I work in a vacuum.
Because the new school is being built and attached to my
windows, I never know what it's like outside.
If I want to see the weather, I have to crane my neck and gaze far to
the edge of the construction, focusing my eyes beyond the steel and concrete
and menagerie that is happening outside of my window.
Every day my immediate neighbor and I go to the teacher
lunchroom and are genuinely surprised to see sun. We both say the same thing: "Oh, I thought it was raining out!" Neither of us sees the sun from 7:30 a.m. until
3:00 p.m. when we try to escape the building.
I am beginning to suspect that I have Seasonal Affect
Disorder. The only rays of light we see
come from welding sparks that spray from the girders on the other side of the
plexiglass. It's dark …. so depressingly
dark … all day long inside my room.
I think I'm going to tape yellow and orange construction
paper all over the windows. This way the
construction workers aren't staring into my classroom all day long nor am I
staring out at their expansive workroom.
While it is fascinating to have the best seat in the house for the
construction, it is somewhat creepy knowing the fluorescent lights in my room
make us the creature double feature on the lit-up big screen to the men
outside. Not that they look, but they're
digging major trenches less than six feet from my view. If I can see them in the dark, surely they
can see me in the light. The
construction paper will give us all some privacy while creating the illusion that
I can see sunlight.
In the meantime, I'd really appreciate one of those funky
visors like they gave Walt in Northern
Exposure. I'm not certain if my
depression is because it's gloomy all the time outside of the building or
because there's so much bullshit making it gloomy to be inside the
building. Either way, it's affecting me,
it's disorderly, and I hope to hell it's just the school-year season.
The worst part is with the approaching change of seasons
(and clocks), soon it will be dark still at 7:00 when I leave for work and dark
by 4:30 just after I've come home. It
will be dark 24-7 for me like the kids in Bradbury's All Summer In a Day, only there will never actually be that day.
It's just going to be a hazy shade of brownish-blackish-gray all
damn day long, day in and day out, every single day of the school year.
Is it almost summer?
If not, send me that fancy visor or a shitload of yellow and orange construction
paper. I'm going to need it.
