Day Eight: Ode to a Desk

Day Eight: What's in your desk drawer, and what can you infer from its contents?

From the top middle drawer, I pull out lip balm a few times a day. In the top right drawer, I put away my remotes every night when I am resetting the room. In the bottom right drawer, there is a giant bag of trail mix from which I grab a handful most afternoons. My "technology drawer" is jammed full of manuals and chargers and boxes and cords that I "might need someday."

None of this seems too interesting to me. The lip balm and trail mix demonstrate my need to be comfortable while teaching. The technology drawer captures my teaching hoarder: the part of me that fears that the second I get rid of something will be exactly when I need it. The resting place for my remotes demonstrates my deep desire to be organized, something I work on every single day (and this year, it's actually sort of clicking).

What is interesting to me about my desk is the sticky drawer, the one that I have to jam to the side and hold at just the right angle to close. My desk was a throw-away, placed in the hallway for auction by a teacher who'd ordered a new stainless steel model. I saw it there--a big, old, oak beauty, with water stains and pen ridges and little tables you could pull above the drawers--and I knew that I had to have it in my room instead of the flimsy metal space saver that was currently there.

I didn't notice the drawer until several weeks into our time together. The humidity had risen just right for it to start acting up.

I still loved my desk and chalked it up to character. When the inspector toured our 100 year old house to look for significant problems, he minimized the sloping dining room floor, the peeling paint in the window boxes, the strange wiring in the attic. "It's all part of the charm of an old house," he'd say, and I knew he was someone who spoke my language. In houses, furniture, books, I've always loved to imagine the backstory of what this object meant to someone else. Not only are older things more beautiful to me, they're somehow wiser, even inanimate objects. I know this doesn't make much sense.

I'd like to say that the sticky drawer is a metaphor for something, that it reminds me that some students stick before they are able to move, or that the old oak slab reminds me of the wisdom of those before me. But none of those things would be true. I just like my desk; I like its character, its warmth, its backstory. And a little more beauty and a little more story in each day never hurt anything.