Where’s the Hole?

Most times, I try to think of a creative title to grab your attention and at least get you to read the first one or two lines of my ramblings.  Hopefully this was no different.  Let me tell you another story from the daily dealings of a high school teacher.  I need to lay the foundation, so please bear with me for a brief moment.  Seems my little bitty school has an organization unlike any organization I’ve seen in the many schools I’ve had the pleasure to walk the halls.  They call themselves, “The Redskin Rocketeers.”  I know what you’re thinking, and, yeah, me too.  But anyway, that’s beside the point.  The other day was an important launch for The Redskin Rocketeers.  They were blasting a projectile into the air designed by our students, encapsulating precious cargo….an egg.  The objective was, of course, to avoid scrambling and leave the cargo as poached, I presume.  But I digress.

So, the school was invited to attend the launch, and, of course, being the supportive teacher that I am, I made my way to the launch pad.  I passed one of my lovelies, who was chillin’ with a basketball coach.  We exchanged greetings….well, I did.  This particular lovely is a bit too cool to holla with his teach, so I proceeded to the double doors of space exploration.  As I opened the door, I was hit with a blast of arctic wind….well, actually, it was just a bit chilly, and I was unprepared.  So, what would any other resourceful, intelligent person do?  Well, I turned to my homie of a student and asked  to borrow his jacket, only thinking I would be met with a smile and a smart remark.  Anything to get him to smile.  It was a fine jacket, of course.  One of those hoodie slash jacket deals for the ones who can’t decide if they want a hoodie or a jacket, so marketable manufacturers conjured up the hoodket.  Anyway, I digress. 

Now, this particular student graces the desks of my first period.  Actually, he just breathes in the oxygen of my classroom, and that’s about it.  No trouble.  Doesn’t talk.  Doesn’t sleep.  Doesn’t do much of anything, really.  Just sits there.  He’s a hard-to-read kind of guy.  A black kid.  From the streets.  An athlete on the basketball team.  Doesn’t say much in class.  Occasionally I’ll force a “What’s up, Ms. Green” out of him upon his entering the classroom, but that’s just because I have swagger and am a bit jiggy, so I get props every once in a while. 

But, this kid, once he roams the halls, he sheds his quiet demeanor and becomes a wanna-be thug  like all his cohorts that waddle their way through the crowd with their pants somehow strapped to their mid thigh and their thugish vocabulary leaving all of us nerdy white teachers at a loss of understanding the dialect. 

But there he was.  This hard, street kid with something I longed for….a hoodket.  So, I just flippantly asked him for it.  With my swaggerness, I simply walked up and asked if he were going to watch the space launch.  He thugly reared his gangsta gestures, smiled, and replied so eloquently, “Nah, man!”   In disbelief, then,  I watched this hard street kid begin to peel off his hoodket.  He handed it to me with a smile, and I almost fell out.  As I donned the hoodket, he quietly made the caution, “You kinda gotta look for the hole.”  I smiled and walked through the doors.

It was the walk that couple of hundred yards that changed my whole perspective of this street kid.  I never did find the hole.  Never did see my hands come out the other end of both of the sleeves of his hoodket.  In fact, all I could feel was the lining of the sleeves bunched down towards the bottom of the sleeve, and I thought to myself, “Oh my gosh, this kid wears this jacket every day like this.”  That’s when I mused about this story.

I thought about the cliche, “You don’t really know someone until you walk a mile in his shoes.”  In this case, obviously, I have no real clue about this little kid without walking two hundred yards in his hoodket.  My mind went crazy thinking about his home life.  His situation.  His closet.  His house.  His dinner table.  And all my ideas about who I am and what role I play in the lives of my kids changed, at least for this kid. 

We never really know what’s going on in the hoodkets of the people around us.  On the outside, they may appear nice and clean and cozy.  On the outside they might look like the lining is perfectly in tact.  But on the inside, the hoodket might be ripped up and bunched up.  In the inside, it may be dirty and absent of anything resembling warmth and security.  Finding the hole may be a daily fight for these kids in my classroom and those people on the subway or next to us in the grocery store check-out.  

I’ve never had to search for the hole of a jacket.  Always been blessed with sleeves that work.  Always been lined with comfort and security.  So, when I had to ask myself, “Where’s the hole?” I was, in a way, asking “Where’s this kid coming from?”  I had no clue.  Now I do.  And I would never have known unless I had walked 200 yards in his hoodket.