I have wanted red boots since I was 16. That was the year I saw Footloose for the first time. Ariel, the gutsy small town girl who wants to really feel alive wears the boots to drive her daddy crazy. My dad probably wouldn’t have cared at all, but I liked her because she felt bold and wild and she wanted adventure (and, of course, to dance with Kevin Bacon). I wanted to be like that.

Red boots certainly wouldn’t take me away from home or make me a different person, but they’d be a whole lot of fun.

Though the stereotypes may suggest different, growing up in a suburban area of Kansas didn’t really make cowboy boot shopping a common occurrence. I never found a pair of boots that worked. I settled for red pumas and red ballet flats, but I never gave up the desire for those shoes.

Ten years later and I still have not found the perfect pair of red cowboy boots — although, I’ve certainly expanded my search options by spending the last four years in Texas. As I’m facing my what could probably be my last year in Texas, I’ve decided this is the year.

The year of the red boot.

I know that if I put my mind to it I can find the perfect pair of red boots. Low brown heel, aged red leather, intricate pattern stitched up the side. If the boots have a story — a history — even better. While I once wished for red boots because of the sense of possibility they suggested, the chance to break out of the place I’ve always known and find the world out there waiting for me, I now wish for red boots because of the life I’ve attained.

I recently watched Footloose again and remembered the first time I watched it. I was 16 and wishing to be anywhere, anywhere, but where I was. Surely someone had made mistake. I was not meant to live my life in Kansas. I was bored and desperate to have a life a little less ordinary. A life that featured a great pair of red boots.

As I watched the movie again, sitting on my couch in my house in Houston, I liked the movie for entirely different reasons. Instead of seeing just Ariel’s plight in the movie, I saw her parents struggling with their own realities of what it means to be adults with fears and challenges while trying to love a headstrong teenager. I saw not just a close-minded small town obviously too small and pent up for the likes of characters like Ariel and Ren, but a community that loves and values its safety and children and faces the challenges of a new and changing world. I saw my experiences as an “old, lame” teacher who has to be the one to say no and a big city girl working in a small town newspaper where I learned the comfort that can be had when everybody truly does know your name.

Now I want those red boots because I found my adventure. I don’t need them to be bold or break the rules, because I’ve done that all on my own. I want them because I’m living the life I always dreamed of and one I never imagined. I certainly never dreamed I would understand Ariel’s uptight pastor father or the townspeople who burn books at the public library, but I do. With age, and four years teaching a few hundred teenagers I’d give nearly anything to keep safe, has come a little bit of wisdom I suppose.

As I set off on my next adventure, I want to take something with me to remind me of those days in Kansas and who I used to be. I want to carry the little inkling of Texas pride that has developed in me in boot form (because I certainly will not be hanging a Texas flag on my wall anytime soon).

I stopped in a small vintage thrift store on my way to Dallas last weekend and shared my red boot desires with the woman working there. She pulled every red boot she had while she asked me about my childhood, college years and why the heck I didn’t make it down to Texas sooner than now. None of the boots fit or had the right specifications, but she kept looking. While walking around she showed me a fantastic pair of brown leather boots with a low heel and beautiful flower pattern etched up the side. I tried them on out of curiosity and proceeded to walk around the store painfully debating whether or not I could justify adding this pair of boots to my collection before attaining what I was really after.

Finally, I shook my head and started to remove them while I apologized for taking up so much of her time.

She smiled “Oh honey,” she drawled, “Don’t you worry. I get it. When it’s right, it’s right. And I’d bet you’ll find your boots just like you found the life you wanted: when and where you least expect it.”

She then told me that she was expecting a new shipment next week so when and where I least expect it might be back in her shop around 2 p.m. on Wednesday if I was near I-35 between Austin and Dallas around that time.

I’ve got at least six more months in Texas to find my red boots and I’m bound and determined to do it. That’s one of the things about Ariel that I appreciated both then and now: her stubborn refusal to give in. That’s a quality that’s not changed in me and probably never will.

And one of these days I’ll have the red boots to prove it.

Editor’s note: for the next two weeks we’ll be running the best of our This Ordinary Day pieces. We’ve enjoyed working with so many great writers and wonderful people and felt it was high time to take a look back at some of what they’ve brought us. If you’d like to see more pieces, please take a trip over to our archives page — it’ll be well worth your time.

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I live a busy life.

I rush from moment to moment, always planning ahead, always focusing on a goal. I’ve always been like that. I can’t think of a time in my life when I wasn’t thinking of the next step. The next moment. The next item to check off on my perpetual to-do list. I would say, without a doubt, one of my greatest weaknesses is forgetting that life is constantly swirling all around me while I’m busy making future plans.

Thankfully, sometimes I’m lucky enough to be hit with a moment so stunning that it knocks the breath — and all of my plans — right out of me.

At the bottom of a steep dirt road at a camp in the heart of Texas Hill Country, a sign spells outs odd, if not amusing, directions. Yes! You drive in the river, it reads.

In our case we walked.

Seventy-five screaming, giggly seventh and eighth graders and their chaperones walked straight into the water and up the road to our campsite for a three-day end-of-year camping trip.

Originally, the plan had been to haul the kids through the water on a trailer. The plan changed, and I’m so glad it did.

As we entered the icy water of the Frio River, nearly everyone around me screamed and shouted. In an instant, I was surrounded by giggling and shouting and every other kind of joyful noise I wish I heard out of my students’ mouths more often. Sometimes, teaching in the rough and tumble neighborhood in which I do, it can be hard to remember that at the end of the day, my kids are just that: kids.

Giggling, goofy, joyful kids.

There aren’t really enough words to truly describe the looks on their faces as they walked through the river that day. Every last horrible thing I go through on a daily basis at my school is worth it for being a part of that moment in their lives. As they slipped and slid all over the rocks and clung to hands and arms and anything they could use to stay upright on the slippery rock bottom of the road, I was struck by the awesomeness of it all. For many of these kids, it was their first time ever leaving Houston. For even more of them, it was their first time setting foot in fresh water.

For that one moment, in that 100-yard stretch of water, they were just kids. Not poor kids or troubled kids or delinquents or projects. But for that moment, they were what every person should be at least once in their life: perfectly filled with an overpowering happiness.

And so was I.

Take a kid into a river for the first time in their entire lives or watch their eyes when they look at the stars for the first time without the glare of the city lights and tell me anything in your important, busy life matters. I guarantee that after seeing their faces, it won’t. That walk in the river was one of those moments that if I could just capture it and play it on repeat in my mind for the rest of my life, I would be a better teacher, friend, person. There’s no doubt.

As I followed the last group of kids up the dirt road that led to our campsite, I listened to their laughter disappear over the hill and I stopped and stood in the road smiling and crying, completely stunned by the simple power of the moment.

It’s a very odd thing to realize what it must feel like to be a parent. To be standing on a hill and looking at a group of wet, hysterically happy children and just thank God for that moment. Thank God that they were able to have that moment in their lives and that you got to be there to share it with them. To watch them take it all in. I didn’t realize until right then that I have reached a point in my life where I’ve had enough of these moments to know that, for them, this was one. It’s a memory that will be there through all the ups and downs of the coming years — something to lean on and appreciate when life inevitably gets a little rough.

For all the things I chase in my life and all the moments and relationships and obligations that always seem a little less than perfect, a 100-yard walk through the river was one of the most perfect moments I’ve ever had. What’s more, for all the goals and plans and dreams I’m always chasing after every day, I would not trade one second of that walk for anything. I would not give up a single step for any accolade or achievement.

These are the moments when we’re truly alive. When laughter and holding hands are enough to sustain us through all the bad things that cloud our lives. Maybe if we stop more often and look at the faces of those taking in a first experience — like a walk on a river road — we’ll be better people for it. Maybe, at least for a few seconds, we’ll remember to live in the present because goals and dreams are nice, but what good are any of them if we’re not living the life we’ve got right now? Maybe all the worry and anxiety so many of us carry around can be lightened or even released by the voice of a truly good friend saying I love you or the smile of a stranger on the street or the shouts and laugher of a group of ragtag, messy children.

At least, for my sake, I hope it can.

I start every morning with the same routine. Coffee and a stack of agendas stuffed full of last night’s homework.

My school gives homework every night for every subject. And I check it every morning as the sun rises and my students devour a quick breakfast.

Homework check is a quick affair, lasting less than an hour between bathroom breaks and attendance for all 97 of our fifth grade students. I’ll admit that some mornings before the caffeine has really set into my system, I’ve gotten a bit upset with a student who doesn’t turn in his homework, doesn’t put it in order or has somehow managed to make backpack origami out of the formerly pristinely white and flat reading log I handed him the night before.

Our school holds big expectations. Homework every night, for one, is not an expectation many of my students have been used to being held to. There are two trends in those who struggle with the homework — and thus meet my wrath, or at least my frustrations, early the next morning.

The first trend is the student who is perfectly capable of finishing his or her homework, but chooses not too. Usually a few 7:30 a.m. phone calls home and a parent conference can work that problem away. The second trend is the student who simply struggles in such a fast paced environment. They’re behind from the get-go for a myriad of reasons. The whole concept of longer school days and more work is overwhelming and confusing.

I have three of these students in my homeroom right now. At first, I just grew increasingly annoyed every morning shouting their names to hurry up and bring their homework folder up to me so I could move on with the rest of my day after marking down all the missing assignments and incomplete papers the folder was sure to hold. We’re well past a month of school and these three are still, daily, missing major assignments, not getting things signed and generally showing up unprepared for morning homework check. Once the majority of the fifth grade gets a grasp on our morning routine, students such as these start to stand out like traffic cones.

Instead of moving into the rhythm of daily homework assignments, they flounder with the added work and lack the organizational skills necessary to keep track of it. What originally starts as frustration and complication in my morning routine begins to turn into sympathy for the ones lagging behind — as this is one of the many reasons schools like mine exist. It is one of the major reasons I work for a school that requires extra hours and weekends from teachers.

We’re not going to let them fall behind. We’re going to find a way to fix it.

My way, with my three traffic cones, starts not in the mornings, but in the afternoon before, in study hall. For the past week, we’ve gathered together and written each of the assignments down in their agendas, organized them by subject and put big, monstrous circles around the things they need to get signed.

This morning as I finished off my coffee, I mindlessly flipped through a stack of papers. Math, Science, Social Studies, Reading, Writing. Parent signature. All complete. All perfect. I turned to the front of the agenda to find a name and smiled.

“Javier,” I shouted, “Come here.”

He hustled up quickly and a look of relief and pride flooded his face as I offered my hand up for a high five.

“You did it. You got a check,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said, biting his lip and rushing off to tell his friends.

Next came Micheal. Check. And another high five.

And then Juan, the messiest of all three, also a check. Before I could extend my hand in the congratulatory high five universally preferred by fifth grad boys, he stuck his hand out and confidently said “I’m going to do it all week. All week it will be perfect. I promise.”

“I hope so,” I said as I shook his hand.

There are certainly days I wish I had another hour in bed, worked at school that didn’t require me to be awake enough at seven in the morning to check piles of homework or didn’t have to hurry off 32 noisy 10-year-olds to the bathroom before I had downed my first cup of coffee, but today was not one of them.

There’s something to be said for taking the time to catch someone who is falling. There’s something to be learned from looking for the real problem instead of giving up on someone who is lagging behind. And there’s certainly little better than a high five and a handshake to start your morning.

I have absolutely no shame in admitting that at least once a week I find myself wishing my life were a musical.

It makes no sense at all. I like dramas and comedies and books about education or journalism. But I love High School Musical. And Hairspray. And Hannah Montana. If it is cheesy, people break into song when doing everyday tasks and there are choreographed dance routines, then I’m in.

I don’t know when I first discovered that cheesy teen musicals made me feel better, but I tried to hide it as long as possible. Surely, a grown-up with a real job and college loans to pay off should not be so engrossed in Zac Efron’s major high school dilemmas.

Until last night, I hadn’t been able to defend myself when others figure out my silly obsession. I just chalked it up to my one weird thing that has no rhyme or reason. Teen musicals simply make me feel better. I don’t understand it. I told people. Then I finally got my answer.

Each year for work, all of the schools in the charter network I work for gather at a national conference for a week of professional development and mingling. On the last night of the conference we have a banquet to celebrate the successes the teachers, students and schools have had in the past year. Students from one of the schools attending the conference always perform at the banquet. I love the performances because I love seeing talented kids who have been given confidence in their artistic abilities.

And it’s the closet to a musical my life ever gets.

Until last night.

In the middle of the second dance performance, the sound cut out. One minute we were listening to and enjoying the flamenco. The next, the room was silent. To their credit, the students kept dancing. To our credit, in 15 seconds nearly every person in the room was humming, singing and clapping. By the end of the song we were all on our feet in all-out sing-a-long.

It was exactly what I always hope will happen when any error occurs in my day. I dropped my coffee? It would be better if the people around me broke into song about how the day could only get better from there. The wind whips my skirt all around me just before a rainstorm? What if we all broke out umbrellas and danced? My crush walks into the room? It’s definitely time to sing.

The sound goes out in the middle of a performance? Four hundred teachers in cocktail dresses should break into a rendition of Marc Anthony’s “I need to know.”

Silly high school musicals remind me not to take the world too seriously. They take things like rainstorms or coffee spills and turn them into something to laugh about. So why not? Life gives you lemons? Coordinate a dance move or two.

As I stepped onto the elevator after the performance, I was confronted with a gaggle of giggly 14-year-old dancers, still ecstatic about their performance.

“Did you hear them all singing?” a curly headed girl asked her friend. “It was like being in High School Musical.”

“It was so awesome. I wish more days in my life were like that,” her friend sighed.

Me too.

Photo by Paul Waldron

Often I can’t decide if I’m a risk taker or not.

I’ve made some big decisions — moving away from home for college when many friends picked the 45 minute drive west, abandoning a journalism career to teach, spending semesters, summers and any other time I can in foreign countries…

But is any of that a risk? I’m starting to wonder.

Since arriving in Africa two weeks ago a change has been coming over me. I want to be here. But not just want to be here for the time being.

I want to stay.

That’s scary.

This isn’t a job. This is Christian missions. For free. Or actually, not for free. I have to pay to stay here and work. That concept goes against every planning, thinking, rational choice making bone in my body.

I should be saving for a new car. Preparing to pay for grad school. Buying cute shoes at Nordstrom. Not praying about who is going to support me financially while I’m here and how much can I save on my own. I don’t take these kinds of risks. They’re just too big.

This past weekend I traveled to Ghana with 14 companions from the ship. The group had been around for a while (anywhere from three months to four years) and intends to stay at least another five months if not longer. As a shorter termer, my spot on the trip was thanks to my roommate from back home who has been on ship for six months.

Most of my travel companions were beside themselves with excitement about Ghana, simply because it wasn’t ship life: you live and work in a very small space in a very large, dirty city for months on end. Things don’t change often. When they do, it’s exhilarating.

So we drove and breathed in deeply as we reached the lush hills of Ghana. The day after we arrived we hiked to the lower of two waterfalls in the area.

For all my adventures, I’ve never seen an actual waterfall.

They are amazing things to behold.

The sheer force of the thing rushing down on you is enough to take your breath away. My first attempt at walking all the way through failed. Unsure of what was behind the fall, it felt like the rushing, blinding water would never end. I gave up and walked back out, content to just be cooled by the water still hitting me 25 feet away. Then a fellow hiker came out having reached the other side.

”Just keep going. Close your eyes, get low and just keep going,’’ he said.

Again, I walked into the rushing water.

There is something overwhelmingly exhilarating about the power of that much water raining down on you. I was able to see the underside of the wall of water after I reached the rocky backside of the fall. I could breath again, but like anything powerful, there was little relief from the rush. Even on the other side, the strength of the water still engulfed me.

I would say right at that moment. Right there in the lower falls is when I decided that I don’t think I’m much of a risk taker. But I’m going to change that starting now. That force of nature made me believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that this life is too important to play it safe. My life needs to be shaken up. And I don’t care if I get my masters in two years or six or not at all. I don’t care if I drive a crappy Toyota when I return home or if I stay here until I’m 60.

I care that I’m going to follow my heart, listen for God’s call in my life, close my eyes and just keep going.

I know I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I am conquering my fear of flying.

That’s a lie.

I’ve conquered my fear of leaving the window shade up while flying. I’m still absolutely terrified of flying. I just hate the feeling. I hate the rockiness of turbulence and the constant threat of the fall.

A week ago I began a trip to Africa to spend my summer teaching aboard a hospital ship called Mercy Ships. My trip included three different plane rides – the shortest of which was three hours long. The longest was seven.

Ignoring the fact that I was heading to Africa for seven weeks and that this is not something most 20-something teachers do with their precious weeks of summer vacation, I tried my best to get some sleep on the flight over. I made it about 30 minutes before we hit turbulence and my mind started checking the nearest exits in case of emergency. I also started debating how long I could swim.

And so it continued like that, on and off, for the remainder of my trip over the Atlantic. Turbulence. Panic. Imagination overdrive.

It’s just something about the fall.

I hate the threat of it.

When this trip presented itself, I pretty much jumped. I jumped last summer as well. And when accepting my current career path. Even with my fear of heights I cliff jump. I like the exhilarating feel of the jump, just not the lack of control accompanied with the fall.

I made it over the Atlantic with nothing more than a few gut checking dips of the plane, but I still feel a bit like I’m operating in imminent fall mode. Something about this place is unsettling. I guess that’s exactly what I was looking for. Something that wasn’t easy. Something that would challenge my plan – my life. I just thought it would feel a lot more like jumping and lot less like a free fall. I thought I would have some choice in the matter. Right now it feels like I have no choice. My world is being turned around on me and I’m not getting much say in the matter.

I’m not quite sure where this trip is going to take me. Whether I’ll return the same or go home and make alternate life plans. I don’t know whether I need a big push off my big comfortable life to make a change or whether I take another leap of faith all on my own.

But I do know this, with falling or jumping, the general premise is the same: at the end you have to have the faith that something will catch you before you hit the ground.