Our Fearless Leader

 This, in more of a Pilgrim's Progress sort of way, is what my 2nd grade teacher looked like. Even for a rule follower like myself, Mrs. Roach could be and was frequently terrifying.

A stern, pale, and skull-faced woman of late middle age who pulled her hair back in a no-nonsense bun, my teacher wore what were commonly referred to as "cat eye" glasses and her mouth was a horizontal slash of red, courtesy of the House of Avon. She wore dresses with slips underneath, silk hose and high heels with pointy toes. Every single day.  Mrs. Roach pulling her Pontiac into the teacher's parking lot in a pair of stretch pants would have have been no less shocking than discovering an aproned minotaur in a hairnet serving up tater tots in the cafeteria on Hamburger Day.

When it was time for math, you did not ask why and then pretend to lose your pencil. You had at least five other Eberhard Fabers (always sharpened) in the "side pocket" of your desk which you lined with a brown paper towel so that pencils and crayons didn't fall through the holes. When it was time for handwriting, you did not cleverly substitute the capital "S" in your last name with a treble clef  (even though they sort of looked the same) unless you wanted it circled in red pen with a note to erase and do it over. When it was time to read aloud, you did so in hopes of hearing a "Nicely done!" before she selected another victim student.  That was high praise enough. We didn't need or expect a 21 gun salute and an application to MENSA.

When accused of chewing gum in her class you did not roll your eyes and say, "I don't HAVE any gum" in an exasperated tone which--although-- technically true because you were chewing something, it wasn't gum. It was Captain Crunch. Because you didn't have breakfast that morning (As if that was somehow her problem or responsibility. But go ahead and suggest to her that it was her responsibility and then wait for the Apocalypse.) Better yet, have your parent do it. Same result.

You did not try to be the class clown by burping words to the Pledge of Allegiance or ask her if this was her "real hair" or if she dyed it.  When she asked for your homework you did not fix her with a smarmy grin and tell her you didn't do it because "I was busy".  The only notes you wrote in class had damn well better be from the assignment on "How to Write a Letter To a Friend" and not to your actual friend who had a different teacher altogether who wouldn't have cared if that same friend spent a brief moment of class time reading your synopsis of last night's episode of "The Monkees".

If you were told to carry a sealed envelope home to your parents, you were clueless about its contents and you did not ask. It could have been a letter about a PTA matter or a request to have you publicly flogged. It mattered not because it wasn't any of your damn business because it wasn't addressed to you and hiding it for two weeks inside your copy of Encyclopedia Brown wasn't going to make it go away.  Later, your parents weren't ever going to go all Liza Minnelli crazy when questioning Mrs. Roach like she was at her own trial because you didn't bring the note home. Why?? Because that was a parenting issue and your parents--God love them--were smart enough to know it.  However, your ass would be--as they say--grass even though the note was about being a homeroom mother, you paranoid maniac.

Had the internet existed back when you were a kid, Mrs Roach would have been listed on Wikipedia as the country's seventeenth line of defense. Just ahead of the Boy Scouts.

Mrs. Roach was a teacher, not a convenient doormat to be stepped on by lazy-ass parents who expected her to offer free tutoring for class days missed because of a surprise birthday trip to Carlsbad Caverns which necessitated lying about being sick for two days so that it would be excused. She wasn't about to be trifled with or disrespected during professional development seminars by being asked to remove her teacher hat for the day and pretend to be a student learning the same shit she was already teaching in real class. One didn't tell Mrs. Roach that she would be taking and grading work from any and all children who had sufficient time to turn in their assignments but didn't do so....for five weeks.

And if someone told her that she would be expected to tiptoe around a mentally ill student who hears voices that tell her to do bad things and if said student was demonstrating those bad things in class and began to otherwise act strangely like having a conversation with her own shoe, and that she--Mrs. Roach-- was required to halt the educational process for everyone else in the class, hit the panic button on the wall and then step ALONE(?) into the hall with said mentally ill student and wait until help came? Well...Mrs. Roach would have poured those people a big old glass of OH HELL NO and stood calmly while they drank it down with a side of KISS MY ASS cookies. Guaranteed Mrs. Roach did not have to aid her nightly sleep with  five melatonin and a martini chaser because even though she was required to dress like June Cleaver and she was paid like crap and the moral turpitude clause in her contract prohibited her from being seen buying or consuming alcohol, she was respected. By everyone. Or they did a really good job at pretending. Period.

It's not hard to see why my colleagues and I look wistfully into the rearview mirror and sigh before pouring ourselves another stiff drink. Even on a good day, I'm forced to behave less like Mrs. Roach and more like the friendless kid who converses with her sandwich. We live in an era where teachers are everyone's whipping boy and--like my friend Nance says, no one's boss. I live for the days when I can say "no" or "yes" and actually be granted permission to follow through on my own decisions. Sure, I'm allowed to wear pants, but only in the literal sense. Never in the figurative.

But I can hoist a glass and so I do. Here's to you, Mrs. Roach.

Crumbs

1) I get bored easily and a fresh blog look can often bring me back to the keyboard. You're welcome.

2) I modeled a love for books with all of our children and--as a teacher of middle and high school English--I'm called upon to practice what I preach. Unfortunately, the demands of my job don't allow for reading anything pleasurable between the hours of  5:45 am until 6:00 pm, which are the hours when I'm most likely teaching or grading. After 6 I'm trying to eat, take in a yoga class or sleep. Today I took a "personal day" which entailed two doctor's appointments, paying bills, doing dishes, grocery shopping and attending a mid-day yoga class. Also? I read. Some. It was lovely. Because I did not go to work.


3) I love the show "Parenthood", but I don't think Kristina Braverman should run for mayor of Berkeley on the Education platform because I'm bored with that plot line, but in real life it's realistic. Want to know why? Because politicians don't know crap about schools and they only wind up making stuff worse. The only people who have any influence to move shit around are parents, which is unfortunate and the reason for that is because districts are deathly afraid of lawsuits. Want to turn on-level literacy classes into a hot stew of varying abilities/diagnoses/learning levels where only one teacher is expected to serve everyone? Ask a parent. So you say downtown hasn't addressed the broken HVAC issue at your school? Ask a parent (because you know damn well they don't care if the teachers are uncomfortable). Want to bring a visit to the modern art museum to a grinding halt because you're afraid that your baby might see a picture of a naked body? Ask a parent. I could go on...but I won't. Whining makes me tired. And I'm okay with somebody addressing the temperature controls in my classroom.

4) Growing up I watched "Room 222" on ABC and dreamed of teaching at Walt Whitman High. I never suspected that I would be teaching high school level English years later in a futuristic building where kids would never know know who Walt Whitman was were it not for their enthusiasm for Walter White aka Heisenberg.

5) I dreamed about Islamic Jihadists last night and how they were attacking random suburban neighborhoods with guns. In one dream I saw that they had killed Walter White. I really need to watch what I eat/drink before I go to bed.

6)  Turning the pages of an e-book is not the same thing as turning them in a real book. Maybe that makes me a dinosaur.

7) This year is so much better than last year as far as school goes. I have some awesome students and my teacher-peeps are wonderful. However, I've traded my wonderful former principal for one whom I don't trust and parents who "helicopter" constantly if they think their baby isn't being served as one might a reigning monarch of a European principality.

8) I am the oldest person in the English department.  In many ways it makes me smarter, but it also makes me feel self-conscious. Especially when I look in the mirror.

9) I  don't know how to end this post. Someone help me.

Work Email In Box:

Dear Teachers

It has come to our attention that some of you feel your 30 minute duty-free lunch is being compromised when parents show up for unscheduled conferences while you are eating.  Please know that while we support your right to a noon meal 100%, we hope you will still make every visitor to our building feel welcome by addressing their requests in an interested and efficient manner. If you feel such an encounter has unnecessarily intruded on your private moment with last night's reheated leftovers, keep a strict accounting of your missed minutes, enter them onto an Excel spread sheet of your own making,  submit it to our already overworked secretary and she will repay your lost time with a 50% OFF coupon for dry erase markers. Please do not remove any school-funded supplies from campus.  

Thanks for all you do!!
__________________________________________________________________________

 Faculty:

To ensure that every learning day is focused on teaching excellence from "bell to bell", we discourage any teacher-led activity which might distract from the objectives at hand. We must teach to the test ready our students for the end of the year and all that this entails. Please refrain from imparting information which isn't covered on the test is not expressly mentioned in the curriculum. We LOVE it when you are creative, however content which veers sharply from tested materials targeting the intended concepts does not contribute to an optimal learning environment. Every classroom minute counts!!

Additionally--we ask that, following the Pledge of Allegiance, the state pledge, school pledge and  moment of silence, you devote a consistent part of each and every morning to a student uniform check, chewing gum check, attendance check and tardy count. Please help the office clerk by collecting the brown Beginning of Year envelopes containing emergency cards, free lunch forms, media release, home language survey and PTA membership form. Use the attached spread sheet to record forms turned in and keep track of all forms not signed or turned in. Please do this every day.

REMEMBER! MANY HANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK!!!!

________________________________
URGENT TO ALL TEACHERS!

  Students may not carry a backpack to class after the first week of school. If a student persists on bringing the backpack to class and you feel you MUST confront student, you must lawyer up first contact parent (phone/email/conference) for permission to enforce a district/school/classroom policy. We repeat: Parents must be totally cool with any rule you are required to uphold before you can go forward with it. After you have received approval, wait one week for angry parent to go over your head to call downtown and complain. Then, check the computer system for evidence of a 504, IEP or BIP which might provide the student with special permission to carry one of the following: blackjack  (sorry...this is currently not yet approved) backpack, emergency water, emergency Gatorade, low blood sugar snacks, emergency candy, cell phone, inhaler, epipen, hand-held/battery-controlled fan (for hot days!), small pillow (for sleepy days!), iPod (comforting music for those with anger issues), worry rock, pet rock, Rubik's Cube, ice pack. Please attempt to address these issues outside of class. It's all about the learning!!!!

DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU'RE OUR HERO??????
_______________________________________________________
Faculty and staff:

Students may not be allowed in hallways before 8:30 a.m!!  This is a safety issue and it is of the utmost importance that we work together to discourage loitering, isolated moments between adolescent students, potential vandalism or theft. Students must have an official pass from a teacher before being allowed to enter the school during non-instructional hours. Of course, some exceptions can be made. For your convenience we have provided a list of those students who may not be approached or questioned about their presence in the hallways during non-instructional hours:

*Students with a pass signed by a teacher
*Students who had a pass signed by a teacher and then lost it
*Band students
*Choir members
*Students being tutored.
*Students who say they are being tutored but you know damn well it's a lie.
*Students whose mothers are on the PTA board and get testy when you don't let their children retrieve their cheerleading "pom-pons" from their lockers.
*Cheerleaders
*Spirit Team
*Coach's "helpers"
*Team managers
*Any female student claiming she is having her period. (Do not confront!!)
*Students retrieving instrument from locker
*Students placing instrument in locker by mistake and then coming back again to get it.
*Students with no pass but whose indignant parent is accompanying them.
**6th grade peer tutors
**7th grade free breakfast eaters
**8th grade Whiz Quiz kids
*White Board Monitors.
*Office Assistants
*New students
*Any student with a mysterious rash needing to see the nurse.
*Angry parents with no appointment and a small-caliber weapon.

All others must remain outside until bell rings!!

TEACHERS!!  YOU'RE THE WIND BENEATH OUR WINGS!!! SERIOUSLY!!!

_________________________________________

Note from Attendance Clerk:

Some teachers are still not pausing to take electronic roll every class period!! Dammit, people!!
The following teachers are screwing it up for the rest of us:

Coach Jones
Coach Shannon
Coach Tribble
Coach Mayhew
Coach Overton
Coach Longstreet-Preston
Coach Hayes
Mrs. Peckinpaugh

____________________________________________________________
FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT TO ALL TEACHERS:

It has come to our attention that your respective unions have advised teachers to question the seemingly mountainous amount of clerical paperwork being required of them. While it is true that such work was previously the domain of office staff members at the campus level, budget cutbacks demand that these tasks fall on the apparently too-delicate shoulders of our teaching compatriots. My bad!

 In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act we are now obligated to work around any and all legal prohibitions by limiting your paper workload to only those tasks which are directly relevant to the teaching day (ie: student work, grade book, lesson planning tools/forms and professional training materials).

If you feel unnecessary paper duties have been thrust upon you, please record any and all incidents (including date, time, place, reason, person who asked you and a detailed account of the paperwork's educational value) on an Excel spreadsheet of your own making. Please make extra copies for your records as well as those for your campus as well as one for me. Please submit the entire packet to your principal in person. You'll be sorrrryyy! And then wait.

REMEMBER: THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US MAKES US STRONGER!

Yours for the children,
Superintendent Clay

Why Aunt Bea Can't Make Pickles (And Other Mysteries of My Summer)

Some of you don't know this yet, but you make a lot promises to yourself once you anticipate the heady cocktail that is equal parts Empty Nest Syndrome and Public School Teacher's Summer Vacation. On paper, however, it looks like the last and very sad Bucket List of a person who aims only for the lowest hanging fruit, due to its complete lack of anything interesting or worth doing. Of course, it must also be said that this same list was compiled by a shell shocked adult who spent the last 10 months waiting for permission to use the bathroom. Because they were serving time in the pen busy teaching someone's littlest angel how to read or multiply. It bears consideration. Be gentle with me.

So this might explain how some of the following items--both crucial and trivial--landed on my Summer "To Do" list.

1) Start running again. Let's avoid a legalistic application of the word running since that conjures unnecessarily flattering visuals of Jackie Joyner Kersee which don't apply to me. What I'm doing involves walking the curving portions of the nearby university's track complex and then sprinting the "straights". Who are we kidding? It's less like sprinting and more like hurrying. Carefully. As if I am carrying a priceless crystal bowl filled with angrily swimming piranha. It's all about the baby steps.

2) Blogged more. Uh...next?

3) More yoga. I absolutely have begun practicing more than ever before. Somewhere between 5-6 classes per week. Flying Scissors, anyone?

4) Read more books. Before summer happened, I ritually blamed work for getting in the way of my lifelong book habit. Once I packed up my old classroom, I've found that I can point an accusing finger at Facebook, blogs (other people's...not mine) and my oldest friend--television-- for drastically impeding  my literary intake this summer. I think I read 13 books last summer and I only read 10 this time around. However, it's important to remember that blogs are writing and all television is also writing except you read it with your ears, so we're all even on that count.

5) Buy all new school clothes/shoes. I've found a couple of clothing websites that seem to comply with our district's new "work appropriate"jihad style prohibitions prescription for teachers. My personal version is a hybrid of casual and professional while also being comfortable. Not quite pajama comfortable so I appear to be settling in on the sofa with a tube of raw cookie dough waiting for a "Facts of Life" marathon, but definitely something that works for me mainly because I don't want to cry when I put it on. Now all I have to do is find footwear that does the same. Unfortunately, our district seems to be conflicted as to appropriate foot coverings for teachers during the hellishly hot months of August and September (also April, May and June). The arguments over, "Is it a sandal or is it a flip-flop?" have shamefully dominated more administrative meetings in our area than I care to count.  I'm going to let those jagweeds downtown worry about whether my shoes slap my heels when I walk across the room or whether they have a strap across the back or are mostly made out of rubber. I've too busy teaching my 8th graders about the importance of Atticus Finch as a male role model.

6) Changed the batteries in my bathroom scales. Something's afoul with those scales and I'm tired of having a bi-polar experience every time I step on them. One minute the numbers on the digital read out would suggest that I have a couple of anvils stuffed into my pants pockets. Five minutes later I have apparently lost the kind of weight that it would take three violent bouts of food poisoning and a water pill to pull off. It's maddening.

7)  Make homemade salsa. Since February, I have had Pinterest-infected hallucinations where I am making my own salsa and then getting so good at it that by Christmas, I have only to invest in a few dozen Ball jars and some festive ribbon to have my yearly neighbor/friend holiday gift conundrum solved. Unfortunately, this seemingly simple and enjoyable project has proved a bridge too far for yours truly. Not only have I not done this or even looked into what making it might entail, but I haven't even used the food processor this summer. It's too much like cooking and with the current heat wave afflicting our state, the mere thought makes my brain all hurt-y.

8) Pervasive Mystery A: After a comprehensive study of "The Andy Griffith Show" involving TVLand's Morning Lineup and my own boxed sets of Seasons 1-4, I have come no closer to understanding why Opie Taylor's Aunt Bea can fry a chicken, mash a potato, serve up buttery homemade biscuits and bake the hell out of a pie, but can't seem to make a decent pickle that doesn't taste like it was boiled in a pot of ant spray. It's a real puzzler.

9) Pervasive Mystery B: Why is it that every time I stumble across unwarranted and hostile diatribes written by Facebook trolls, they are almost always rendered in the most excruciatingly inarticulate examples of spelling, grammar and basic punctuation. "YOUR AN IDOIT AND I BLAM ALL THE WORLDS TORNADOSS ON OBAMA. IT HIS FALT THE FLOODS TO  AND U CAN CHEK IT ALL ON SNOPS COUSE IT ALL TRUE." 

I'd cry if I weren't already laughing so hard.  What did you do this summer?

Coal Miner's Prom Date

Nothing says "A Wedding on Walton's Mountain" like the dress I wore to someone else's prom. It was a long time ago and I probably should have apologized to my date for looking like an escapee from Warren Jeffs' Yearning For Zion Family Incarceration Facility and General Store, but shopping with my mother always did tend to urge me into regrettable impulse purchases. My dress was a prime example.

Somewhere deep in the many reorganized photo albums my mother has squirreled away in my childhood bedroom closet is a picture of my washed out self posed with my date who was really a nice guy and didn't deserve to have his senior prom immortalized with a girl who had all the pallor of someone who had recently donated blood. Add to the horror the fact that I had no one to counsel me about what a bad idea it was to choose a dress inspired by my lengthy and ill-advised "beige period" when my naturally pale skin had not yet accumulated enough pigment to distinguish me from a tall glass of Cream of Wheat. The dress was long and it covered up all my lady parts and that was good enough for my mom. I'm just fortunate that it didn't come with a matching bonnet.  Because my Southern Baptist mother might have insisted on it. Bless her heart.

This is not my dress, but it is made by the same virginity preserving label and it has many of the same features.

I can't unsee this! Ever!! Damn you, Gunnesax!!

You know how you can get all nostalgic about the past and start daydreaming about certain articles of clothing that you wish you could still wear although they are no longer something you could shoehorn your ass into fashionable? Me too. There's the silvery gray corduroy jumper that I wore in middle school. The mulberry colored jersey top I wore with the matching hip huggers from the 5-7-9 Shop. The oatmeal sweater with the roomy pockets and the black and putty ESPRIT blouse that I wore when I first started teaching. I'm sorry I threw that last item. I could probably still make it work.

It goes without saying that I do not miss that prom dress. At all. Not the way it looked all limp and uninteresting on the hanger or how ghastly and I looked when I was wearing it. Oh sure, it might come in handy if I moved in next door to Loretta Lynn and she needed something to see her through until laundry day. Maybe if I decided to audition for the Grand Old Opry or a starring role in the broadway production of Willa Cather's "O Pioneers!" But not until then.

I really thought that my own prom the following year would have provided the chance to make fashion restitution, but it didn't. I had a new boyfriend by then who was away at college and could not make it back for my big event. He helpfully granted permission for me to ask his friend, Alan to escort me. Alan was a short, gopher-toothed young man of good intentions who wore his bell bottomed jeans "flood style" with hideous man-sandals and wool-ish tunics and who sprinkled his conversation with cringeworthy terms like supposably and pacifically (As in: I never got to wear a decent prom dress that looked as though it was made for me, pacifically).

The lady or the tiger? The memories of my first prom marred by a terrible dress OR my own special night made worse by a date with Samwise Gamgee?? I chose the former. And that, as Robert Frost so wisely said, has made all the difference.

What article of old clothing do you miss??

A Swing and A Miss: Failed Blogposts I Never Actually Wrote Concerning Embarrassing Stuff I'd Rather Forget

One would think that with the wealth of free time I currently have on my hands ---summer vacation from teaching, kids no longer living at home, a clearer mind thanks to a brief respite from stress-induced impulse drinking...and...a laptop at the ready---I'd have written a long novel's worth of carefully crafted posts all published with the appropriate title Magna Carta Holy Grail but Kanye West totally scooped me on that front. However, it must be said that Kanye's reasons for using such a lofty title probably have more to do with the enormity of his ego and mine is just a symbolic accounting for the many, m-a-n-y times a day I thought about writing, said I was going to, and then... did not.

Oh...the promises I made to myself all those times I avoided potential parent contacts by hiding under my desk I was too busy with work related nonsense and now I've let myself down again! I don't think I'm alone when I say that the creative juices really do flow best when you're drunk you're too busy to do anything worthwhile with the ideas they bring forth. And I had some ideas, though upon later examination they seemed mostly to follow an unsettling theme illustrating my majestic lack of common sense at various junctures of my life. Such as:

*The semester I was a "walk on" on the college track team because I was somewhat faster than many of my non-runner friends and because my experience with actual athletes was...how we say...non existent? I thought that I, with my whippet-thin body and "Elmo arms" that had lifted nothing heavier than a dictionary,  would have no problem in being equal to everyone who had been running competitively since the invention of movies with sound. The willingness to have faith in oneself is important, but it is clear that it must also be grounded in some kind of reality. Obviously, I had not learned this yet. Oh, the hubris of youth!

Which is why during the inter-squad meet I didn't know enough to wear shorts under my thin white sweats, which were to be removed before we got into the starting blocks. I had to run in the sweatpants, which looked awkward not only because I looked like a white balloon in motion, but also because my bright pink underwear could be seen through the pants--not by only by those running nearby, but also from any low flying aircraft overhead. Also? I was the last one on my squad to cross the finish line.


*There was the time that I--in a fit of young teenage angst--possibly over dramatized the familial dysfunction that was going on inside my childhood home and wrote a lengthy and detailed letter to the advice columnist at Seventeen Magazine. Cut to a few months later when I get an envelope addressed to me from the magazine and a letter inside advising me and the fellow maniacs in my family to seek professional help posthaste. This was problematic for several reasons: 1) My mother did not allow me to read the magazine because--choosing to believe as she did a literal interpretation of its audience--decided I had to actually BE seventeen in order to be a legal member of its target demographic. Therefore, she could never know that I had written them in the first place, which was difficult since I was not of an age where I got personally addressed mail at my home unless it was my birthday.  2) I couldn't remember exactly what I had said (Had I exaggerated or not??) in the letter that had touched off the clear concern this stranger had for me, and 3) I was confused and afraid that--just perhaps--my family was crazy and now someone outside our family unit knew and would tell everyone.

It is my personal belief that the origins of my perforated gastric ulcer from three years ago can be  traced to the moment immediately after I received that letter.

*There was also the time when, in a fit of good will for my fellow human, I was so moved by a lonely young man's Dear Abby letter that I decided to write him at the address he provided. Because he was lonely and sad. And (You've got mail!!) he wrote back!!!! From his cell at the state penitentiary!! Did I know he was in prison when I wrote to him?? Incredibly, the answer to this question is yes.  Because I had been so chatty about myself in my letters about what I did and where I lived, my new jailbird pen pal began talking about what I might do to help him reacclimate whenever he got out. You know...maybe my dad could get him a job or something!?  This unforseen turn of events would have necessitated having to tell my very strict father (Whom we sometimes referred to as Captain Von Trapp.) that I had helpfully provided an incarcerated man with information about our family. That I had thought writing to a prisoner AT ALL was a good idea would have seemed to them beyond the scope of understanding. Let alone that this idea, apart from all other worthwhile things in my life that I should have followed through on, was the one that took root inside my hormonal mind.

Tragically, there are plenty more stories like this and I suppose they could serve as an embarrassing reminder of how stupid I was and for how long I remained that way. Or I could decide to focus on the fact that I did eventually turn into a relatively normal person with a miraculously amazing family and a decent work ethic and not a walking cautionary tale. People grow up and they get smarter in the process. Most of them, anyway. But they, like me, have a secret list of horrific missteps to remind them of when this wasn't always the case. Even today, and just to be safe, I never wear white pants...with anything.

And then...

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 give birth get fit.  I've also dived head first into the Jenga tower of books on my bedside table, the best part of which is that no characters in any of these volumes tries to axe anyone else a question and none of them are on the Newberry list.

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.