Toeing the Line

The line at World Market was all wrong.

There were only a few people ahead of us, but rather than queuing in the spot that was clearly marked with a sign Checkout Line Forms Here, the man on his phone, and the couple with their ginormous stroller, and the lady regarding all who approached suspiciously as she protected her third place status trailed into the cooking and dining section of the store.

Knowing from experience that we should be winding back and forth along the candy and attractive tchotchke display, the cognitive dissonance was almost too much handle and I wanted to put down my peppermint syrup and flee. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and Heidi joined the line as it was.

I, on the other hand stood where the line should be, forcing any shoppers who came behind us to reform it according to expectation. The suspicious lady didn't like it one bit, because it seemed like I might be trying to cut, but when at last it was our turn to be beckoned forward by those magical words, Next customer, please, everyone behind me was where they were supposed to be.

I Get It

The day dawned with some dread-- today was the spring meeting and work day for our community garden. I don't mind the meeting, and I don't mind the working, it's the community I have a problem with. I don't like the awkward social situation of trying to figure out my place in a massive hive of spring gardeners trying to tidy up the common areas. Give me a solitary job and I will be fine, but this nebulous "clean up" involving all sorts of questions and small talk with strangers is excruciating to me.

Still, I like having a garden, and so I sucked up my angst and made my way up the hill this morning, hoping that the predicted snow and sleet would rescue me. Oh, there was no such meteorological knight in shining armor, so I signed up for the crew closest to my garden, the gate, and where I parked the car.

It turned out that I was teamed up with one of my neighbors, the lady from the next garden over who was on her best behavior, and another woman I had nodded to casually over the last few summers. We worked diligently to clear the fence line along the sidewalk of weeds and vines and trash, and the small talk was not even the least bit painful. As the clock neared the hour of freedom from the only slightly onerous bondage, one of our crew looked up. "Oh, here's my daughter now," she said. "She's one of my co-gardeners."

A slender woman in her early thirties approached us. I turned my head, my brain scratching with that tickle of recognition. "Is your name Heather?" I blurted, no longer reticent in the least.

She nodded.

"Heather D---?" I added, unnecessarily, for I knew exactly who she was. "I was your sixth grade English teacher!"

With that reminder, she recognized me too. "Tell her what you're doing now," her mom prompted her. It turns out she is an elementary school counselor working under a principal who was her seventh grade English teacher.

"It will be fun to see you around the garden this year!" she said, and I agreed.

It was like a message from the universe: Hey! Tracey! Community? Is never really bad.

Eagle Eyes

I couldn't believe what I was seeing last summer as I drove up one of the busiest roads in the county. Could it be? It was! A bald eagle soared right over my car and swooped away into a small wooded park. Our hometown is very populated, and despite its proximity to a big river, eagles are not common here at all. Once back at home, I searched the internet for confirmation of my sighting. Surely someone else had seen the raptor and reported it? I could find nothing.

Several months later, I saw it again. This time I was driving on another busy road, and the eagle was right over my school. There's an eagle in the neighborhood! I told anyone who would listen, but try as I might, nobody else seemed to see our national bird.

Then yesterday, I stepped outside the school for a quick walk to clear my head. A couple a crows were making a terrible ruckus, fussing at something. Looking up, I saw a big wingspan heading our way. I froze on the small hill behind our building. The eagle flew right over me, white tail and and head clearly visible as it winged its way northwest of here. Back inside, I shared the sighting with a couple of colleagues, speculating as to where it could be nesting.

And at last today, my long-awaited affirmation. One of the friends I talked to yesterday burst into my room. "You have to go to this website!"  she told me. "Right away!"

There they were! But even better? This resource was also cited. In addition to a current map of all the eagle nests in the state, it also has information on osprey, heron, and nightjars, as well as links to other tracking sites. It will definitely be a go-to for me the next time I glimpse a grand bird.

Penalty for Excessive Celebration

Around about lunchtime a mysterious hole appeared in the wall down the hall from my classroom.  "Do you know what happened?" asked a colleague.

"No," I told her, "I didn't hear a thing." We agreed that some angry kid had probably taken out his frustration on the wall, which is extremely rare in our school, probably because most of the walls are metal.

A couple of periods later, the phone rang. It was the assistant principal looking for a young lady in my class. When she finished her test, I sent her to his office. The bell rang, and she had yet to return, but my co-teacher poked her head in the door. "Did D go to the office?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered. "How did you know?"

"Because I saw her kick the hole in that wall right before lunch!" she reported. "She was shocked when her foot went through, but then she took off running."

A few minutes later, D returned. "I heard what happened!" I said. "Wow!"

She cast her eyes down, embarrassed.

"Did it hurt?" I asked.

"No," she shrugged.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"Because I was happy!" she said. "I got a good grade on my test!"

I gave her a double take and widened my eyes. "What did the assistant principal say?"

"He said, If that's you happy, I'd hate to see you mad!"

I laughed.

"And he gave me detention." she finished.

The Next Act

I was talking to a friend the other day about some impressive deductions she had made based on a couple of meetings slated for the same day. "You're such a detective!" I told her.

"Maybe that can be my retirement job!" she answered.

Indeed.

Because, lately? Retirement jobs seem to crop up quite frequently in conversation. Just this evening our neighbor and her mom who was visiting from another state came over to see the freshly painted living room. The mom, who is a retired educator herself, was impressed. "When ya'll retire, you can rent yourselves out as painters!" she gushed.

And so it goes. Even though retirement is still several years away, it is steadily colonizing our ideas of the future. Will we be teacher assistants, dog trainers, or prep cooks? Will we be Uber drivers, museum docents, or personal chefs? Will we become journalists, finally publish our writing, or open an indoor dog park? Where will our passions and necessity lead?

I haven't seen this many open doors in the distance since I was in college.

Reeling in the Years

When teachers marching to replace tattered textbooks is headline news, it's hard not to appreciate how fortunate our affluent school district is. When it comes to materials and supplies, our students have pretty much anything they need. There is some disparity in facilities, however. Predictably, the newer the building, the nicer the place and the stuff inside.

Our school is 47 years old, and the furniture in my classroom is original to the building. The wood veneer trapezoid tables and heavy steel and composite chairs have been in my personal possession for 25 years, so they are in relatively good condition, despite being over 20 when I was first assigned them.

Aesthetically, I like to think they have held up well-- my classroom seems classic to me-- but on days when I am giving a standardized test, the vintage furniture doesn't seem quite so user-friendly as usual. Mostly? It's the tables-- they wiggle and squeak where the metal legs are bolted to the wood veneer tops.

To be honest, I don't even hear it anymore, and the kids get used to it pretty quickly, too (well that, and it's not always that quiet in the room; learning is a noisy business, you know.) But today the squeaking was bothering everyone. "This test is going to take me 2 weeks!" one frustrated student proclaimed dramatically, "And I'm not even kidding!"

I pulled her table away from its partner, and the awful noise was mostly muted. When the day was done, I opened one of my storage cupboards and retrieved my trusty can of WD40. 24 spritzes later, I was sure she would finish the test tomorrow... on that iPad the school system gave her!

A Worthy Adversary

My directions were clear: for the final push in our fiction-writing unit, the classroom should be a quiet working space.

"So, what's your story about?" asked one student in a loud, conversational tone aimed at the other kids at his table. He was looking for some verbal distraction, and I was more than happy to refocus him.

"My story is about a quiet classroom where writers can finish the drafts of their stories," I answered him pointedly.

"Well, that's clearly fiction," he replied.

We laughed, because it was really funny.

Then?

He got to work.