Pencils and notebooks

Maybe its the office supplies. The mechanical pencils and sheaves of speckled notebook paper, the ball point pens and highlighters. A sharpie or two. They jumble and toss in my messenger bag as I walk a mile to the squat yellow building where I will spend my day below fluorescent lights and a shiny white dry erase board. My Ipod touches off and I bury the earphones in my pocket as I walk through the door. I pull out my pencils and erasers, notebooks and calculator and set them on the formica coated desk in front of me. I may have bought my tools at an office supply store, but they are now school supplies.

I am rediscovering what I have always known, and which may or may not be related to my penchant for collecting post-its and pens:

I love school.

When I was in second grade I would race with David and Vu to see who could finish the math quizzes first. In eighth grade English I rose my hand to read Juliet while all the other kids stared out the window at the browning field or practiced that pen flipping over and under the fingers thing. Dr. History entertained me every afternoon in high school with his lectures that inevitably created a thick foam at the sides of his mouth, flecks of spittle flying into the front few rows at the mention of Gettysberg or the French and Indian War. I can't recall his name, which is actually quite fitting seeing as everything I learned in his class evaporated soon after taking the quizzes I aced with my selective etch-a-sketch memory.
Read the textbook, ace the quiz, give it a shake, American history disappears.

This time I want to shellac the knowledge into place. I want to keep these pathways growing, opening, sailing forward. Reinforcement, I tell myself, is key. Which means working on a boat. Which means being on the water. Which means everything that I want in this moment, right now, is in alignment. Except for the whole bigger purpose thing. But I figure that can wait til I get a decent suntan.
(Just kidding, this skin is blocked)

Or maybe this is the bigger purpose. Or...

Anyone got a yacht job before I go back to school again?