One of the things Claudia the peace maker reminded me of was that our infighting on the School Board detracted from our mission to educate children. I could not deny this. We are a bunch of asses. And yet, as I told Art Johnston a couple days ago I’ve never met anyone on a school board who didn’t want the best for children in the schools no matter how grievously Mark Twain bad mouthed the collective whole of a school board. And yet, I also told Art that our school board has become much less than the sum of its parts.
By the way, that last line is a play on words. One idea in the world of psychology is Gestalt theory. It holds that some things are greater than the sum of its parts. Taken more broadly, one example might be an army. Its parts are frail individual soldiers, Taken together they are mightier than the worth of all those frail individual members added up.
As one fellow from the Bible made his points with parables and my hero made his points with humorous stories much to the annoyance of his Secretary of War who couldn’t abide listening to them I make mine with metaphors. They pop in my head during conversations and I often use them to break up the especially intense ones.
I met with the Superintendent Wednesday ( a post to follow) and he told me that while he often found my metaphors hard to decifer he also found them amusing. During that conversation he told me how powerless he was to control the School Board and I replied that he must feel like a tin can tied to the bumper of a car that said “just married” on it. Yes, he told me he felt just that way.
In like vein I was talking to Art Johnston this week and told him we were just like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the movie when they were trying to escape from a posse. They were poised on a cliff with nowhere to run when Butch suggests they jump to safety in the river below them:
Butch Cassidy: Alright. I’ll jump first.
Sundance Kid: No.
Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first.
Sundance Kid: No, I said.
Butch Cassidy: What’s the matter with you?
Sundance Kid: I can’t swim.
Butch Cassidy: Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you.
Sundance Kid: Oh, shit…
I think my recent description of the reporting of the Superintendent’s assault as being like the story of Chicken Little is particularly apropos. Yesterday before the 10,000 words evaporated I had several more examples to mention.
For my next post I’ll jump from metaphor to story telling mode to describe why I think our school board tiff might finally be buried after a long half year.
