Mercifully, the school year ended right before I voluntarily fed myself head first into an industrial grade wood chipper. Obviously I refrained from doing this. Instead I met a bunch of my teacher friends for a Hallelujah!!! happy hour where some of us didn't leave until 11 p.m. and I may or may not have roofied myself with a combination of margaritas and extreme happiness bordering on delirium.
It was a l-o-n-g year, people, and I was one lunch duty away from Nutcase Ahoy! The Cloverfield Monster had nothing on the homeroom class assigned to me this year. The little blessings! *cough*
The day before the 5th grade promotion a student whose mother saw fit to name him after a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle accused another boy of "tea bagging" him, which turned out to be nothing more threatening than one fully clothed kid gleefully jumping over the seated body of another fully clothed kid who was trying to watch a movie. How happy I will be not to feel the need to take a Silkwood shower after work every day, which probably happens a lot when you suspect you're fighting a losing battle teaching subject-verb agreement to the next generation of Menendez brothers.
So... it's on to middle school in a completely different part of town. More Ellen Degeneres and less Jerry Springer. I get to dust off my adolescent psychology notes and try to reach my inner teen. That's the awesome one I wanted to be who could blow everyone's minds with her new crocheted vest, Love's Baby Soft-scented skin and mad spelling skillz, but whose "cool" was hamstrung mightily by the unforgiving trifecta of glasses, braces and white knee socks. Plastic framed glasses because the parents of yours truly believed only hippies wore wire framed glasses and wearing panty hose gave one the mistaken impression one was a grown up and--believe me young lady, being grown was apparently something that only happened when your parents decided that it happened. Until that time I was doomed to live out middle school as an AM girl in an FM world. A used plastic poncho in a roomful of London Fog raincoats. The lone can of Cheez Whiz next to the plate of gruyere. A lamer episode of McMillan & Wife when the world is all about Sherlock Holmes (Both Rathbone and Downey Jr. varieties) You get the idea.
So yeah....*whispers* it's summer. I've fantasized about this so many times I'm afraid of talking about it too loudly for fear that it's really just a dream. A dream where I awaken to find myself explaining for the eleventy hundredth time why wearing red pimp shoes is not part of the dress code and then attempting to sweat a confession out of a kid who is a destined to be a first round draft pick for Leavenworth and who will steal anything that isn't locked up claiming that he "found" it.
I've been rededicating myself to running sprints and practicing yoga because Spanx can correct only so much when you are pregnant with a 9-month old food baby which I can only blame on my stress diet of candy corn and alcohol. I am grateful for the available time to
In unrelated news I'm also cleaning out my bedroom closet in anticipation of the new duds I'll be able to buy with the 4% raise teachers in my district are getting after three years of bupkis and a crapton of excuses as to why insurance and cost of living continue to rise but our paychecks do not. I did the math and if I start buying my bras and underwear at the Dollar Store I'll j-u-s-t be able to spring for some new blouses from the 4th of July discount rack at CrackerBarrel. Or something equally classy.
Try to contain your jealousy.
You're giddy - I can tell. And I, too, have reached that point where Spanx alone will not do it.
ReplyDeleteDoing the Happy Dance for you here in Seoul. Thank God Americans still feel the need to follow a time-honored agricultural school schedule despite the fact most of us are no longer even distantly involved with agriculture and the children aren't needed during the summer for raking hay, picking corn and delivering calves (or whatever they did back in the day.) While I don't think your middle school job will provide the kind of pithy fodder we've all grown to anticipate here, I'm sure you'll find plenty of amusing observations to share. Your descriptions of your day-to-day experiences in the Hood remind me oh so much of my first 2 years of teaching at a middle school that was smack in the heart of the projects with all of the accompanying social ills. I was quickly jerked out of my idealistic fantasy world in the first week when an 11-year-old-boy graphically described some activities that he would like to engage in with me. (I'm pretty sure he learned the terminology from his father between stints in jail.) It was very sad - but, tragically, not surprising - when I read of his death in a gang shooting not even 6 years later. Here's to a restful summer and the smooth and uncomplicated delivery of your Food Baby.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you are happy to close that chapter of your life. I loved teaching suburban middle-school kids--especially the ones whose parents listen to NPR and buy them Nooks for birthday presents.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you've escaped from that school! Have a wonderful summer.
ReplyDeleteWhich teenage mutant ninja turtle? ;)