Removing Staples and Picking Mint

This morning my job is to take out all the staples from files dating back to the 1960s. Old grade sheets, individual projects, communications with professors, registrations and withdrawal forms - all of these papers must be checked for staples and if I see one, I will take it out.

Concordia University of Ann Arbor, one of the places I work, is re-imagining itself. Actually, CUAA is being re-imagined by another entity - one I like to call Professor Umbridge - the school is not allowed to re-imagine its own self.

I’m taking out staples because all these papers will be shredded in an effort to prepare the way for what’s being re-imagined. I am content taking the staples out of all these papers because it reminds me of a prayer Flannery O'‘Connor wrote in her prayer journal: “But dear God, please give me some place, no matter how small, but let me know it and keep it. If I am the one to wash the second step everyday, let me know it and let me wash it and let my heart overflow with love washing it.”

What she means is, “Lord, give me a purpose because the thing that I want to be my purpose - writing - is not being very cooperative at the moment.” At least, that’s what I mean. If I remove staples, I have direction. If I remove staples, I have something clear and concrete to do. If I remove staples, I don’t have to worry about how writing breaks my heart again and again and again.

While I work, I listen in on a conversation between two college students who are discussing where they’ll finish their degrees now that their ability to re-imagine - or imagine, really - has been taken away from them. They talk about transfer credits, scholarships, dorm life, sports. One of them will need to find a car if she goes out of state. The other hoopes there’s a spot for her on the volleyball team. Neither of them are sure they can afford the schools that match closely to CUAA.

//

When I learned Concordia would cease to operate the way it’s been operating (which is a realistic way of saying, “re-imagining”), I suggested that we turn the English class that I teach into what I called a “Quest Course.” I’d teach all the essays an English Composition course introduces: narrative, process-analysis, compare/contrast, argumentative, research, etc., but I’d do it using the hero’s journey format. This way, the students learn to see themselves as heros of their own lives, hopefully resulting in the desire and agency to find, develop, and share their voice with the world - no matter where they go, or what they do.

I was so excited about this idea. We’d read The Hobbit. We’d read Demon Copperhead. We’d read Brown Girl Dreaming. Probably, I’d make them watch “Rocky.” I knew without a doubt I could intergrate every objective an English Composition course lists into a that of a quest. And really, what did the school have to lose?

Alas, I am not a white man, and I don’t agree with all the rules and regulations of the Missouri Lutheran Synod. I cannot be trusted to come up with ideas of my own. I might offer someone an apple.

//

It takes me several hours to go through the stacks of paper and remove staples, and when I finish, I walk to the shredder bin where the students are talking about what’s next. I say hello as I slip paper through a slit in the top of the bin. When the papaers are all gone, I return with a movie theater popcorn amount of staples, and pour those into the trash; their fall sounds like a rainstorm, or that musical instrument we’d play with in elementary school. The one with sand in an enclosed tube and when we tilted it the sand would spill to one end and then the other - an eternal rush going nowhere.

“Did you take all those staples out?” one students asks me.

“Sure did,” I say.

“You didn’t need to do that,” she tells me, and I say nothing so she continues. “The shredder can handle staples.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, and she tells me she is sure.

“I’m the one who shreds everything,” she says.

//

That night, Jesse and I are in the kitchen making dinner. He has poured boiling water over bulgar to make tabouli. I am slicing tomatoes and cucmbers and dropping them into lemon and olive oil. I will sprinkle salt and pepper and hot pepper flakes on that, and when the bulgar has absorbed the water, I’ll toss it all together.

I head outside to our garden to pick parsley and mint. We are late enough into the season that I have to take a flashlight with me, mostly to scare away any skunks that might be around, but also so I can tell which herb to pick.

I only need the flashlight for a bit, though. Soon, my eyes adjust. Soon, I am on my knees, and the fragrance of torn mint and parsley assures me that I’m getting it right here in the dark. The plucked leaves slightly sting my fingers and I realize I have paper-cuts and teeny marks from the staples I removed early today.

I keep working, picking and picking until my colander is overflowing.