So, as I frequently do, I assigned my AP students an essay. They weren’t happy with it. Most of them didn’t do it. So I wrote an example for them. The assignment was to describe, with imagery and details, your perfect day: and this would be mine.

I think this says more about me and my life than it does about my writing or about my students and this assignment.

A Day of No Need

My perfect day is in the autumn. Probably November: there is no longer any pressure over getting Halloween exactly right; Thanksgiving is coming, but thankfully, I will never host any gathering larger than myself and my wife and our pets, so there’s no pressure there. But thinking about what food we will eat on that day, and about the four-day weekend, blocks any worries about Black Friday or holiday shopping; this is the time of year when, if you see something you think someone on your list would like, you pick it up and buy it, and feel good about yourself for getting ahead of the game.

The weather is perfect: the sun is out, and bright, but not hot; the breeze is cool, sometimes becoming a wind that bites and makes you want to tuck yourself into your jacket like a turtle pulling into his shell. Jackets are a must: which is great because it means more pockets, and also a layer that you are almost required to take off when you go inside, which means you can be warm outside and not too hot inside. If there are leaves on the trees, they are turning into beautiful colors; if they have already fallen, they are turning into beautiful sounds with every step through them, every stride leaving a wake behind, a surging wave of leaves leaping ahead. The smell of warm, spiced apples rises from the cup of cider in my hand.

But in truth, all of that is negotiable. Almost any weather can be perfect: there is such a thing as too hot, and another such thing as too cold; but hot and cold between those extremes are both fine, and warm is as good as cool. Green leaves on trees are almost as lovely as fall colors, and the bright blooms of spring and summer break up any monotony in the foliage. I like rain, and snow, and clouds, and blue sky – and night, for that matter. I don’t need any weather for my perfect day.

I need there to be no need.

On my perfect day, nobody needs me. My parents don’t need to call, my in-laws don’t need to call me to tell me to tell my wife to call them, like some bizarre game of phone foursquare. I don’t need to get up, I don’t need to walk my dogs (though if I feel like it, it would be fine; I like walking with them, as long as I don’t need to), I don’t need to shower, I don’t need to pick out and put on my teacher clothes; if I shower, it will be only when I feel like it, and if I get dressed beyond my pajamas, it will be in whatever I feel like wearing. If I eat breakfast I won’t need to cook. I don’t need to make the coffee for my wife, I don’t need to get her up for work, I don’t need to feel bad for waking her up to go to a job she mostly doesn’t like. I don’t need to find or make lunch, don’t need to fill a water bottle, don’t need to make my coffee just right, because if it’s not sweet enough I can just go into my kitchen and add more sweetener, any time I want to. I don’t need to go to the bathroom before I leave, because there will be time to go whenever I need to. I don’t need to check and double check that I have everything before getting into the car, and I don’t need to drive through traffic for 30 minutes to get to school. I don’t need to change the radio 65 times over that 30 minutes just to find some goddamn music instead of radio DJ blathering or used car salesmen yelling (LOOKING AT YOU SCOTT LEHMAN).

I might go to work, because I like seeing my coworkers, and even some of my students sometimes; but I won’t have duty, and I won’t have to period sub, and I won’t have to run a lunch meeting, and I won’t have to have meetings after school where I have to report on a student’s progress, or even worse on my progress, and I won’t have to listen to somebody or other telling me that I’m not doing my job well enough. I won’t have to stay to watch a sportsing event, or to watch my NHS students sell snacks at a sportsing event.

And most of all: I won’t have to teach. My students will be ready to learn on their own: I won’t have to drag them behind me, or drive them before me, to force them to gain an education for their own good. I won’t have to argue with them about learning, or about what we are learning, and I won’t have to listen to them complain about and criticize everything I do, over and over and over again, even though they probably won’t do it regardless of how they actually feel about it, which is only rarely the same way they say they feel about it. I won’t have to listen to students lie to me about how hard the class or the assignment is, because they want to lower the bar so they don’t have to work as hard. I won’t have dozens of different people trying to wear me down so they can have a day off, even though they have ten times the down time that I have: after all, I don’t have PE, or study halls; and while they have to write the essays, I have to read them – and you figure if I assign an AP essay to my 40 AP students, and they average 2-3 pages per response, that’s somewhere around 100 pages of writing I have to read and respond to, while they ask me if I’ve graded that essay yet.

But not today. Today they don’t fight me, and they don’t argue with me, and they don’t complain at me about what I do to help make them and their lives better. Most of all they don’t need me: they do the work on their own, without the need for me to pressure them. I don’t have to walk around the room and check on them, don’t have to make sure that none of them are cheating or sleeping or skipping, I don’t have to monitor their bathroom visit duration, or make sure they are signing out like they know they have to. I don’t have to tell them to put away their phones or close their Chromebooks. Because today, on my perfect day, my students do what they know they should do, what they know they are expected to do, what is entirely rational and reasonable for them to do: learn the material without being cajoled or coerced, and without disrupting the learning for themselves or others, and without being rude to anyone involved. They act like young adults, today, and so, they don’t need me. If they ask me any questions, it’s only because they’re curious what I think, not because they want my answer so they can write it down so they don’t have to come up with one themselves. None of them will have a test or missing assignments for another class, so they have to ask me, once again, to let them ignore my subject because the other class is more important than mine.

Today none of my students, and also none of my friends, are in crisis, and so nobody needs me to listen to them tell me what’s wrong. It’s not that I don’t want to listen when someone needs me: I just want nobody to need me, for nobody to be having a panic attack, or an explosion or righteous anger, or a bout of severe depression. I want to not need to find a way that I can help even though there’s not really much I can do: because the one thing I can do is listen, and empathize, and I don’t want to have to do that. I want nobody to need that, today. I don’t want to have my own bout of righteous anger or an explosion of panic or a depression attack. I just want to be okay, and for everyone else to be okay. Just for one day.

I want none of my students to need me to grade that one assignment, or to help them figure out how to do that one assignment, or need me to find another copy of that other assignment. Nobody should have a field trip form, or a grade check for their parents, or a failing grade the day of the big game, or a letter of recommendation they need, or advice and editing help on an application essay.

Nobody thinks they need to take advantage of me. Nobody does things they know they shouldn’t do just because they know I won’t get them in trouble for it. Nobody says “Oh, Humphrey doesn’t care if we do nothing.” Nobody lies to me. Nobody cheats on my assignments. Nobody insults me or my subject, calling school useless or saying that reading is boring. Nobody even thinks that the only reason people need to read is so they can learn more vocabulary words. Nobody asks if they can re-read a book they read before, or if they can just watch the movie, or if watching subtitles on an anime counts as “reading.” Nobody asks if we can watch a video on YouTube instead of reading today. Nobody forgets what I taught them the day before. Nobody asks if we can just do nothing today. Nobody even mentions the word “chill.”

Nobody asks if we can play Head’s Up Seven Up.

At the end of the day, I don’t need to drive home, don’t need to go to the grocery store, don’t need to make dinner. I don’t need to make or keep any appointments, and I don’t need to pay any bills, or do anything for extra money. If I write, it’s only because I want to. My bird doesn’t scream at me, and my tortoise doesn’t try to eat my foot, and my dogs don’t whine at me when I’m petting the other one and not them.

The only one who needs me is my wife. Because I need her, and I need her to need me. She will need me to hug and kiss her, and tell her I love her, and she will need to tell me she loves me. We will need to eat together, and share stories about our day together, and then unwind in front of the TV or in our office/studios making art. Though I won’t need to make art, and I won’t need to write an angry rant about anything, and I won’t need to tell all the idiots on Twitter that they are idiots: if I want to play Minecraft, then I can. I would not mind if my dogs needed to greet me when I come home, or need to lie next to me so I can pet them while I eat or while I relax.

And when I go to sleep, I won’t need to take Advil to get rid of my headache, and I won’t need to take melatonin to help fight off my insomnia. I won’t need to lay awake for an hour in the middle of the night, worrying about what happened in school today, or what’s going to happen tomorrow. Nobody will send me late night messages, or early morning messages, because they need an extension on an assignment, or because they are having a crisis and need to vent to me, or because they need me to cover their first period class in the morning. And I won’t have to worry about how I’m getting older, and things about my health are starting to scare me, and how my life has not been everything I want it to be: and I will not need to be more than I am, because I will, the whole day, just. Be. Happy.

That would be perfect.