I forgot to turn off the lights in my car and killed the battery.
It was a late Friday morning, I’d slept in after a late night out. I was an unemployed teacher, newly divorced, no health insurance, fighting against admitting that the pains in my legs were sciatica due to ruptured discs that needed surgery.
The plan was to get away for a few days, take my kayak up to Canada and go camping on a remote island. Think about life. Run a few rapids. Hike a little. Try to ignore the pain in my body, the emptiness in my soul, and the lack of a real future.
I’d packed everything the afternoon before so I could just get up and get on the road, so I was very annoyed when I turned the key and didn’t even get a click from the starter. I tried the lights, nope. I tried the horn, it made a weak squawk then died. Totally dead battery.
Crap.
Grumbling to myself, I got the battery charger out of the box marked “garage” on the porch of my apartment and hooked it up to the dead battery in my car. With an hour to kill, I went inside to check e-mails and cruise the net.
There was the usual pile of low priority semi-spam in my inbox, including a notification from the NY state public school teaching job message board. I hadn’t seen anything useful on the site for over a month; it was past the main April/May hiring time and before the August panic. The body of the message didn’t show anything, but on a whim I clicked on it to check out the full listings.
Near the bottom of the list there was an ad for an opening for a Physics(Chemistry/Biology) teacher, 5+ years experience preferred, deadline for applications this coming Monday at 8 AM. Somehow I’d missed hearing about this opening; it had been on the board for almost a month. I checked out the location… rural school, about a half hour away from Albany, in the foothills of the Green/Berkshire/Taconic mountains. My kind of place. I checked out the travel time… about two hours away.
If I could get cleaned up, get my professional things together and get my car to start in less than an hour then I could just about make it there before everyone left for the weekend. If nothing else, I could take a look at the place and I could make sure that my application was on the top of the pile in the principal’s inbox for the Monday morning deadline.
My car didn’t start until after a full hour on the charger, so I got to the school just as all of the kids were stampeding out the door and onto the buses. The first person I talked to out in front of the school just happened to be the principal. He noticed the kayak up on top of my car, and since he is an outdoors-person we hit it off immediately. What followed was the best non-interview interview of my life; I was the man with all of the right answers.
“We’re replacing a third of the staff next year, we could use someone with experience.”
“I’ve been teaching eleven years.”
“This is a rural school. It’s not like teaching in the suburbs.”
“Yeah, the school I taught at was in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains… much smaller than this place actually.”
“The listing says Physics, but the person we hire will need to cover another science. We’re not sure which one right now, either Chem or Bio.”
“Not a problem. I’m certified in all three of those. And Earth Science. And General Science too. And I’ve taught them all. Several times in fact.”
It went like that for the entire hour that I was there, and after it was done I drove away with a very good job in my pocket, the day before it was going to go away. After ten years in this job I still think I am one of the luckiest teachers in New York State. I have a great administration (both are former science teachers), a very supportive community, easy students to work with, excellent co-workers, a great workspace, lots of materials and supplies, and the freedom to innovate. Every morning I wake up to fresh air and a view of the mountains. My commute to work is 5 minutes by car, 8 minutes by bike, and 10 minutes by hiking through the woods. I do not need to lock my house when I leave, or lock my car or my bike on the end of the commute. I live close enough to a city that I can get a dose of culture or find things that I need when I want them, but far enough away that I don’t have to deal with the drawbacks of urban or suburban life.
Ten years later I still think that I’ve found my perfect job.
And if my car had started that morning, I’d never have found it.