I could appreciate the humor in the following joke.

Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.

I could appreciate the instances in life when it seemed all too true, and I had confidence I was smart enough to know when it wasn’t.  Unless someone pointed out directly that it referred to me, I figured it didn’t.

I found the joke a clever way to laugh at a truth that could otherwise be sad.  So one night I shared it with the family at the dinner table.  We all laughed.  Nobody pointed directly at me.  And that was that.

Until months later, when my dad greeted me, “Boy, you sure got me in a lot of trouble.”  I had no idea what he meant.  “I always put a joke at the end of the column I write for the Insulator Collector’s Magazine,” he said, as I remained clueless.  “I wrote that joke about teachers.”

“Which joke?”

“Those who can….”  I winced in expectation of what he would say.  “I never got so many angry letters.  I had to take the whole next month’s column to explain that I got the joke from my daughter who is a teacher herself, and she thought it was funny.”

“Well, Daddy,” I laughed.  “I could have told you not to print it.”

Daddy died eight years ago.  I wish he were here today to appreciate the irony that his own daughter, an ex-teacher, is now a not-quite-writer.  And the first book it looks like I’ll complete is a book on how to write a book.  A book on how to be a writer…by a non-writer.  Complete with advice for editors and agents.  Now wouldn’t that be a killer to put in his next column!

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