Parent Teacher Conference

I sat at the window table of the Sandbar Lounge

on a gray afternoon in February

reading essays and stories from my students.

Second semester three weeks old.

Amanda tending bar,

ponytail flying,

ready to flagellate a chest,

Popeye arms,

confirmed rumors of her punching out

dipshit fishermen.

The Great Recession was wreaking destruction in Newport.

Evicted families tented in campgrounds, crowding cheap motel rooms.

Hundreds lined up at Walmart to apply for one job.

Students inhabiting my classroom before dawn,

for heat, electricity, running water, toilets, Internet

and hot coffee, hot chocolate, donuts, fruit, energy bars and bagels I served every morning.

I spent $7200 that year,

worth every penny.

Amanda came up to my table, a first.

We’d always conversed at the bar.

I had a tiny crush on her, but did nothing.

My first rule of Oregon tavern life: don’t touch the bartenders.

She knew I was a teacher at the high school.

She said her son, a fifth year senior recently moved in after many years with the father,

was enrolled in my creative writing class.

His only class.

He needed one credit to graduate.

She said his name.

Oh yes.

Her son looked like a young Bozo the clown without makeup, wearing glasses.

Sweet disposition, loner, didn’t say a word,

but always paying attention.

Never missed class,

never turned anything in.

Amanda asked me to please pass him.

The deal: free drinks for the semester and I could fuck her once a week. She had a little crush on me.

Certainly the second most beguiling offer of my teaching career.

I refused.

A weekly parent/teacher conference ensued at the Sandbar.

We plotted how to motivate him.

Carrot and stick.

Something worked.

He turned in one piece,

a riff from a fantasy novel he wanted to write.

It was damn good.

The riff made it into the literary review.

I brought the book into the Sandbar, handed it to Amanda with her son’s piece bookmarked.

She opened and cried.

I passed with him a D+.

Amanda and I never got together.

I wonder if the diploma made any difference.

They often do and don’t.

I bet he finished the novel.