lightning bolts

"hello mr. molina, this is XXXXX. i'm just calling to let you know that [chi-chi] may not be there at jim hill next year. he got into trouble today at the school, and he'll probably be calling you later and i thank you for all your help... goodbye."

**

coach terry told me that when he was a new teacher, someone who had been around for a while took him aside and said, "you haven't learned this yet, but you'll find out that when you start caring about these kids, you have to watch out for lightning bolts." coach didn't see how his situation was making him any more susceptible to meteorological tragedy, and so inquired further. "every once in a while," the veteran explained, "something will happen that will take these kids away from you, and it will be totally out of your control. and they'll be gone forever, and there's nothing you can do. you'll have been doing everything you can to help these kids out, and you may actually be making some progress, and then - suddenly - they'll just be gone."

**

to get to the juvenile detention center, you take gallatin underneath hwy 20. the street fades slowly past dead industrial complexes, and then bends past a strip club, a bar called "hat and cane," the jackson police department's practice range, and unexpected trees. right in the middle of wondering where the hell you are, the center jumps up on you, and a sudden turn is necessary, which prompts whoever's driving behind you to lean on their horn as you barely make the turn off.

the parking lot - trucks and deliveries to the left, and visitors to the right - is always nearly empty, even during the obscure visiting hours - 6 to 7:30 pm on thursdays and saturdays. this is probably because you actually can't ever see the people you've come to visit; you're most likely just going to stand in the half-lit, stone clean room and watch whatever reason you had
to come visit whomever slip bitterly away as the don't-shoot-the-messenger security guard explains to you from behind bullet proof glass the incredibly complex process of getting on the list of people allowed to see someone - which inolves a parent/guardian that may not exist and a detention center counselor who may not be assigned yet, and even if he/she were assigned, keeps inexplicable hours. so you sit there for a minute, feeling a terrible, swelling impotence, and then almost kick through the security-released front door when it makes a loud buzzing noise telling you that it's unlocked, but then doesn't open.


**

i made it about 2 minutes - stupidly lisenting to johnny cash's american v - before breaking down and not knowing where to go, but knowing that i couldn't go wherever i was heading before i panicked and became sobbingly directionless. then it seemed reasonable that - since it was 7:30 pm on the thursday before classes started - mrs. haynes was most definetly in her office, somewhere amidst her hours-long process of wrapping her day up and going home.

all the doors were locked at the school but i could see people talking in the front office, so - since they couldn't hear me when i banged on the door - i sat outside for about twenty minutes watching the sun set over the graveyard across the street, until a college conselor noticed me waving and let me in.

**

i talked awhile with mrs. haynes, who undoubtedly has had to deal many more times with many more things much more serious than a foolish kid who gets arrested for playing around with a bb gun in the auditorium. "how do they do it," i asked (and i still ask), "how do these people give their lives to this profession knowing that their hearts are going to be broken? that they'll fall in love with these strange little people, knowing all the while that - one way or another - eventually they'll be gone? how do they come back to the building the day after they see it for the first time - that if they don't walk away from it right now, then they won't ever; that this love is so terribly profound that you get lost forever in its incompleteness, waiting for that next lovely face to either show up or not show up the next day, the next week, the next year." when i left: the hallways were still full of ghosts and questions; the moon was over the graveyard.

**

chi chi woke me up this morning, banging on the door and prompting the woman on the other side of the duplex to accuse him of trying to break in. his mom waited in the car and had a cigarette while chi chi showed me the 3rd place medal from the 5k he had just come from. he then ate a substantial number of my oreos while looking at pictures of jake's wedding, eventually draping himself over the coach in protest when his mom came shyly to the door to get him - i thought she was going to ask me for the hundreth time if she owed me any gas money for my troubles.

chi chi rode with me up to the jackson medical mall, and his mom followed us. he visited with jake for a bit while i helped his mom register to vote. as she was filling out the form, dana larkin pulled me over into a discussion a bunch of advocacy groups were having about how they could coordinate their community involvement efforts. they were all speaking in pathetically abstract terms about "change," and "community," and "parents"; nothing was focused on definable, tangible outcomes, and as the wheels of people "keeping it real" kept spinning and spinning, i thought of all of the parents who don't get involved because strategic plans mean nothing. when i was finally able to slip away, jake told me that chi chi and his mom had left.

**

when they let chi chi outstide into the fenced in yard at the detention center, he just ran the tiny perimeter hundreds and hundreds of time. the other kids and the guards thought he was crazy. his first cross country meet is in three weeks; he had to get his run in.