Sundays Aren’t for Teachers

Here it is, Sunday night, eleven PM. Teachers should be sleeping. 

The problem is that I am not so good at the early bedtime and I am GREAT at sleeping past nine. The other problem is that schools have bells. 

In any other profession, it doesn’t really matter if you arrive at 7:59 or 8:02 and even if you DO arrive at 7:59, you have time to settle. You get to “water cooler it.” I know I am right about this because all through college I was an office temp and I knew exactly how to stall. 

There is no real stalling in teaching. A bell rings (or in our case THREE fucking bells ring) and we all GO. There is no, “Hey, did you see the Emmy’s last night” talk over brewed coffee. There is no “I’ll check my emails and my facebook account,” moment.

So tomorrow I will walk in and a few people will ask me how my weekend was and I will nod and say “good,” because there is no time to tell them about how I mixed a mojito with oxycontin by accident and how it made me puke when I woke up. There is no time to tell anyone about how my neck is still stiff and so I spent the entire weekend sleeping on Elizabeth’s travel pillow, which is shaped like a donkey and apparently (just found this out) named Louise. There is not a moment to linger, to expand on my thought that if I were to get another dog, I might consider the name Louise, if I could call it Wheezy. The conversation will never have the chance to turn into “office talk” about The Jefferson’s and their version of Wheezy. 

At the same time, when I nod and say “good” I will be thinking about these things and The Jefferson’s Wheezy will lead to thoughts of Archie Bunker which will lead me to think about Sean, which will bring me to the idea that maybe we can buy fish for Christmas presents and name them Wheezy and Archie (because I can’t get two dogs)… and then a bell will ring and I will shift gears, instantly, robotically. 

Bottom line is that I think we could make a lot of progress in education if we just gave our teachers some adult time in the morning, thirty minutes to feel connected to other professionals, to feel welcome. A “Norm” Cheers moment is all I’m talkin’ about. 

11:11 PM … damn.