At 7:30 on a Saturday morning surrounded by 700 other teachers, I expected some peace and quiet. I don't know why. I figured that everyone else was probably as tired as I was after the first two weeks of school. I guess it's just me.
Bad breath was fiercely circulating. Bad breath and Starbucks do not go well together. I was standing in line trying to be very positive. But how can I be when others make it so hard? People tell me that I am too critical and judgmental. I think I'm just honest.
There I was in a line that had to be 70 feet long. Teachers are surprisingly stupid I've noticed. I observed. One of my best talents is people watching.
I was looking, hearing, taking it all in. And there they were. Every other woman had a Coach purse strapped to her shoulder. Matching tops and slacks. Shoes and earrings coordinated. Every few minutes a high-pitched shriek, "HHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! How are YOOOOUUUUUUUUUU?" Then some guy would walk up and see the 70 foot long line. "Is this the line?" Really? Did he really just ask that? What the hell? Female teachers. Who the hell do they have to talk to at 7:30 in the morning on their cell phones? I can't tell you how many were. I'd catch snippets. "I'm ON-line at a workshop." Annoying. This ain't New York. How did they all have Coach purses? Maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing. I don't even want a Coach purse. But it really bothers me that other teachers have them when I couldn't even come close to affording one. What am I doing wrong?
And then I sat. The workshop started in the auditorium. I sat there thinking about how my mother graduated from that high school. Maybe she had sat in the very chair I was. And the room probably looked exactly the same.
It had been a full hour and we still hadn't started. My blood pressure was on the rise. The high pitched hellos continued, and someone decided to flash some sort of teacher-spiritual power point up on the screen. There were pictures of hawks flying with captions like, "We can make them soar." Good God. Cheesy. These things tend to annoy me more than motivate. I checked my watch repeatedly. Why is it that when I am very early to these things they start an hour late, but when I'm late they won't let me in? Seems like a conspiracy. A gnawing pull started in my stomach. I was wasting time sitting there in that auditorium. I got up at dawn's hairy crack to watch a cheesy power point presentation and listen to a Celine Dion song repeat over and over again on the stereo system??? There were so many more important things I could have been doing!!!!! I felt on the verge of taking that stereo system and throwing it and Celine across the stage. I came oh-so-close to walking out.
And then I realized that I was sitting directly behind talkers. With a serious case of halitosis. Jesus! Pop a peppermint! PLEASE!!!! They talked through the entire presentation. It really bothered me during the guest speaker's speech. She was awesome. And I finally appreciated being there. Without her story the whole day would have been a bust. Her story actually brought tears to my eyes. Man she was good.
Lunch break. Wasn't too bad at all. And when we got back from lunch I ended up in a room with the presenter who wanted to get outta there early. THANK YOU! It could have been a potential 4 o'clocker. She had us out at 2:15. Someone was looking out for me.
I actually got a nap in before I had to babysit. Yes. I know I'm thirty-one and still babysitting. But I love these boys and will sit with them til I'm eighty if I have to. They no longer live in Dallas, so when they come up I watch them over at some friends of their family's. Very wealthy people. I pulled into a driveway complete with a golf cart, some sort of classic car, BMW, Porsche, and a Maserati. I know. I'd never seen one in real life before. And I'm not a huge fan of cars and the sort. But I am highly aware of the cap on my auto insurance policy and if my Honda had kissed the bumper of that thing I'm pretty sure my policy would face cancellation. So I was extremely careful.
The good news is that we were going swimming at the very exclusive country club pool. Very pretty and high-end. I fit in like a Coach purse on a teacher. The boys wanted to take the golf cart to the pool. Fine with me. But the eight year old, who is convinced that he is in his twenties and very confident with himself, wanted to drive it. I figured he could steer. He had other ideas. As I turned around to throw my purse in the back seat of the cart, he slapped the shift into reverse and floored the gas pedal. Did you know golf cart tires could burn rubber? They burned twice actually. Once when he floored the gas, and also when I jammed the breaks, less than two feet away from the Maserati. We had almost experienced a rear-end collision with a $130,000 car. How do you think that would have gone over with the owner? Thank God he doesn't know about it.
My blood pressure had officially hit an all time high for the day. Maybe it's time for some medication.
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