Reflections from the Artist Formerly Known as Tent Boy

by Rob Goodale



I am going to die, is what I told them, “them” being my exceedingly patient mother and father, both of whom had nervous smiles plastered across their faces. They had just finished the first leg of the forty-sixth iteration of the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, better known by its catchy acronym -- RAGBRAI -- which entails roughly five hundred miles on a bicycle but also every kind of homemade pie you can imagine and tenderloin sandwiches bigger than your head and a great deal of laughter and craft beer tents and spaghetti dinners hosted by churches in tiny Iowa farm towns and nights spent sleeping in a stranger’s backyard in a tent, which is where I come in.

Due to ligamental limitations, I was not medically capable of riding a bicycle for any mileage whatsoever, let alone seventy miles a day, every day, for a week. So instead, I drove a fifteen-passenger van from town to town as part of my parents’ team’s support crew, transporting gear and stocking coolers and, most crucially, putting up and taking down a dozen tents every day. These tents were all different shapes and sizes -- the dumbest one, by far, was pentagonal, for no good earthly reason other than to invite a penitential mood into the proceedings.

Quoting Coldplay isn’t a thing I would like to do in print very often, but since my pride is already shattered and lying on the side of a highway somewhere in Story County, here goes: when it comes to putting up and taking down a dozen tents every day for a week, nobody said it was easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard (that’s from The Scientist). I was woefully underprepared for this.

Mom and Dad had made the mistake of asking me how the tents went, which is when I told them that I was going to die. It had taken nearly five hours to put up all of the tents, and both my body and my spirit were on the verge of breaking. I could hardly walk. I was afraid to sit down because I was reasonably certain I would not be able to stand up. My hands, whose labor experience had previously been limited to turning pages in books and pouring whiskey into a glass, began shedding their outer layer of skin in an attempt to escape further punishment. About three hours in, I overheard my lower back, hamstrings, and quadriceps whispering to one another about unionizing and going on strike. Fortunately for me, they ran out of energy before they could launch a full-scale mutiny.

And yet, as they say in the movies about torture, it’s not the physical part that gets to you -- it’s the mental aspect. If my muscles and joints were creaking under the weight of menial labor, they were in mint condition compared to my mind, which was A, embarrassed to be so totally destroyed by such a simple task; B, terrified at the prospect of repeating the day’s misery another six times; and C, ten thousand percent sure that there was no way in a frozen hell I would be able to survive.

So, I told my parents I was going to die, and they both forced a chuckle with those nervous smiles still frozen on their faces, and I shuffled off to find a beer. Night came, and morning followed: the first day.

I drove that fifteen passenger van from the Mississippi River back to the center of the state, where my motley tribe makes its home. This drive presented ample opportunity for reflection (and also for rest, which was bad since I was alone in the van, and so was combated with cold brew coffee and sunflower seeds). I realized that the progression over my week as Tent Boy mirrored, in an uncanny way, the first stages of my career as a teacher.

And then something strange happened: I continued to do the work. Each day, the sun rose and cast its brilliant light on a job that seemed a shade less daunting than it had the day before. The blisters on my hands turned to calluses. I learned the proper pacing, both physically and mentally, to endure the work, and then to my utter amazement, to enjoy it. By Friday, I was actually sad that it was over.

In the weeks preceding the first day of class, people warned me that the first year of teaching was a gauntlet one could hope merely to survive. It is kind of them, I thought to myself, to try to lower my own expectations and do what they can to set me up for success, but I am a young person filled with zeal and so while perhaps these people found teaching hard, this is what I was made for, and I will surely not find it too difficult, is what I thought to myself, like an idiot.

I remember making it to the end of the first class of that day, wearied from the effort of keeping the attention of two dozen sixteen-year-olds for an hour, but generally pleased with myself. Then the bell rang, another thirty juniors poured into the room, and with them, a wave of panic as I realized I had to repeat what I had just done another four times before I could leave.

When three o’clock finally, mercifully arrived on that first day, my roommate and I shuffled wordlessly to our car, too tired to speak. Though I do not remember the homeward commute, I am convinced that we sailed above the crowd of cars on the interstate, carried by the angel of the Lord. We staggered up to our tiny apartment in a massive apartment complex and promptly passed out for about four hours. When we finally woke up, we each ate a small bit and, bewildered, tried in vain to imagine doing it all again the next day. But we did. And before long, we learned not only to endure the labor, but to enjoy it.

The first few steps of any endeavor bring with them a turnstile of exhilaration, dread, panic, and exhaustion, particularly when the new work is imbued with uncertainty, and even more so when it is work that is thrust upon us without our consent. It is acceptable, at the first opportunity for rest, to collapse in a heap of dying expectations and wounded ego -- to be expected, even.

But in due time, left foot follows right foot follows left, and the sun eases itself into prone position under cover of shimmering starlight, and leaves grow crisp and depart from their branches so that floral infants can blossom in their place. Filled with a nonnative strength and beckoned onward by love itself, we discover that nothing is ever quite as terrifying or impossible as it seemed at the outset, when we stood alone on the threshold of life.

As I packed away a dozen tents on Saturday for what will, in all likelihood, be the final time in my illustrious career, I marveled at what God hath wrought. Sure, it may be a bit foolhardy to scrutinize such a lowly exercise in search of deep meaning, but is that not the very reason the Word Became Flesh? To drench our world with a superabundance of grace, so much so that some may even be found in the midst of tents, bicycles, and beer?