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| (What it looked like in August) |
Sometimes I go to lunch in
the school cafeteria and sometimes I stay in my classroom. I eat; I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not
starving myself. It’s just that the
school configuration means I walk a very long way to the lunch room, and I only
have twenty-two minutes including hall duty time, which brings it down to about
seventeen minutes. Taking five total
minutes to walk to and from the caf almost seems like wasted time.
Plus, it has been too
flipping cold to leave the warmth of my classroom. Sometimes it’s nice to sit and enjoy the
peace, the quiet, and the temperature above fifty-five degrees. It is this occurrence that brings a colleague
to my classroom.
Years ago when I taught
the same grade level this guy does, we had rooms separated by the home
economics classroom. He would sneak
through that connecting room, lurk between stoves, silently open my side door,
and blast an air horn into my room. Then
he would run away.
Good times, actually.
We are in a different
building now. My room is in the same
wing as the offices of both the superintendent and the assistant
superintendent, so this part of the school sees a lot of visitors. This colleague, a grade eight science teacher,
happens to be visiting the super’s office when he hears the tap-tap-tap of my
computer keyboard echoing down the deserted seventh grade hallway. These days, though, it’s almost impossible
for him to sneak up on me because he broke his foot and has it in a
cast-boot. I can hear him kerplunking
down the hall long before he sticks his head into my open doorway.
SCIENCE DUDE: I thought I
heard someone typing away down here.
ME: Yup, I’m
typing my blog. I don’t have time to do
it later.
SCIENCE DUDE: You have a
blog?
(I’m reasonably certain he’s
heard this fact before.)
ME: Yup.
SCIENCE DUDE: How often do
you write your blog?
ME: Every
day. Every damn day for more than two
years.
SCIENCE DUDE: A
professional blog?
ME: It’s as
unprofessional as it gets.
SCIENCE DUDE: Do you ever
write about school?
ME: (pausing … he
is the union president, after all) Um …
sometimes.
(SCIENCE DUDE ponders this
for a moment.)
ME: But I write
under a pseudonym.
(SCIENCE DUDE nods
slowly. I’m hoping he knows what a pseudonym
is and doesn’t think I have some sort of mental disorder, as if that isn’t
obvious enough by my choices of writing topics.)
SCIENCE DUDE: Do you write
about the people you work with?
ME: Sometimes.
(SCIENCE DUDE digests this
while tilting his head slightly at an angle.)
SCIENCE DUDE: Have you ever
written about me?
(I break into a very broad
and somewhat evil grin.)
ME: I will now.
Truth is, I probably have
mentioned this teacher before. He’s the
guy we invite to dive bars where he orders fru-fru girlie drinks with umbrellas
and fruit in them. I may or may not have
related the story of how when he first broke his foot he needed a wheelchair to
get up our 400-yard long ramp between wings.
The ramp is about a sixty-degree gradient from bottom to top, and he
didn’t have the stamina to wheel himself up the whole ramp, so I got a running
start and pushed him to the top myself.
No biggie.
I used to do judo. I carried men on my back and in my arms and
dragged them up and down mats as exercise, men who were heavier than I was
because I only weighed about 112 pounds.
Back then. I weigh more now, so I
figured I should be able to carry, drag, and push this guy and his chair up the
ramp with little problem, despite my Achilles tendonitis and lack of recent
weight training.
I am happy to report that
SCIENCE DUDE did not hurtle back down the ramp to oblivion, and I did manage to
push him to the top of the ramp. I’m
also happy to report that he no longer even needs crutches, so he calumphs
loudly down the hallway, unable to sneak up on anybody.
But, mostly, I am
super-elated to report that SCIENCE DUDE has officially made the blog, with his
very own entry… which he will probably never read … because he’ll be too busy
plotting a way to get me back for writing this and letting the world know he
drinks fru-fru drinks.
It’s okay. I can always hide in the caf at lunch, and,
for a few more weeks, anyway, I can outrun the gimpy SCIENCE DUDE, if necessary.
