Saving the earth, one ignored email at a time

Earth Day came and went past me like a bus boy at a truck stop diner this year. I forgot to dim my lights, I used my LCD projector to show Energizer bunny commercials so as to teach the power of refrain, and I had a second cheeseburger with my second cheeseburger for lunch.

So as far as reducing my carbon footprint goes, I was about as successful as Donald Trump using his helicopter to get his Frisbee off the roof of Trump Towers.

But I did pull off one minor success: I went the entire day without sending one email.
(Actually, it was Monday I pulled that off, not today. But let’s pretend it was today. That works better for me.)

My inbox is actually pretty sparse, but my deleted and sent folders are galling. There’s stuff in there that never heard of things like September 11, or YOLO. I mean, we’re talking ancient history. And every day that goes by, something else gets chucked in there, on the off chance that one day, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I might want to comb old messages for my favorite request to A/V for more thumbtacks.

I hadn’t checked for messages all weekend, so when I rolled in Monday morning, there were five or six emails sent by students inquiring about one thing or another: graded assignments, syllabus directions and so on. Feeling tired and bilious, I decided not to respond right away, but to wait instead, watching them roll into class, full of the questions and inquiries they’d been so eager to communicate to me over the holiday weekend. When I watched them slouch in and didn’t get any questions, however, I started to suspect that what had seemed so urgent over the weekend was not urgent at all upon the opportunity of communicating to me face to face. So I said nothing.

Then, about twenty minutes later, I got a note from a guidance counselor wanting to ask about a specific grade report on file. Nah, I thought contemptuously, I’ll ignore this for now. “For now” lasted all of twenty seconds; then I felt guilty and trekked down the hall to have it out with her face to face.

Then a coworker wrote, wanting to know about an assignment we were supposed to plan for next week. So rather than send it to her, I printed it out, walked it down the hall, and spent another ten minutes pleasantly ruminating over the verbiage and jeering at passers-by through the window.

Two more colleagues got visits in their rooms instead of emails (one of them had leftover Easter candy). Another student found me dropping by during lunch to give a makeup assignment, rather than email it to her. I think she was somewhat nonplussed when I sat down at her table. I also think her friends were peeved when I stole French fries off their plates. But whatever. Kids don’t know how to share.

And when another colleague started harassing me over instant messages, rather than join in like I usually do, I went the SNAIL mail route. I can only imagine how surreal it was. Picture teaching your own class, only to be interrupted by a student runner bearing a large inter-office envelope (the kind with the string that ties it shut; depending on how old the envelope is, you’d think it contained the Magna Carta or something). You stop whatever you’re doing and fumble the thing open, expecting to find a summons or incriminating pictures accompanying a demand for cash in unmarked bills.

Instead, my memo, scrawled on the back of a hall pass in Crayola:

“I’m bored, asshole. Entertain me.”

And at that point, we were off to the races. The paper trail was a mile long, but rest assured, there’s no digital residue to be subpoenaed later, and when I burn messages that invite sexual congress with the office supplies aisle in Osco, rest assured, they stay burned.

In short, I had six or seven face-to-face conversations I would not have otherwise had; I escaped the confines of my room for maybe half an hour more than I would have; I wiped out all records of my own miscreant behavior rather than trusting to the delete key; and not only did I do some preemptive reaching out to guidance and parents about struggling students, but I also managed to see old Mr. Sun while doing so. All by giving up on electronic messages.

Imagine what I’d accomplish if I gave up returning phone calls. We’d probably have a wing of the school named after me by now, and I'd be in jail.

Thankfully, there's no way they can look at my web history...right?