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Beau
These last few weeks of summer quickly fill up with memories that will last a lifetime.
While Mary goes to school to prep for classes to begin, I go over football strategies in my office downstairs. With the Language Arts department team leader as my girlfriend, I’m excused from the department planning sessions due to my football schedule.
Instead, we meet one-on-one for lunch in my office or on the field when the sun isn’t too blisteringly hot.
Between football practices, we take Micah and his friends to the city pool. Mary is super patient when parents or football fans come up to chat with me, but I try to keep those encounters short. I want my focus on her whenever possible.
One day while she’s busy with lesson plans, I make good on my promise. I have a sectional sofa—complete with cupholders, a remote holder, and an insulated cooler drawer—delivered to her house, surprising her that night. It takes up most of the living room, but no one seems to care.
Micah and his friends christen the new furniture with a movie marathon night one weekend. When Micah goes to his dad’s house the following weekend, Mary and I christen the sofa in our own way.
Micah, Mary, and I take the boys camping at Ratcliff Lake in the Davy Crockett National Forest one weekend. The weekend before school starts, there's a break in football practices. I rent a charter bus for the team and all of Micah's friends, and we live it up in San Antonio, where I treat everyone to as much wholesome revelry on the Riverwalk as they can stand.
Although my schedule is exhausting with two practices a day, and I’m barely sleeping on nights I spend with Mary, I’ve never been so happy. Not even at the height of my career with the Cowboys have I been this happy.
I give all the credit to Mary.
So when the first day of school rolls around, I feel good about things.
That day’s early morning football practice goes so well. I already know we’re going to destroy in our first Friday night game against Longview.
It’s not until I report to my classroom at 8 a.m. that I realize I have a problem. A really enormous problem.
About two dozen freshman teenagers are talking, shouting, laughing, and texting, and what am I doing? Standing at the door, looking in, realizing I do not have a lesson plan.
Fuck. I barely know what a lesson plan is.
I breathe and take a moment to pump myself up. This isn’t so bad. All I have to do is bullshit my way through day one. There’s no practice tonight, so I can quickly make up a lesson plan for the rest of the week, and it should be smooth sailing from there.
That’s it. That’s the plan. I can do this. How hard can this be? I’ll come up with a list of books to read and make them write reports on it. That’s all English class is, right?
Okay. Okay, Beau. You got this. Let’s go.
I walk into my class, and the room goes berserk.
I’m not proud of it, but the rest of that first hour is spent shooting the shit about football. Kids pepper me with question after question. What was it like playing for the Cowboys? Who was your closest friend on the team? Which Cowboy is the biggest jerk? Which one has the most followers on Instagram? How much did they pay me? Can they try on my Super Bowl rings?
In truth, most of the rest of the day goes like that.
And even that is exhausting. Despite my outgoing, slightly cocky nature, I don’t like talking about myself quite that much.
At the end of the day, I blow out a breath as the last class is dismissed at the bell.
“Where are you going? We have a team meeting.”
The question comes from one of the English teachers I haven’t met yet. Mary excused me from joining team meetings over the summer since most of the other teachers were available at times that conflicted with football practice.
Mary enters the conference room looking phenomenal in her first-day-of-school outfit. For her birthday, I took her to a museum in Dallas that she’d wanted to visit, then also insisted on a side trip to the Galleria for the actual present. She refused to let me buy her designer clothes, but she deserves them. We argued but finally settled on one outfit and two pairs of shoes. And obviously, I peeked at her size, went back to the same mall, and bought a bunch more clothes that I’m saving for Christmas gifts for Mary. Not that she doesn’t look gorgeous in her usual attire, but I can’t help but want her to have the best of everything.
Mary catches my eye across the conference room table, and I give her a wink. She blushes, though I’m sure it’s common knowledge among most people at the school that we’re dating.
“So, let’s go around and talk about our first day. What do we need to tweak? Karla, you go first,” Mary says.
I’m at a table with four other teachers, all seemingly on top of their game.
And now I’m wondering how in the hell someone handed me a teaching certificate? They are all using big educator words that I do not understand.
