Ferretic Nitrocarburizing

My wife, who had to wait in line all night to get food during Poland’s 1981 to 1983 martial law, becomes enamored with America but I am disillusioned because I became enamored with the close-to-the-bone deliberateness and soberness of East European life. After two years there, I cannot find my place in the materialism, superficiality, comfort-at-all-costs, provincial mindset, and the violence that seems to define much of byway America’s character.

"The idea that poor education is related to crime is pretty intuitive." I find this pitifully evident in the mainstream school where I teach.

A new and promising teacher does not change the star football player’s grade and is not offered a contract. She is angry with me because I advised her to hold her ground. Teachers squabble like hyenas over who gets a TV and a VHS player because they have resorted to entertainment rather than negotiate the minefield of effective teaching where students may get grades they don’t like in this product oriented Walmart culture. Our students can’t manage above a composite fifty percent in state mandated English and math tests, which is really no surprise when the US ranks 27th out of 34 countries in education because the public, by and large, is apathetic, at best, towards education—but citizens blame teachers for dismal results. Who else? Teachers are publicly humiliated and pilloried over half-truths and outright lies from hysterical adolescents (and administrators) who believe that education is a right rather than a privilege. Good and promising teachers leave--or stay and become bad teachers under the weight of the Sisyphus stone while administrators brush their shoulders and smooth their skirts and remodel their offices.

Student and teacher hit lists proliferate and I imagine taking a bullet between the eyes while announcing a vocabulary quiz. Christ! I won't even hear the "thwap" from the little meteor zipping through my skull just above the right eye and scattering my brains out all over the whiteboard like so much Crazy String. And here I am, crucified on the podium and dumb agape while Vocab Quiz 5 adheres to the coagulating blood dot on my forehead. This is pastoral Central Oregon for Christ’s sake, not East LA’s Hollenbeck or the South Bronx’s Tremont.

On my way to the store for milk and Pampers some drugged-up nutball tries to hijack my car but I speed off as soon as he grabs the door handle. I stopped at an ATM one evening back and an emaciated black-toothed tattooed character knocks me out of the way and proceeds to use the machine. The guy didn’t even have the decency to tell me to “Get the fuck out of my way.” I think the unthinkable.

I swore off guns decades ago but maybe it’s time to lock and load. My wife and I talk it over and I cannot believe what I’m saying: “Well, the Glock is the official NATO gun and it has ferritic nitrocarburizing.” My wife's eyes twinkle. That does it. What, we’re both going to start packing heat to go grocery shopping? We sell out, pack our toys, and head back to Poland, although I turn sharply south to take a teaching job in Kuwait where I will watch a rocket sizzle over the rooftops three years later and where I will feel significantly safer I kid you not.