Finding a Cloud in the Silver Lining

I have not yet received word on where I will be teaching.  Although the vast majority of the teachers will be placed in the bustling cultural Mecca of Abu Dhabi, some of the teaching jobs are way out in the rural desert, hundreds of kilometers away from the high-rise apartments, pools, and jetsetters here in the city.  

A vast expanse of barren wasteland sits between here and those jobs on the “western edge” where the undeveloped land is still sheathed in hot sand and the water trickles out of faucets with all the force of a racing snail.  It is the stickless version of the sticks.  And until I get placed, I am confined to this 5-star purgatory, hoping that I do not get placed out there. 

But all of this idling has given me ample opportunity to pursue one of my favorite pastimes.  Worrying.  Worrying about the whatifs and whatwills.  What if I’m placed on the western edge instead of in the city?  What will my apartment be like?  What if it’s squalid? What if I have to ride a camel to school instead of a new car?

It’s always been a practice of mine to worry – to run every possible worst-case scenario through that theater screen in my mind.  Through this method, I am allowed the uniquely exasperating privilege of turning an otherwise fond experience into a damnable catastrophe. 

My grandmother, a renowned worrier herself, taught my father to worry, and he graciously passed it along to me.  When I was a boy playing at Grandma’s house, even the small, shallow fishing pond in the pasture behind her house hosted a multitude of perils. 

That benign little fishing puddle evoked all kinds of worrisome dread because what if you fell in and miraculously happened to cramp up on account of the small snack you ate less than 15 minutes ago?  I could see Grandma’s gears working as the murky pond floor in her mind managed to grip and suck at, not just my feet but my arms, thereby immersing my young face into 3 feet of deceitfully amiable waters.  Drowning was inescapable.  Every scenario Grandma played out in her head led to my certain death. 

My father, who inherited her worrying gene, was able to suppress it slightly better than my Grandmother, although he refused to let me cut anything with a knife until I was well out of college. Upon seeing me prepare food on the cutting board, he would run up behind me to snatch away the knife because he worried that a detached bloody finger mixed in with the eggplant was inevitable. 

Even now, when I help Mom with the cooking, Dad will sit in his kitchen chair peering out over his Reader’s Digest to watch me cut vegetables, and I can see him wince every time the knife slides into the cutting board. 

While I should be floating around at this hotel’s multi-level pool with the assurance that I’ll have a great experience teaching and learning wherever I am placed, I find myself milling in a worrisome circle around my computer opening my email every 18 seconds or so to see if I’ve received a placement.  Will I be in beautiful Abu Dhabi City or in the arid version of Iowa without all that picturesque corn? 

I suppose worrying has to carry with it some sort of evolutionary benefit, but I don’t see how. Imagine Ughbot, the thick-browed caveman…

He worry about being eaten by big mean saber tooth so he sit on rock in cave all day make sure no get eaten Tummy rumbling Ughbot hungry but no get food because maybe saber tooth hungry too. 

But then doesn’t Ughbot die of starvation and leave this world without any progeny to carry on his worry gene, because he’s too worried about tigers to risk going out for food?

Or maybe a daring little cavegirl strolls confidently into Ughbot’s cavern in her scandalous fur lingerie, unafraid of the outside world, and once inside – she gives Ughbot the hot steamy chance to pass on his gene, although it will be slightly diluted by her primitive bravado?

However it happened, that irksome gene managed to survive from Ughbot, to Grandma, to Dad, and now to me.  It has fully expressed itself in the Showalter family, but perhaps the gene will die with me.  After all, every time I entertain the idea of having my own family, the idea is accompanied by anxiety, worry, and panic.  Now, to check my email - to see if all my worry about being placed in the western edge is merited.