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Training

It’s too early on a Tuesday
morning. The agency’s having
budget problems, they’re cutting
back on juice and fruit and the only
things on the table are coffee and tea,
bagels cut in half. The director
of our useless human resources
department is introducing the new
director of training. He’s wearing
a sports jacket, a brightly striped
wide tie. His smile is too big,
he’s talking too fast and he moves
around the room like Jerry Springer
on cocaine. Jesse comes from New
Hampshire and he’s of course
much too young to know anything
about anything that matters.

I’m trying to pretend I’m interested
in what he’s saying about seeing
the field and our consumers-yeah
that’s what we call them now-
in a whole new way. He wants
to give all group home managers
a context and races through a reader’s
digest version of the way society
has viewed them throughout history;
from being expelled in the dark
ages to benevolence and Christian
pity, to guinea pigs, Geraldo Rivera
and Willowbrook where half
of my guys spent their early years
all the way to today with community
inclusion and fantasies of normalcy.
He names causes, lists diagnoses,
asks for typical characteristics.

I know all this and none of it
has helped me or the six men
in my group home. Lee still never
wants to spend time with anyone,
Larry wears the same sweatshirt
every day and James still traces
endless circles. No matter how or why
they’re here, whether I call them
consumers, clients, or shake my head
when they do another nutty thing
and the thought, ‘crazy ass retard’,
flashes through my brain, I know
they’re a lot like me and it’s my job
to help make their world happier,
a bit bigger, day after day and I wish
this guy would shut up so I can grab
a bite to eat and go do my job.

  Tony Gloeggler