Wrong Answer for the Teacher - Poem

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Greg Luti’s poem “Wrong Answer for the Teacher” explores his decision to chase writing instead of following his family into teaching — weighing the pursuit of happiness against stability, risk, and all the what-ifs that come with choosing a creative life.

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Teaching is a touchy subject for me.

I come from a family of teachers.

My friends are teachers.

Everyone I know is a teacher.

Expect me.

I do not teach.

I have never stood in the front of a room as degenerate children stared at me wondering what was tonight’s homework.

I never taught a kid extra help on a topic I was not that interested in.

I don’t know what it is like to send a kid to the nurses office or to the principal.

I write.

That is the stupid decision I made with my life.

Did I get a girl in college pregnant?

Did I commit a crime?

Did I cheat on a friend?

No, I choose to pick a career that had very little chance for success, basically no chance for financial stability, and may very well be my reason for depressed thoughts.

All in the name of my own happiness, because I enjoy this.

This… mockery of madness.

This sham of sentences, this forgery of fonts.

This message of meandering meaningless muses.

There was a time I was a teacher.

Me….

A teacher….

Let that sink in for a second.

I taught kids.

Which, makes two bad decisions I made in my life.

(Possibly three, because there was a girl back in college who I am not sure about)

As I learned of these strange looking creatures we called children, I felt for them.

I saw that they are not sure of what is really going on.

They are going wherever they are being told to go.

They go soccer (finish this)

I am going to feel so bad for these kids, when they learn that the questions that really matter to them are never answered by school.

They will become an adult, already regretful of their lost youth, and then they will not know of life’s purpose or meaning.

Only an artificial meaning they gained through years of misdirection, test taking, and false equivalencies.

You go to school for your whole childhood.

Your schooling defines your youth as much as anything else.

You spend more hours in a classroom with strangers who you only share an age with, and by the time you leave school, you are no longer a child.

But an adult with adult problems.

You are in debt, expected to start a family, and no wiser of the world around you.

So you must find a job.

Get a girl.

And know of the world.

Know of the world….

That’s a funny thing to say.

How can anyone know of the world, when we barely know ourselves?

What does this…

Any of this mean?

Does anyone know?

Does anyone care?

Is anyone even interested in finding out?

Or are we all supposed to learn the grammar rules of the English language, as if that means anything.

I before e expect after c.

Oxford commas are not needed.

Explicit is clearly state, Implicit is not.

Or of the lessons in books, or history or the other subjects.

Learn of the math.

Learn of the sciences.

Learn of the history.

Learn it all.

Get the grades.

Go to the good school.

Maybe that will distract you from the emptiness you feel of your place in this world.

Distract yourself from the questions never asked.

Ignore the meaning you seek.

Don’t even think about life itself.

Run from the truth.

That is the lesson that the schools teach kids.

The truth is… optional to know.

Until that fateful Tuesday morning that you start to question every life decision you ever had while eating a bowl of cereal.

Where did you go wrong?

Are you the problem?

Can you blame the school for messing you up?

Maybe it was your parents?

How about that one moment with that one older kid that you would rather not talk about?

That is why as you sit in your underwear pouring some milk into the bowl, you are empty.

You were told of the truth that is in this world.

You lied your way through life.

And now, as you sit down to have some breakfast, the truth caught up to you.

It wants to know why you never asked of it.

You never sought it out.

Nor did you call upon it.

You acted as though the lies you knew were the truth.

That is not how truth works though.

Which is why it hit you harder than anything you ever knew.

Harder than when you heard that the girl is pregnant, or when you didn’t get accepted into your dream job, or when that older kid did those things to you.

You can’t live your whole life running from the truth and expect it never to come back to you.

But hey, at least we all learned what an apostrophe is, right?

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