The Dean Of Infinite Second Chances

The guitar was beautiful jumbled noise, not hard to define, and not hard to hear. It was crisp, like a winter breeze. We were down in front, right next to the huge speaker towers you see at concerts, the ones that make you hard of hearing.

"Huh?" he yelled, hardly glancing over.

"How's your back?"

"What?" The guitars had muffled my question unheard.

I asked again, louder.

"Ha! Cervical Spine Surgery is no three-day recovery!"

The Dean had undergone the procedure just a week prior, and he bobbed to the tunes a bit lighter than usual.

The song ended with a huge bang of drums and clashes of cymbals. The Dean of Infinite Second Chances quit bobbing up and down gingerly, as the band yelled, "See y'all in twenty minutes! A pause for the cause!"

The Dean and I walked, slowly, to an exit at the far corner of the gym floor. He looked at the cloud forming outside.

"Concerts and smoke, always together," I said.

We walked past the gymnasium wall windows, the neon still pouring out. We had about fifteen minutes, and so I dug in.

"How was your summer?"

"Summer is great, as always. It's not just the weather, I love the faces. The chatter."

We stopped, and The Dean leaned gently on a lightpole. I leaned up against the building.

"What did you do this summer? I mean, you're always busy. Tell me!," I exhaled the question like the young smokers, exhaling tobacco and weed, fifty feet away.

A young couple in red leather, walking past, smiled at us, as The Dean began. "It's a macro approach to education, and about quality rather than quantity."

"You always work while on summer vacation?"

He laughed, rolling his head back, but not to far. I could see he was stiff. The surgery had slowed him down, albeit very slight.

The large brick building, across the sometimes busy street we stood on, had foreign lettering.

"What do you think it says?" I asked.

"A favorite line in something I read," The Dean answered, "asks, 'Do we learn things to make us better?'"

I knew what he meant, that we just don't know. But we can, if we make the effort to learn.


"I went to a conference," The Dean said as we walked a few paces, "and I went to a tattoo parlour."

"And surgery too," I added. "Busy busy."

"Mexico too, but that was December. A six-hour-a-day Spanish language school."

The crowd at the door, in spite of the huge smokecloud still looming, had grown thin.

"We should go back in," I said, thinking about The Dean and the music.

He stopped, and watched a 1950s looking bus roll by.

"I would drive that."

"You would rock that."

"It's not real 'goal orientated.'"

I laughed, and The Dean continued as we were walking again.

"At El Bee, we want a clear focus on goals. We want to ask, 'How successful are our students after they leave?' We as administrators, want education to be associated with a strong local economy."

The music had began again. This time with a screeching, piercing guitar. The smoke outside had cleared, as we walked back inside the red and green and blue neon.

ARE YOU READY DEAN! The band played and pointed at the The Dean.

"You again?" The Dean asked me.

"Yeah, I told them you were here and that they are your favorite."

"I'm a deep believer in redemption, so I imagine I'll get over it."

"Of course you will," I replied, yelling again, "you are The Dean of Infinite Second Chances!"

Photos and story COPYRIGHT RONALD BORST