When I was about 7-years-old, I was strapped in between my mom and my dad in an old 74 station wagon decked out with wood paneling and missing a hubcap. (Poor preacher-mobile.)

My three sisters were crammed in the back seat. One of my sisters, Trisha, was fast asleep after four hours of driving and faintly smelling exhaust. She sat peacefully — mouth open, slightly drooling — and if there weren’t such road and hole-in-the-exhaust-pipe noise you might have heard a small resemblance of a snore. My younger sister April sat next to Trisha slowly and methodically trying to see how many small items she could place in Trisha’s mouth without waking her up. She was up to a pencil, and a piece of scrap paper, and a baby carrot. My third and oldest sister, Lorrie, sat reading Gone With the Wind, for what she would remind us at every rest stop, would be the 11th time. This was the scene, or the highlights you might say.

I sat in that front seat, at that particular moment for no real reason except boredom, contemplating why my mom and dad smelled so different. Now, my dad is a preacher — Southern Baptist that is — and quite possibly the most unorthodox Southern Baptist preacher you could ever meet. He is an ex- marine, dairyman, truck-driver, welder, boxer, drinker, smoker, and brawler. Although the good Lord has saved him from many perils with a new life in Jesus, there is still the aroma of those things hanging about him. Maybe that’s what I smelled that morning on the way to my grandparents somewhere in the great sweltering cornfield desert between Indiana and Oklahoma.

For some reason, maybe fate, maybe the Lord decided to bring a memorable moment, whatever the reason, the stage was set for drama. It was one of those highways where you wondered if the highway department had ever considered it as an existing part of highway reality. It wasn’t necessarily the potholes, although there was a steady flow of them. It was the lack of shoulders that gave this day its final ingredient for horror.

It was upon this shoulder-less, pot-holed stage, that an old stray dog made his entrance. I remember thinking, umm, he’s walkin’ awfully slow. He just seemed to be sadly meandering to a new nap spot. Or … maybe… Humper! I thought.

My dad had told me a story a few months before our trip about his dog named Mickey (nick-named “Humper” because of his K9 philandering), and how when they had Humper “fixed,” Humper was so depressed that he just laid down in the road until a car ran over him. Humper did himself in.

But this dog looks like he’s trying, I thought, too slowly, very slowly, cross the road and not lay down… do not lay down.

The next 10 seconds happened in what seemed like fast forward and slow motion simultaneously. I look at my dad, my mom nervously says his name, my sister Trisha wakes up from her slumber not entirely noticing how many things are in her mouth, while Lorrie tears herself away from Rhet and Scarlet and my little sister April unsuccessfully tries to see over the front seat blocking her view. I look back and forth from my dad to the dog, my dad to the dog. As my dad starts to brake, his eyes dart to the rear-view-mirror, then to the side. Two semi trucks had made their way beside and behind us.

Like heralds of death, the truckers seem to see the dog, the brief flash of brake lights from our family-packed station wagon, the dilemma, and simultaneously honk their horns to both warn us and hopefully scare the darn wayward dog. The dog, however, seemed to care not.

Trisha and Lorrie scream, “daddy, dog!” and my little sister simply pulls her arm up and down at the truck drivers to try and get them to honk again. Knowing the peril we are all in my dad says, with his thick, Oklahoma, tough-guy-born-again accent,

“Well, …bye bye dog.”

And the rest, as Harvey used to say, is history.

A woman approaches and sits next to me at the airport. She’s wearing a designer skirt and crosses her leg so close that I can’t help but notice it’s well-toned in a bronze hue. Within a second or two her perfume hits me and the smell is sweet, but mature. Teenage girls and insecure men overdue their fragrances, but not her. Everyone else in the waiting area is informal or slovenly, myself included. This woman knows what she’s doing.

She clears her throat and seems to draw attention to herself with sweeping gestures as she moves. Checking text messages. Stretching her arms. Pawing at her shirt. She casually cranes her neck and out of the corner of my eye, I feel her looking in my direction.

There are plenty of open seats in the area. I start guessing when I shouldn’t. Most people don’t sit next to complete strangers when they don’t have to. They don’t dress up while traveling at midday.

“How do you like it?”

It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about the book in my hands. Ever since she sat down, it’s been nothing but a prop. She tells me she just finished the same novel. It’s a gritty, historical fiction western and a book I hadn’t heard of until a friend handed it to me weeks ago. I don’t like to stereotype, but she doesn’t seem like a western fan.

I reply with a few opinions about the writing style. She nods and mentions she’s reading something much different now. Now, she’s reading a romance style novel by an author I’ve never heard of. She looks at me and pauses. She said it can be graphic.

I wonder where this is going. In the movies, on television, it can be somewhat common to strike up conversation in unfamiliar places with strangers. In those settings, people meet and suddenly share a common bond. They become entwined and the plot carries them into the next act. That doesn’t happen in reality. In reality, people who try to talk to you other than a brief acknowledgment are usually crazy. I’ve met so many weirdos and junkies and perverts and sycophants that I feel like an amateur social disorder analyzer. Older men are by far the majority but I’ve learned that lust and needs come in all packages.

She continues on about her new book. Saying there are detailed descriptions. Sex acts and erotica. She asks if I’m familiar with the reverse cowgirl. “You know, with the woman on top but turned around?” She doesn’t state this in hushed tone, but matter-of-factly. I wonder if she begins all her introductions like this.

I don’t respond because she keeps talking. Her eyes are arched with aqua eyeshadow and the red in her lips races to a fine dark border where it stops on a dime. She casually strokes her raven hair, which falls somewhere between neck and back. I wonder if she’s a hooker.

I ask a couple questions about writing and literature. This is more done to keep the conversation away from sex than to be polite. I don’t mind talking about it, just not with strange women in airport terminals. The talk turns elsewhere and I learn she is on her way to Vegas. I suppose that could explain the clothes, the fancy makeup. I want to confirm my theory, but the plane is boarding and I still don’t know why exactly this woman is chatting me up.

I keep waiting for it. Waiting for something, a question or clue. In foreign countries, it’s more common for strangers to talk freely for the sake of curiosity or conversation. In America, we’re always looking for an angle. You talk to someone because you want something.

I begin to zip up my bags and she excuses herself when the final boarding call is announced. She smiles and wishes me a safe trip. We never even exchanged names. I won’t see her again.

She boards the jetway and leaves me to my seat and my thoughts. Brief encounters like this leave me confused. I didn’t get what I expected and I’m not sure exactly what happened. It bothers me when people don’t act the way we think they will. It bothers me that something so insignificant won’t go away.

Here’s the thing about irrational fears: they sneak up on you, out of nowhere, like a knife-wielding psychopath who’s hiding in your closet waiting for you to fall asleep. (Which is one of my irrational fears.)

I thought about this when my coworker Colleen and I decided to go camping in the Grand Tetons and visit Yellowstone National Park. Before we left, the subject of bears came up. Colleen mentioned that the bears would be in their super-active eating season, trying to fatten up before they hibernate for the winter. They would be active for up to 20 hours a day, she said.

As we sat in her office, we agreed that we needed to be honest with one another about whether we wanted to go to the Tetons – bear country – or go to Moab, Utah, where there was lots of desert and no bears. (But possibly scorpions.)

And out of nowhere, knife glinting in the slim shaft of streetlight, the fear raised its ugly head. “I don’t want to be mauled by a bear!” I wailed.

Where the heck did THAT come from?, my more reasonable self asked.

Oh hey, said my fear, with a Fargo accent and a friendly wave.

But we Colleen and I both agreed that we would risk bears for the sake of seeing the Tetons – and, while we were in the neighborhood, Yellowstone. So we buckled into Colleen’s new Corolla, my fear in the back seat quietly reading a magazine, with his knife sheathed. We drove for nearly 10 hours through rain and low-lying clouds that obscured the dry hills of Wyoming. As we neared the Tetons, we rode through forested hills in clearing weather and finally saw the peaks rising ahead of us. (Peaks which did not, I might add, resemble – ahem – “tetons,” but then, I’m not a lonely French pioneer.)

We marveled and gasped and took pictures, and as we got closer my fear put down his magazine in the backseat and started whispering in my ear about the campsites we were going to. “You know, the ones without RVs probably are more susceptible to bears,” he said. Jenny Lake, the campground we had chosen, was the only “tent-only” campground in the park. Luckily – I thought – it was full, so we drove to Signal Mountain, a mixed tent-and-RV campsite.

Signal Mountain was rustic in the way the Outback Steakhouse is Australian. Yards away from the campsites sat a gigantic lodge, complete with a restaurant and bar and indoor bathrooms and actual hotel rooms where people could sleep near the elements, without actually having to be in the elements. (My people!)

Colleen and I set up our tent in a picturesque site among tall, thin pines. We cooked ourselves dinner over our portable stove. Then we went to Signal Mountain Lodge and got their signature blackberry margaritas. This is the life, my fear sighed, relaxed. You’re not going back out there, are you?

Oh, but we were. We hustled out in the now-chilly air and quickly piled on layers and brushed our teeth and climbed into our sleeping bags. After reading for a while, we went to sleep. Or at least, Colleen went to sleep.

I lay awake, listening to a rustling and crunching noise outside our tent. Ohmigod, my fear whispered, sitting next to me, alert. Don’t move. I think there’s a bear outside.

For a few minutes that felt like forever, I lay trying not to move a muscle, trying not to breathe loudly, trying not to smell like delicious food such as, say, blackberries. Then I whispered, “Colleen!”

No answer.

“Colleeeeen!”

She shifted in her bag. “What?” she murmured.

“Do you hear that?”

She listened. The rustling/crunching continued.

“Katie, that’s our rain flap,” she said.

Oh.

I sighed, sheepishly, rolled over, and fell into a fitful sleep.

Waking up with all of my limbs and an intact tent was a joyous occasion. I shivered in the cool morning air. My fear, surprisingly agile, was stretching in a downward dog position outside the tent. Good morning!

I wish I could say he finished his yoga routine and went away, but he didn’t. He was over my shoulder as I gazed at grand vistas of glacial valleys, scanning for lumbering black dots moving toward us. He inspected our next day’s campsite, pointing out the claw marks on a nearby tree.

But despite his presence, I somehow managed to survive – and even enjoy – the trip. I stared in awe at the creepily steamy landscapes of Yellowstone. Colleen and I sat in multiple buffalo-induced traffic jams. I saw more geysers than I could count. And I didn’t see a single bear.

My job has some odd requirements. Besides the fact that students fill my day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. Besides the fact that the school issues cell phones to teachers and the kids call us each night for homework help. Besides the facial hair growing contest the males on my campus just spent the entire month competing in.

Besides all that, we also recruit our students. Every teacher goes out into the homes in neighborhoods of every size and nationality in Houston and meets with every single student who signs up to attend our school.
Of all things, this was odd to me.

I’m used to being involved in my students’ lives, but it usually comes through degrees. Mainly by deciphering the maze of complications that occur in a child’s life when things go wrong at home.

Brian punches walls and curses his teachers out? Let me tell you what his mom does for work.

Natalie never has a ride home from soccer and never really seems to mind being at school every second of the day? Let me tell you how much every bone in my body aches when I pull my car out of the crack den apartment complex where I just dropped her off.

I usually discover my kids’ lives because they’re hard and messy and include events that leave marks and bruises that always manifest in my classroom. I know about their lives because teaching kids like this – who live in a world like that – doesn’t work outside the bubble. You either jump in feet first or your give up and go find a different job with a nice office and a good 401k plan.

Things are a little different when you’re invited in by mom and dad and given a guided tour of the world they live in. For starters, you get to see a lot more of the good side of things: dads who come home at night, plenty of food on the table, aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and brothers and sisters who are investing everything they have in this world to see that a 10-year-old gets to college – to a better life.

On the bad days, I don’t really get to see any of that, so it’s refreshing to start out my introduction to next year’s fifth grade class – 95 little faces I will spend 50 plus hours with a week – on a high note.

As a co-worker and I walked out of the home of a future student last night, he smiled and shook his head.

“He’s my favorite,” he said. “I can already tell.”

“How can you tell so soon?” I asked. “We’ve only met five of them.”

His answer was simple.

“How can he not be? I’ve been to his home. I’ve seen his world. For me, once I’m in, there’s no getting out.”

In a way, he’s exactly right. They go on to other grades, other schools, other states even, but loving kids and becoming a part of their world is a lot like the mafia: once you’re in, you never get out.

I got in my car and waved goodbye to the three little brothers of our recruit who had followed us out to shout variations of “Buenos noches!” and sighed. It was already 8 p.m. and I had left for work at 6 a.m.

I flicked off the radio, picked up my phone and dialed Natalie’s house to see how her ninth grade biology exam had gone.

Like I said, once you get in, you never get out.

All seven babies are screaming as loud as their tiny lungs will let them. I stand in the midst of them, unsure of who to reach out to first.

I am at church, and my own fifth and sixth grade class is empty, all absent today. I pack up my stuff and head out of my classroom. As I walk by the nursery, I notice the only two weary volunteers have their hands completely full. It looks slightly overwhelming, but I offer the help anyway. And as I rotate screaming babies from my arm to the highchair to the pack ‘n play, my nerves frazzled and my ears ringing, I can’t help but wonder.

More and more, bringing a child into the world seems like a downright absurd idea.

I mean, everything seems to be going down the tubes, doesn’t it?

The economy is about to throw us all overboard without so much as a life jacket. Many of us are wading, floating, sinking or otherwise, and depending who you talk to, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. With all the safety nets we’ve tried to secure for ourselves disappearing on the horizon, how bright can a future for our children be?

Or take the environment: All you hear about these days are global warming, stuffed landfills and threats that if we don’t use more ‘green’ we’ll be dead by the end of the century. While I have a hard time believing if I throw a single can away, my child won’t have clean air to breathe a few years down the road, there is definitely some credibility in the lack of care we’ve had for our planet, and it shows. Is it even healthy to bring a child into a world when the air can cause cancer and there may be no clean water in the coming years?

The nightly news is a prime example of the overarching theme that humanity just can’t cooperate. We lie, cheat and steal into getting our way. Wars go round and round, disagreements go round and round, the pain goes round and round. Will people be any nicer when my children are grown? Will they learn to be good people in the midst of so much ugliness?

As my mind wanders, the mother of the baby girl I am holding shows up, takes her sniffling daughter from my arms, and walks her away and down the hall. I am surprised at how much my arms ache without the extra weight and realize I have broken a small sweat. I adjust my shirt and look around the room. It is quieter, but just as one volunteer is laying a small boy down in the pack ‘n play, he wakes up hollering, begging to be held. The volunteer, clearly stressed, has no choice but to set him down. Her own daughter is crying crocodile tears at her feet, refusing to be held by anyone but mom. The boy sits and continues to cry, his little eyes squeezed shut, his bottom lip sagging and his youthful skin shiny with tears.

I walk toward him, stoop down and hold my arms out. Before I can even blink, he almost seems to leap into my arms and conform his body to the shape of my own. His little arms wrap around my neck as far as they can go, and he cradles his head in the curve of my shoulder. His crying instantly ceases, besides the random deep sniffles he can’t help but suck in as he tries to calm down. He relaxes, his puffy eyes already closed, happy to be snuggled and safe. Now and then, he lets out a little content noise like a mouse.

I can’t help but smile. My heart melts as I sink to the floor, my back against the wall and my knees drawn up behind him. I hold him close, patting his back. As I hold him, I begin to let my mind wander again. His little hug makes me feel loved, so this time my thoughts are different.

I think about my family. I can remember my brother as a tiny little boy, running around in his Loony Toons shirt. I was so proud when he began to walk and talk. I remember my big brother, always making us roll with giggles on the floor until we couldn’t breathe. I remember waiting breathless, all three times my sister was delivering her children, all of them five years apart. I remember holding Mom’s hand and skipping. I remember going to get early morning donuts with Dad. I remember late-night Nintendo marathons with my sister and her husband.

I remembered when I met my husband. The first conversation in history class, the first time he told me I looked pretty, the first time we held hands, our first kiss. I think about the last conversation we had, the next time I will talk to him, his presence in the next room and how I will ride home with him in his pickup truck today.

I think of how good it feels to have someone close, to have your friends around you, to be loved, to reach out and have someone return the sentiment. I think of the strength of a simple gesture. A hug. A hand to hold. A touch on the arm. Eye contact and an ear to listen.

I feel love from this tiny person I have never met before this morning. His simple need to be hugged reminded me that sometimes it’s simpler than coming up with the right stimulus package, the right president, the right products or the right way of doing things.

I looked at the nametag stuck to his back, where all the children wear them so they don’t rip if off their own shirt. Grant - #7.

Well, Grant, I think, as I pass his flushed and sleepy body to his mother, maybe more of you is what the world needs.

I have a love/hate relationship with cleaning my apartment. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a neat and orderly living space free from unbecoming odors. It’s just that I usually find it hard to muster up the motivation to make the cleaning happen. It’s like a never-ending cycle; there is always something to clean. A floor that needs to be vacuumed, a bathroom mirror with little specks of toothpaste all over it, beard trimmings all over the bathroom counter…the list could go on. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person that experiences these things.

Washing the dishes is something else that is extremely hard to motivate myself to do. Especially because I don’t have a dishwasher. When I moved to Columbia, Mo., I wasn’t too picky about my living arrangements. I lived for a few months during my undergrad with no dishwasher, so surely I can handle it now, right? Wrong. I have resorted to using paper plates and bowls as much as possible to avoid doing dishes. For those who are judging me for being wasteful, you probably have a dishwasher, so I don’t want to hear it. Dishwasher is now firmly affixed near the top of my list of necessary modern amenities.

Let’s move on from something that I just don’t like doing to something that I simply don’t do: dusting. Since moving out on my own after I graduated high school, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I have dusted. I don’t even buy Pledge. Dust is one of those things that you don’t really notice unless you get too close, or it collects in places that nobody really sees anyway, like behind the TV. It’s just not a big deal to me. If you notice dust, you’re a little too picky.

As for things that just seem pointless, let’s talk about making the bed. When I was a kid and my mom made me clean my room, the job was not considered complete unless my bed was made. This is something that never made sense to me. I mean, you are not actually cleaning anything. And you’re not fooling anybody; everybody knows you slept there. It just seems silly to do something that is going to be entirely undone in a matter of hours.

I cleaned my apartment this weekend, and did most of these things (except for dusting) in the process. The whole time I kept trying to think of ways to live my life so that cleaning would not be necessary (like the paper plates and bowls). I have actually been sleeping in a sleeping bag on top of my made bed. We’ll see how long that lasts. But as I was thinking about ways to not get my apartment dirty, I realized that I sometimes try to live my life in the same way. I am a chronic people-pleaser, always wanting circumstances and relationships to be as non-messy as possible. I don’t know how many times I have had to re-learn this, but life is messy. It’s very messy, and that’s OK. Sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and get to work. And just like having a clean apartment, it will always be worth it. I’m not budging on the dishwasher, though. It’s a must.