Nothing Left to Do

One of the students in my Honors English class mentioned yesterday that they had discovered my blog. Several nodded, confirming that they had also seen it. A polite silence ensued.
"You must have been pretty bored reading it," I said. "It's all politics."
"I didn't even read it," one girl said. I think she meant she couldn't even read it. After all, how many high school juniors would get a joke about Thomas Friedman?
"What else could I write about?" I asked. "I can't write about you guys. It wouldn't be right. What else am I going to write about? My daughter's soccer games? I spend my time doing my homework on Saturday and Sunday nights. To break up the monotony, I go to work out at the Y."
My life: work; study; reading the news; watching 5th graders play soccer on the weekend. It's only on days like today, when I have no one to claim my time (Sharon and the kids have gone to the Big E with her parents), that I wonder if I am anything more than a pacing animal, counting on movement alone to transport him beyond the bars in his cage, and coming to the realization that the restlessness movement only serves to map another part of the cage.