A Poetic Lament

Well, this is it, finally! My last day of work. It's hard to believe. I've been working since 1983, so 43 years! Even though I've had vacations and I know what it's like to not have to be anywhere on any timetable, I haven't had the luxury of living like that for quite a while. I guess the year I spent not working right after we moved to London was the last time.

My co-workers keep asking me in hushed voices, "How do you feel?" Like they expect me to burst into tears or present them with some dramatic emotional revelation. Honestly, though, I feel fine. I have no qualms about this at all. I am absolutely ready and I'm sure it's the right decision -- which is exactly what I tell them: "I feel great!"

Meanwhile, for one final day, I'll focus on my job and getting everything done that needs to be done to hand it off to my successor, who starts Monday. All I can say is, more power to her.

I've photographed that wisteria above many times before, like here and here and here. It's right around the corner from the school and it's impressive enough that lots of people stop to take its picture, as you can see!

And this tree is just a bit further down the street.

Yesterday a 6th-grader came up to my desk and asked to borrow some scissors. I loaned her mine, and she pulled a small plastic tube out of her pocket and cut the tip off, then handed the scissors back to me. I didn't think anything of it and just put them back in my drawer. A couple of hours later, when I went to use them, they were positively welded shut. I couldn't get them open no matter how hard I pulled. Clearly the student had opened a tube of Super Glue. God only knows what she did with it.

Oh well. If she had to destroy my scissors at least she waited until my second-to-last day of work!

Yesterday I found this little Post-It note on the floor of the Lower School library. I thought it was pretty clever and showed it to a librarian and we had a laugh. "First-World kid problems," I said.

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed too clever. Would an urban Lower School kid know what an "outboard" was? So I did some Googling, and sure enough, it's from a Shel Silverstein poem. I guess it's still impressive that the student felt motivated to write it down.