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"You have a little icebreaker activity you have to do for Monday," I told Heidi as I read her school email. (I know, I know, but I had a good reason to be on there-- I wanted to see how much money Treat will be making as a first-year 8th-grade English teacher since he was just hired for that job, and I can't access the staff resources as a retiree.)

She groaned as I turned my screen around to show her the slide she was supposed to fill in. "I'll do it for you!" I offered. "Find a picture you like, and I can do the rest."

Five minutes later, we laughed at how quick and easy it was. "I can't wait to tell the people at school," Heidi said. "They are going to be so jealous."

"It was fun!" I told her. "I love creating materials!" The truth is, I loved all the parts of teaching, but there were just too many of them. "Maybe I can start a teacher task rabbit service where I can do the things that teachers are too busy to do."

She nodded, "That would be great if only teachers could afford to hire you."

How Can I Work With This?

Maybe I was a little hasty judging the broken screeners. And, admittedly, I'm certainly biased, having never shattered mine. (🪵 knock knock knock!) But you know what I have had break? Appliances! 

Regular readers of this blog might recall many sagas involving inoperative stoves, air conditioners, and refrigerators. I can't believe it's possible, but I think we went over six months without a stove in 2008 before we finally replaced ours. Then again, we were stoveless for months in 2019 and again recently when the electronic panel went out. 

In every case, part of the situation was service, part was supply chain, but mostly it was me trying to repair instead of replace, and making do in all sorts of crazy ways. (Yes, like the cracked screen folks.) 

Just this summer, I prided myself on being able to make the HVAC unit work despite a burnt-out capacitor. I guess it's lucky that it was outside and down a flight of steps; otherwise, who knows how long I might have used my skewer to crank it up when it got too warm?

And our refrigerator drama has been going on for years. First, it leaked, and when it was too old for any repair person to consider, I used a combination of Swedish dish towels and plastic containers to capture the water while we waited for a replacement that literally never came. By then, the capture system was in place, and we put a new fridge on hold. Then, the water outage in June burst the line to the ice maker, and water leaked everywhere until we turned that off. We had a fridge delivered that wouldn't fit through the door, and then the third one we ordered was delayed, so we've been buying ice, 8 pounds at a time, all summer.

The new fridge is scheduled to come on, wait for it, Friday the 13th (of September), but today it seems like the old one might be losing its cool. I have some thermometers on order to confirm, but if it's true? That 20-year-old appliance may have finally met its end. 

And what are we going to do?

It Took a Minute

It’s taken me all summer to reconcile the notion that I will not return to school next week with everyone else. 

When she sighed in dismay because she had received her welcome back to school letter from the principal, I asked Heidi to forward it to me so I could live vicariously. I was a bit deflated when the link to the agenda for the staff meeting didn’t work for me. But soon, I realized that maybe, just maybe, not sitting in the theatre all day was a good thing. 

Then, today, for some random reason, I checked my school access again. I suppose I wondered if the start of the new school year would bring further restrictions to what I could and couldn’t see of the virtual infrastructure of my old life. Everything seemed as it had been all summer until I clicked on my grade book for the hell of it. 

There, I was stunned to see six new classes. Curious, I clicked around, just as I would have if I were returning. My homeroom was 17 students, too many for that type of class, and I remembered how much I disagreed with the model our school had put in place for remediation. 

The drop-down menu indicated two intensified classes, which had the smallest enrollment. A quick scan of the faces and names showed me groups that did not represent the school's demographics. The other classes were overloaded with English Language learners and kids with 504s and IEPs. Minimal checking also revealed many students with homerooms on other teams, which meant the middle school model was pretty loose.

I didn’t see any co-teachers or assistants listed, but it is still early in the scheduling process. (Obviously, because my name is still on the classes!) The room number had been changed to reflect that the new guy was getting an interior classroom, though. 

 “Woof,” I shook my head at the challenges facing the person who was actually going to teach those classes, and suddenly, retirement seemed like a pretty good idea after all.

No Problem

I'm always shocked when I see a shattered screen. My reaction may be improbable, given the number of young people with devices I used to spend most of my time with. Even so, the response of the person with the damaged screen is usually inverse to my own.

Years ago, I read an essay by David Sedaris about a time when he tried to put an injured mouse he had captured in his country house out of its misery. When he looked down at it in the bucket where he was attempting to drown it, it was swimming lamely, but gamely, around, despite its injuries as if to say, "I can work with this!"

I often think of that mouse when I see the lengths people will go to to avoid having their screens repaired. "You can't use the right half of the keyboard," they might shrug, "just use Siri for those letters."

As a teacher, I would deliver the hard blow without hesitation. "Give me that!" I'd tell the student, "I'm going to put a ticket in to fix it." Soon enough, the sting of being without their device would be salved by a repaired screen at no cost to them.

Out in the world, I don't have that power, and so, as I stated at the top, I'm shocked by the number of folks who use their device with a damaged screen until, well, they can't anymore. "It's fine," they routinely tell me, adding that they either don't want to pay or be without it for the repair. 

Of course, there is also the phenomenon of creeping inoperability. A couple of weeks ago, Heidi tripped and landed on her phone. She wasn't hurt, but the screen did suffer some damage. "We should have that fixed," I suggested.

"It's fine," she assured me. "Everything works."

That's no longer true, although I will hand it to her—she has found many workarounds. "Let's get that fixed tomorrow," I said a little while ago as she was scrolling through her address book to find a contact whose name she couldn't type on the broken keyboard.

"Okay," she agreed, "but I think it's probably good for my brain to have to find new ways to keep everything working!"

Name That Jet

One of the gifts we gave to Victor for his birthday was a set of tree identification cards, and we had fun at the beach going through them and quizzing ourselves and each other. I thought of those today when we visited the Udvar Hazy location of the National Air and Space Museum.

The place has been open out near Dulles Airport since 2003, but I had never been, despite the draw of Space Shuttle Discovery and an Air France Concorde. And, in fact, those two crafts were my only must see exhibits when we arrived after the 30-minute drive. 

We started in the section of the hangar with military aircraft, but they quickly became a bit overwhelming and tedious. I liked seeing some of the planes I'd heard of: fighter jets and helicopters I knew from movies, a Blue Angel jet, the record-setting Blackbird, but the sheer firepower made me a little sad.

In the end, it was the commercial airliners that made my day. At lunch, I told Victor and Treat how when we were kids, we used to be able to identify almost all the planes at the airport by make and model. Such knowledge only made sense for an airline family, but we were kind of nerds about it; geeking out with our other airline friends whenever the clock turned 10:11 or 7:47.

Shortly after that conversation, we found a display case of models of vintage commercial airliners, and I demonstrated my knowledge by correctly naming most of them. Right before we left, we went up to the museum's observation tower, and I found it unexpectedly thrilling to watch the planes landing on the two runways at Dulles as we listened to the live chatter from Air Traffic Control and the cockpits. 

Although I scanned the livery to name the airline as soon as possible, I was stumped by the type of plane, and a set of fancy flashcards would have been just right.

At the Old Ball Game

It was a gift of an August day in Washington—82, breezy, and low humidity at 11:45 this morning when Mackenzie Gore threw the first pitch of the Nats-Angels game. We were up in the third tier, right above the first baseline, with a clear view of the plate and our free jerseys in hand. 

The park was nearly empty, and not even the organist was playing. It might have been that this is a prime vacation week in this town, our team is out of playoff contention, or most of the starters were second-string. Whatever the cause, we enjoyed practically having the section to ourselves as we watched the game progress. It was scoreless until the top of the fourth when the Angels put five runs on the board. 

When the Nats could not answer them for a couple innings more, Heidi grew disgusted and went off in search of water and popcorn. She missed seeing LA bring it to 6-0 in the seventh, which was probably just as well. There was a rally in the 8th; the home team scored 2 and had the tying run at the plate with the bases loaded. Improbably, the same scenario occurred in the bottom of the ninth. The Nats had a real chance to tie or even win, but the game ended abruptly at 6-4 after the Angels turned a double play.

We were filing out with the rest of the light crowd when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Three of my 6th graders from last year folded me into a big hug. We spent a happy few minutes catching up and basking in our mini-reunion before we went our separate ways.

"Now, that was a great day at the ballpark!" I told Heidi.

Someone Who Knows

"How's retirement?" a friend's mom in from out of town asked this afternoon.

I gave my standard answer. "So far, it's just been like summer break," I laughed.

She is a former teacher and nodded knowingly. "You won't really feel it until school starts."

I knew what she meant. I definitely felt a twinge of uncertainty when Heidi got her back-to-school letter from the principal yesterday, and I eagerly read over the pre-service week schedule and agendas, wondering all along if perhaps I had made a mistake. 

"I'll be honest," she continued, "I did go through a period where I questioned my purpose. After being a teacher for so long, how could I not?"

I nodded in recognition. 

"But you know what?" she told me. "That did not last long, and I'm here to tell you that retirement is wonderful!"