School's Out

I had an amazing last week of school, partly because I'm finally letting go of a lot of the anxiety I was feeling about my mom's latest mid-life crisis antics. Tuesday, the day before our last day on Wednesday, I forced myself to be a good sport and joined some friends from work for a drink at a sports bar, pretending to care about the Lakers' defeat by the Celtics. Although I was completely uninterested in the game, it put me in a good mood to have social interaction. But it only got better when Gabe called me from the road to tell me songs on his iPod (Rufus Wainwright, Decemberists, and Pedro the Lion) got him thinking about me and prompted him to call. I taught Gabe during my first year of teaching in D.C. He was a sophomore in my English class and we often argued about punctuation and organization, but I treasured his cynicism and was delighted to find him in my class again as a senior, in my Radiohead to Dylan music lyrics class. I can't believe that he's entering his senior year at U Michigan, spending the summer as an intern for a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

Needless to say, the conversation prompted me to remind my fabulous students of this year that they must do the same (call me five..and then ten...and then twenty, etc. years down the line) as I handed the last of them a copy of the book I made of their writings. I have become so addicted to the kids that I was eager to take some of my speech students up on throwing a party around a bonfire on the beach the following Monday, where they made fun of me for being white and having a crush on Obama (I got them back when I pulled out my obnoxious self-dubbed "being ethnically-sensitive" plates, which had big, silly Mexican sombreros on them).

I joked about hiring them to help me move into my house next Tuesday, but they rescinded the offer when I got mad at them for swimming in the ocean three times after I joined the lifeguard in demanding they get out due to unsafe swimming conditions.

"We'll get out, but it looks like you better hit Home Depot on Tuesday, Ms. G."

"What are you talking about? You ARE my Home Depot crew."

"Eeeeeee!"

After I finished packing away my classroom for the summer on Friday, I texted three of my speech students while waiting in line to watch the Jay Leno show inside the NBC studio in L.A., telling them to look out for me that evening. Bernard replied by first texting, "Is it on cable, cuz we ain't got none," to which I indignantly asked him who his English teacher was (gulp-- me, next year, and in AP, no less) and then he later texted me to tell me to look for him, actually IN the show, on "Late Night Oprah."

I will be young forever with their help. Young, and happy, and full of laughter. I think I've found my salvation...