Laughter: The Best of Medicines

I was reminded today of why I teach. Beyond the obvious--and I'm serious--intrinsic rewards, the simple truth is that high school students are so damn funny it's hard to put into words.

I'm going to try, though :)

So my Journalism class is on the verge of sending out the year's first issue. One girl had to finish her article on tips for what to always have in a car, so we were working on a brainstorm list.

She had water, a flashlight, and a blanket on the list, which she read through then asked for suggestions. "How about water?" I said, which was funny enough since she'd just read the list where water was number one. Then, naturally, it perpetuated.

Another student was adamant that tampons should be on the list. She felt that you always seem to need a tampon when everything seems to be going wrong (like your car breaking down)--for the record, I think she's right about the whole "when it rains, it pours" thing.

The lone boy in class today--one of those genuinely wonderful human beings, by the way--tried to get the conversation back on track by saying, "How about extra lights?"

He was, of course, referring to light bulbs. A couple of the girls thought he meant extra light tampons, and laughter ensued. A lot of laughter. It was so damn funny that several of us had tears rolling down our faces. Yes, I was one of them.

I was expecting today to be such a horrible day, and that laughter was just so therapeutic. I am so, so lucky to not only have wonderful colleagues but to get paid to have the honor and privilege of working with beyond amazing kids every day. There are always moments of unbelievable pleasure (usually more focused on curriculum ;)), and sometimes I take for granted how much I absolutely adore my job.

Do you get as much joy (and hilarity) from your job as I do?

Musings on the Horrorversary

Anniversaries--weddings, homeownership, even birthdays--are all celebrations of an event, one with theoretically happy connotations.

So what do you call the day that is the antithesis to those joyous times, the ones that come up once every year the same as the happy days? I created a word tonight when I was thinking about this--horroversary. I'm sure someone else has used this before, actually, but I'm not really in high thinking mode, so work with me a bit here.

I have several horrorversaries. One is in December, one is in January, (I suppose I have to add one these days ...) and one is tomorrow. October 23rd (also my grandfather's birthday--an anniversary for my Papa, a horroversary for me ... life is strange) is the worst. It always will be.

Ironically, my birthday is three days later, on the 26th. My mother has planned to have relatives over Sunday night to celebrate, and it's very hard to say, "I just want to be left the fuck alone for the next few days. THAT's what I want for my stupid birthday." She was on my case tonight for "sounding depressed". Oh, shit, if she only knew ... And my students, my sweet and wonderful and loving students, they have been very "sneaky" in their attempts to plan an in-class birthday party. I am trying so hard to keep my shit together on my horroversary, and everyone else is so focused on my birthday (a.k.a. my anniversary, if you want to think of it that way), and I just reread that and I realize what a selfish bitch I sound like and ...

And I guess I'm going to stop now. I'm going to bed on a double dose of Ambien and metaphorically beat myself up for the next few days over something that happened over ten years ago, when I was a completely different person.

How do you spend your horrorversary? (By the way, I truly and deeply hope that I'm the only person who suffers horrorversaries ... when Addie starts saying, "Ten days until my birthday" the first day of September, I know that I think of my horroversary--all of them, but especially this one--on the same terms. Maybe nobody reading this can relate to this in any way, shape, or form ... and if so--I AM SO GLAD FOR YOU :)

Edgar Allan Poetry Class

I'm teaching a poetry class for the first time ever this year. As with any new class a teacher takes on, there are learning curves ...

The biggest flop to date has been the now-notorious Poe unit (which seems willing to go on forever). Basically, I thought it would be cool to do an author study, my main point being that a poet's work is often linked intrinsically to his or her life. Poe seemed ideal for this--he was an infamously volatile alcoholic (yeah, this should have clued me in ;)), he was found mysteriously unconscious in a gutter with someone else's clothes on just before he died (and with some interesting last words), he married his thirteen-year-old cousin when he was in his mid-twenties, and so on.

Well, each student was assigned a poem by Mr. Poe to lead a discussion about and then write an analysis paper. The first day was pretty cool, with everything from Poe's haunting via tuburculosis (everyone the guy got close to died of TB--talk about bad luck!) to his possible Oedipal complex (both his biological mother and foster mother died of TB when he was quite young and impressionable, and he seemed to be searching for maternal love throughout his life--including with the cousin/wife). Pretty interesting stuff.

By the third day, though, the class and I made an interesting--and depressing--observation: all of Poe's poetry is pretty much the same. He mixes it up a bit in terms of style (it was especially neat to read a couple of his sonnets, since we've studied both Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnets already), but the themes--pretty much same old, same old.

I've managed to ruin Poe's poetry (through overexposure and excessive analysis) for an entire class and for myself as well. I mean, I used to LOVE Poe, and now it's like, "Yeah, yeah, death, loss, darkness, dreams of better things that didn't turn out the way you expected" and so on.

Oh well ... you win some, you lose some ;)

The Paper Stash

I was sorting papers today, trying to get stuff organized (as though that's ever possible, being me). One box that I came upon contained what must have been every freaking paper I wrote in high school and college (and I was an English major--I wrote a lot of papers).

The first thing I noticed was that many of the things I nag my students about (unfocused introductions and conclusions, repeated phrases, passive voice, excessive adjectives and adverbs, and so on) characterized much of this stuff. I mean, I was told by both high school teachers and college professors that I was some kind of writing prodigy ... but either they were full of crap or the competition wasn't much ;)

I did find my analysis paper on the works of Aristotle, written for the guy who was supposedly the hardest English prof at UNH. It says "A+" on it and, just below that grade Dr. X claimed not to give, the word "Perfect". That was pretty cool to see.

The most entertaining trip down memory lane, though, came from the composer paper file. I cringe to admit this now, but I made an awful lot of money selling papers ... and selling composer papers to members of my high school music department was the start of it.

Even back in high school, my morals were pretty twisted. I would never, EVER plagiarize someone else's work--but I'd happily recycle my own pieces, just changing the name from mine to someone else's and reprinting. If you were my friend, I'd do it for free; otherwise, there was a fee involved.

The scary part is, nobody ever caught on. I tested this theory once using my sister as the guinea pig. Well, there's more to the story, actually. Basically, I was bitching and moaning that the teacher played favorites and, if you were one of her pets, you could turn in a shit paper and get an A+.

This bitch-fest happened to coincide with Mary asking me to write a paper for her. I had a stick up my butt (Mary was one of the teacher's pets, and it really ticked me off) and refused, and of course my mother stepped in and forced me to cheat on my sister's behalf. Yeah, I'm serious.

So I figured I'd test out a theory. I wrote an amazing composer paper ... until the end, where it concluded with, "He was buried in Westminster Abbey--and he smelled like old socks." I put Mary's name on it, and sure enough, she got an A+. After that, no one could say the teacher didn't play favorites (the paper I wrote for myself was far better and didn't desecrate the memory of a deceased composer) ... I had the proof right in front of me.

Wow, the memories that come flooding back ...

Trying (Unsuccessfully) to Alleviate Loneliness

Do you ever feel so alone, so misunderstood that it makes you crazy? The thing is, I don't even know if "loneliness" is the right word.

I guess that it's just sometimes the people you want to talk to, the people you thought would always be there, just disappear sometimes.

I'm guilty of this, too, of course. I've been avoiding a couple of my best friends that have been calling, e-mailing, texting ... because sometimes you just don't know where to start :(

Why do the actions (or non-actions, if you will) of others play such an impact in a person's psyche? Why can't you just go through life alone and not have to believe in other people? It would certainly make life easier, I sometimes think.

Eh, things will look brighter in the morning, when I'll still be lonely (or whatever the hell I am) but I won't care as much.

Hopefully.

When Garbage and Ice Cream Collide ...

I've posted about my odd sense of humor here before. Sometimes I wonder, in fact, if I'm completely twisted ;) Well, it perpetuated today ... and demonstrated that I've passed the funny bone-tickling that comes from the bizarre onto my progeny.

When I was driving Addie to school this morning, she suddenly yelled, "Oh my God, there was just an accident between a garbage truck and an ice cream truck." And then she started laughing. And then I started laughing. And yeah, you know how that goes ...

The thing is, I want to state very clearly for the record that I would never under any circumstances laugh at the misfortune of others--except that this is clearly exactly what I pretty much did. This kind of bothers me about myself, actually. I hate hypocrisy more than pretty much anything.

I can rationalize it by saying that obviously trash collection companies and ice cream companies have good car insurance. I can further state that it was obviously not a bad accident, just a minor fender bender as they go. However, the fact of the matter is, it was at the very least a fairly serious inconvenience (at the very least) for the two drivers.

Think about it, though. It's humorous on so many levels. For one, the nutritional value of ice cream is pretty close to garbage. The wrappers from the frozen treats sold by one truck eventually end up in the stinky receptacle contained in the other. What are the odds of two trucks of roughly the same size colliding? And, perhaps funniest of all, what the hell was an ice cream truck doing on the road at 6:15 in the morning?

Anyway, I got the giggles bad. I felt like a jerk, but I just couldn't stop laughing.

Addie summed up the whole experience best, though. Wiping tears of laughter from her own eyes, she said, "Oh, so it's going to be one of THOSE days."

Cystematic

The lump was just a cyst!!!!

I am, of course, beyond relieved. However, this little scare has made me think a great deal about those who are not so lucky.

These things come like a shot in the dark. You hear all the time about children, adolescents, and seemingly-healthy adults getting cancer, having heart attacks, and so on. It's incredibly frightening when you think about it.

I can tell you that I certainly appreciate my life--and everyone in it--more today than I did a week ago. How horrible is it, that sometimes it takes such a sobering event to make you realize how lucky you are?

Well, the bus will be here in a minute ... the freshman class is on a field trip to an outdoor teambuilding event with high and low ropes courses, among other things.

I suspect I'll be flirting with death on a zip line within a few hours ;)