Tomorrow is the first student day at the school where I am employed as a school counselor, North Harrison High School.

I say BRING THEM ON!

It is time to get some students in the building.  That is why we put the place there and fill it with fresh air and fresh ideology and fresh hope and freshman, of course.

This is the third year for me at North Harrison. I love the place.  Like every school I have worked in, the first day is filled with optimism and dare I say hope?  I don’t dare say it.  I am saying it.  I work with a great deal of hope for the future.  We have great young people in the North Harrison Community School system.  In the past two weeks I have also witnessed some great parents and grandparents I have met with, emailed with, and talked to on the telephone.  So many of them are on the verge of being apologetic for taking my time.  I tell them that is why I was hired…to help them out.  I made that point when I was interviewed.

The day is framed on two questions:

Morning:  What can I do to help?

Afternoon:  What did I do to help?

I told my dear wife, Carrie, I brought that up in the interview I had for my current position.  She asked if I got that philosophy from Ben Franklin.  I told my dear wife I actually got it walking around the parking lot of the Meijer store in New Albany.  She told me Ben got there before me. To say I felt I was in good company is an understatement.  I always liked that guy, even if he wanted the Wild Turkey to be the National Bird.

When I was a kid, long before folks kept up with what others had for dinner the night before thanks to a facebook post, the first day of school was reunion first.  You looked around to see who was still there.  Invariably a few kids would move never to be heard from again.  I never got to say goodbye to a girl I was sweet on in the 2nd grade.  Her name was Robin Osmond.  She was fun to talk to.  She was lovely to behold.  I remember the day she took my arm like we were going to a cotillion and spoke up to our teacher, Mrs. Bobb, and held up our arms for Mrs. Bobb’s approval.  Mrs. Bobb just shook her head.  I was 8, but I knew Mrs. Bobb wanted to puke.  A part of me wanted to also.

Paul.  Whatever happened to him?  He was there in 4th grade and gone in 5th.  I felt sorry for Paul.  Lord was he forever easy to want to beat the tar out of.  He brought most of his ill on himself.  His mouth and threats that he could not live up to made him a pain in the ass.  But he was a pain in the ass you could not tune out.  Look, I know so many of you are not going to buy in to this story…but it is the truth.  I was the product of Larry and Tressie Johnson.  Jerry Brown was the product of Tom and Gleda Brown.  John Johnson was the product of Pete and Helen Johnson.  Mike Warren was the product of Leroy and Sarah Warren.  These were my friends….you get where I am going with this.  One day in the fourth grade, Paul had his head down and was crying.  I wondered what was wrong. I didn’t want to see him sad.  Another boy looked at me and said his folks were not getting along.  Paul then picked up his red eyes and snotty nose and said, and I can still hear it… “My parents are not getting a DEE-vorce!”  It went through me like a knife. We didn’t even know how to pronounce it.  How provincial is that?   I call it more fortunate than provincial.  I felt so bad for Paul.  I still do.

My how things have changed.  The culture is different these days for sure.  Kids are much more resilient than me and my cronies ever thought about being.  They have to be.  They have adapted to their environments.  They are made to face examinations in academia that I am not sure, beyond politics, measures a single thing.  A test score did not make me care.  A test score made me a statistic.

I think we need to care more and govern with statistics less.  I would hate to think that worrying over a test would ever make me loose sight of Robin and Paul along the way.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson