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Today I completed my second day of school, and I left the school building feeling rejuvenated and full of excitement.
Oh, I can hear it now — you former or current teachers are screaming, “LIE!”
And you’d be right.
I am emotionally and physically exhausted. I limped out of the doors today, but that was mostly due to my unwise decision to wear high heels to work today. I envy women who have feel of steel and who can practically run marathons in heels. I used to be like that . . . when I was 15. Now, I wear heels for more than a few hours and I am paying for it. I also know I’ll be paying for it tomorrow with the smattering of small muscle pulls in my legs that will be more than apparent as I get up out of bed.
<Sigh> . . . Getting old kind of sucks sometimes.
The school year looks good so far. My schedule is a little less hectic than it was in the past, and I now feel comfortable enough with the classes I teach to not constantly feel like that chicken who had his cranial region extricated from his torso in a rather violent manner.
Oh, how I love the first week of school. There’s an energy that permeates all the students as they walk down the hallway. I remember how long it took me to arrange all my locker items *just so*, and the joy I’d feel when I’d open up my locker and see my magnetic mirror with the pink heart on it, along with the most recent school pictures of all my buddies. It was our own little space that locked. What more could a teenager ask for? Of course, if you were one of the unlucky ones, your locker was a “municipal” locker — one that some hooligan configured so that just the right kick would send the locker flying open.
I am still amazed today by students who never use their lockers even once during the school year. They haul every single freakin’ book around in their bookbags, all the while complaining about the weight of today’s textbooks. Then the end of the year comes and they have to go to the office to get their combination in order to get an official locker “sign out.” It’s just not natural. Then again, carrying bookbags was unofficially declared “uncool” when I was in school, so there were only so many books that our skinny arms could handle at any given time. Lockers were a must.
These weeks are good weeks. Soon the mornings will be blanketed by patches of fog while the nights cool down just a little bit more. Pretty soon, people everywhere will distinctly feel the moment that summer leaves us and “football weather” sets in. Winter may be peeking his snowy white head just around the corner, but for now, it’s a golden time. Sun, low humidity, fall colors on the way, and, most important of all, new school supplies.
It makes my office-supply-fetished heart beat faster every year.
