A Day in the Life

A purple thick haze tinged with gray at the edges, billowing violently as though a thunderous bass drum forced it along a brisk 4-count--that’s what you’d see if you had a microscope with a teeny thingamabob that could get into my ear canal. Yup. 

By the way, the bass is for rhythmic effect, not because I have a headache. I rarely get headaches, strangely enough. I’m a gal with rhythm; it doth move me so. Purple is a deep fave also.  

That aside, I think the value of Hump Day is commensurate with the Hump you have to get over, but I’m still working that out in my head. Yesterday I expunged two loudly bickering boys from my class, which prompted one to call his mommy, and that began a chain of events I’ll get back to in a moment. After the class from which I expunged the bickerers it was lunchtime, but instead of tending to that small but important affair I was hustled into a meeting I barely knew the purpose of only to learn that the meeting’s leader was in the same predicament. It ended with “tomorrow is up in the air (which turned out to be only somewhat true); I’ll have to get back to you.” 

Immediately after that I went to the office to call the mom of the bickerers (one of whom was already alerted by her child, if you recall), but just as I lifted the phone receiver, I was whisked once again to another meeting with the mom of the calling bickerer, who had worked herself into a lather and made her way onsite to sort out this business of her son being ejected from class. Oh boy.

Into that meeting I went with as much briefing as a quick stroll down two hallways with a naturally fast walking dean (who summoned me) will allow. The mom’s voice emanated from the dean’s office--probably not at full register but definitely unavoidable--as I approached. Because her child had continued to push buttons well after he dialed her number, mom's fears were many. Nonetheless, I am proud of my success at bringing her off the ledge. As a matter of fact, I managed to work in a not-so-veiled comment about her baby’s barely lukewarm academic standing. I had her eating out of my hand by then.

Then I ate a five-minute sandwich in three-minutes and went off to class, after which I had a moment to inhale. Then, a scant few moments into my last class of the day I got a message saying I had to cut class short for a meeting, which was filled with what? MORE confusion! Such is the life of an educator in the Greatest City in the World. 

In other news, I did manage to make lunch every day this week and earlier today when the bell rang at the end of my first class, I heard a student say, “Man! Just when it was getting interesting!”

I’ll take that. Yes I will.