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Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 06:37:47 -0500 (EST)
Random Thought: Unnoticed
Brrrrrrrrr. G-g-g-g-g-ood M-m-m-m-m-orning. Haven't thawed out
yet. I'm afriad to hit the keyboard for fear that my fingers will break
off.
Icy chill. Sting of the wind. Study in browns. Bundled grubbies.
Drifting silence. Soft crunch of pine needles, spanish moss, twigs, pine
cones, oak nuts underfoot.
Monday's storm had dumped an accumulation of 12 inches on Valdosta.
No, not snow, not rain. Pine needles! Down here after Nature's squally
rebuke for taking her winter for granted, we have to trudge around in pine
shoes instead of snow shoes. The streets are in disarry, still shrewn with
the remnants of an inundating pine cone and spanish moss slide. I plodded
through the deep matting, head bowed tilted slightly off-center like a
cutting plow, eye brows frosty, watery eyes squinting, reddened nose
leaking, paying special attention to make sure the next step doesn't land
on a hidden ankle spraining pine cone or a tripping branch,
As I gingerly stepped along my new route, questioning my
intelligence and education, I took the risk of looking up through the
opaque, slushy tears in my eyes. In this frozen moment, Valdosta seemed
depopulated, abandoned. The tan monochrome blur dulled everything's
distinctive lines. Nothing seems noticeable. Everything consequently
seemed to withdraw, droop, shrivel, and slink away with a quilty sense of
unworthiness.
That sight and a consoling conversation I had had with a disraught
student yesterday threw a thought, a very personal thought, across my
shivering mind. If you really want to hurt a student--or anybody for that
matter--don't get in his or her face and threaten. Don't loudly berate.
Just ignore that student, let him or her go unnoticed. See through him or
her as if he or she doesn't exist.
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