I’m not all tutor. I’m part big brother, part friend, part cheerleader, part teammate.
One of my students needed to imagine a machine and write about how it would serve a need. The kid’s a great kid – smart, hard-working, courteous, but beyond all that, good. The kind of kid you’d want your kid to be. He’s got great parents, but like most fathers his works a lot. His younger siblings are too young to play ball with, and his mom’s….well, his mom. So Dan invented a catching machine.
It’s big and broad and has eight arms. It catches fastballs, curves, sliders. It’s got legs and brings in long, arcing spirals down the sidelines. I suppose it can dribble and shoot, but it can definitely pass. It doesn’t tire and is available every afternoon after school.
I was raised by a single mom; I had a catching machine too. Mine was the garage door, and in the center of the chipped baby blue paint I had crafted a 2’x2’ square – a tattered, masking tape strike zone. The pitching mound was the edge of the speed bump that slowed our apartment complex traffic. I served as the entire pitching staff. I opened, relieved, and – my specialty – closed high-pressure games with down-to-the-wire, clutch performance. I was Brian Wilson before Brian Wilson was Brian Wilson.
I handled the infield, too. At third I’d backhand one-hoppers down the line and hurl them across the diamond with major league accuracy – to myself, waiting with outstretched legs and a glove that never failed. If a mean grounder threatened to break through with a man on first, somehow I’d glove it, give a sweet underhand toss to second for the force, and wing it to first for the double.
Sometimes Dan and I play catch. We’ll toss a football as I quiz him on whatever it is that needs quizzing. Memorizing poems is aided by catch. Discussing debate topics for humanities is aided by catch. We throw the football across the classroom as we shout out multiplication tables.
“Eight times seven.” A hard, tight spiral to Dan’s right.
He snags it and wings it back. “Fifty-six!”
And this, too, is high-pressure: one errant toss or missed catch and something gets broken. We silently acknowledge this and respect the pressure.
Most days I like my job. I help boys grow into competent, confident, intellectually curious young men. Some days I’m a math tutor, some days a giver of advice. Some days I’m an editor going over the finer points of our English language, and some days I correct poorly drawn Chinese characters. When it’s needed I’ll share my own history of struggles in school, or lend the needed energy and encouragement in the final throes of a brutal assignment. But some days I love my job. Some days I’m a catching machine.
The Misorganized Mind 