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It’s par for the course.
But when I see a tall, giant-of-a-guy walk up to my door, I’m surprised.
He is a football player, no question. You do not see a lot of baseball players or gymnasts or soccer players with that kind of bulk.
“Lennon?” he asks me in a deep voice.
I raise my hand. “That’s me!”
My voice is much cheerier than it usually is when I answer him and I instantly feel a little embarrassed. I’m not a ponytail-twirling, bubblegum-voiced kind of girl. So, I’m not sure why I defaulted to that when he walked into the room.
“And you’re Rayn?” I ask him, in a much more natural voice this time.
He takes a seat next to me and I want to laugh at how impossible it is for him to fit his larger-than-average body into the very small chair, but I hold back.
“That’s me,” he says.
He wastes no time. As soon as he sits in the chair, he reaches into this backpack and retrieves his textbooks that he piles onto the desk. He grabs a notebook and a pencil, too.
“We should start with British Lit,” he tells me. “I have a paper coming up and that’s the class that I have a fighting chance at pulling up the quickest. The teacher is asking me to write aboutTwelfth Night.It can be about a modern adaptation or a personal connection to the story. I think everyone will probably pickShe’s the Man, so I was thinking of doing that Helena Bonham Carter movie version.”
I’m stunned.
Most often, when an athlete starts to work with me, it feels like I have to pull teeth to even get their syllabus. And–not to be biased–but the football players tend to be the worst. Especially if they are good players.
No one expects them to be great students.
So, they don’t try to be.
How is it that this particular football player seems so contradictory to the rest? And why is he in tutoring at all? I mean, he seems to have a great handle on things all by himself.
“That sounds good,” I tell him. “My approach here was going to be assignment-by-assignment, rather than class-by-class. That way we can work on bringing all of your grades up at once. Do you have any other projects or tests that we need to prioritize as well along with the English paper?”
Rayn looks at me questioningly. “I don’t know about that. I prefer to hyper-focus on one area at a time. That way, I can really succeed. If I spread myself too thin, I may not improve at all.”
I fold my arms at him.
I know that there is no way to look tough or imposing in the presence of someonethattough and imposing, but this is my domain. He doesn’t call the shots here.
I do.
And I won’t let his distracting muscles make me question my gut instincts.
“I appreciate that you know how yourself well enough to know how you work, but I also know how to take a struggling student and bring upallof their grades by the end of a semester. And let’s face it. You’re failing all of your classes. If you only focus on one class at a time, your grades will only continue to drop. We can’t have that. So, trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Rayn gives me a very hard glare.
Then, he surprises me yet again.
He slides his textbooks into his backpack, followed by his empty notebook and pencil. He stands up abruptly, the chair shrieking along the floor in his wake.
And then he leaves without a word.
And I’m enraged.
I am so angry that I could throw a book at the back of that man’s head. Not that it would hurt him. Not that he would care.
I have had a lot of unwilling students in my tutoring career. Many of them don’t want to be here. Many of them couldn’t be bothered to show up. Many of them don’t pay attention when I talk.
