On my bulletin board hangs a pink card featuring a drawing of a feisty-looking bulldog and the following message: "Tina was so tough, her poodle skirt had a bulldog on it."
If I had a poodle skirt I'd put a bulldog on it, but that doesn't mean I'm succeeding at being that tough. My toughness has definitely been tested this week and pushed to the breaking point a few times, but somehow I'm still standing.
Make that sitting. As much as I prefer to wander about and wave my arms while teaching, I've been doing a lot of sitting down in class lately. I try to reserve all my energy for mental alertness, but even there I wonder whether I'm slipping. I occasionally lose track of what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence, but that's nothing new--I've been experiencing occasional mental slippage for years. I just don't have any way to gauge whether the slippage is turning into a landslide.
This week I've employed several new techniques for reserving energy: taking the world's slowest elevators even to go up one floor, resting my eyes while my students do group work, parking in the handicapped spot near my office. I felt a little guilty about using my temporary handicapped permit to fill a space that someone else might really need, but if the inability to walk across the room without pausing to catch my breath is not a disability, what is?
And this week at my darkest moments I've wondered whether I'm crazy to keep teaching through treatment. Wouldn't I be doing everyone a big favor if I spent the next few months sitting at home looking at birds and going slowly but inexorably insane?
Last night--or early this morning, if you want to get technical about it--I was sitting in the dark eating instant mashed potatoes (because that's what I can eat right now, even though it belongs in the same food group as wallpaper paste) and wondering whether I can finish the task I've tackled. I know I'm tough, but am I tough enough?
The mashed potatoes must have helped, though, because I woke up this morning sore and stiff but energetic, ready to take on the new day. This would be the perfect day to wear that bulldog skirt, as long as the bulldog doesn't mind a little nap in the middle of the afternoon.
4 comments:
If I could sew, you'd have a bulldog skirt. In any color.
Would a poster of a kitten clinging deperametly to the branch of a tree with the words "Hang in There" written in puffy letters help?
For a foodie such as yourself, the instant mashed potatoes must be insult to injury.
I vote Bev takes tomorrow off and the students do an in-class pop quiz 2 page essay about the significance of one sentence in their reading assignment for Wednesday night.
This post made me feel nostalgic. To be honest, I don't really know why. But I do know that you are inspiring - keep coming.
I'm pretty darn sure that no one, absolutely no one, would be better off if you weren't teaching now! And if you were at home all day, you'd still probably have to take a breath when walking across the room, only that room couldn't be nearly as interesting as the class you teach. But that zombie poem...yeah well.
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