Oh, Hi There

“Oh, hi there,” thirty-four-year-old-me says to me.

There is a mischievous look hidden behind those dark sunglasses. I recognize that shirt. Forty-five-year-old-me still has that shirt. Our friend Pierre gave it to us years ago. He bought it from a thrift-store. Pierre liked the vibe, but it didn’t fit him right.

That yellow shirt fits thirty-four-year-old-me better than it fits forty-five-year-old-me. So goes the passage of time, I suppose.

“Oh, hi there,” forty-five-year-old-me says to thirty-four-year-old-me.

Just two ships passing in the night.

***

My wife Katie sent me this image a few weeks ago. Old pictures show up on Timehop. Timehop is an app that, as the name suggests, allows a person to hop through time.

I feel like I’ve been hopping through time lately. Forty-five-year-old-me becomes thirty-four-year-old-me becomes twenty-two-year-old-me becomes seven-year-old me.

To quote the venerable American poet Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.

I am trying to write an honest book about teaching and learning with my friend Erin. We are writing in present tense. Even about things that happened twenty years ago. It is a wild process. Hopping through time and space. Returning to 2003. Returning to 1991. The book is all over the place, but I’m really excited about it. It feels vital. It feels honest. It feels unlike much of what I’ve read and written about the vital, honest, and urgently important work of teaching and learning. We contain multitudes.

I am eager to see what comes of our multitudinal book.

***

I was texting an old friend last week. It came up that girls we had crushes on in the 90’s probably don’t look the same.

“And how do you think we look?” he wrote back.

I laughed loudly.

Forty-five year-old me and thirty-four-year-old-me are not the same person. The same goes for twenty-two-year-old-me and seven-year-old me. No amount of exercise will bring twenty-two-year-old me back. No amount of dental work will ever erase twelve-year-old me’s buck teeth. And yet all of those me’s are here now, alive and well behind this sentence. There’s a degree to which I’m learning to welcome all of those people into this moment. Writing in the present tense. Making peace with past tense and letting future tense be whatever it will be.

There’s something healthy in the last sentence I wrote, I think, I still learning about what exactly it is.