Friday, May 13, 2005
counting down
Standing outside in the midday sun, listening to the roar of sirens as a line of fire engines descend to dutifully pronounce that, once again, there is no fire, I turn to one of my fellow teachers.
"Remember that song, Welcome to the Jungle?"
She laughs and comments that our kids are too young to have ever heard that song, but perhaps they should.
My husband finds it amusing that I once owned a Guns N Roses t-shirt. I was a sleeper-in-class, who never once lived up to my potential. i refused to write with capital letters. I was one of the senior skip day organizers. My friends were vandalizers. When I graduated, I slipped the principal a plastic roach as I dutifully shook his hand.
Now, I am the adult in the room, the order-maintainer, the crisis-averter. I am the one who carries the roll book and attempts to gather students as they spill into the parking lot. I order them to keep walking all the way to the fence so they can be counted.
They evidently don't realize that bomb threats get you out of class for a longer period of time than fire drills. Or maybe the world has shifted post Columbine, post 9-11. Maybe bomb threats are not as surreal and practical joke-ish as they once were. Maybe the pull of the fire alarm lever has a visceral rush, the opening of the safety box, and the red promise of release. Maybe that moment of physical contact when the lever switches and the alarm begins sounding in its blinking-light splendor is more thrilling than an anonymous call from a pay phone would be.
Whatever the case, there are six days of school left and the halls are full of barely contained energy. The teachers are tired. The kids are like cans of coke that someone shook and put back in the fridge. They are waiting to explode into the promise of summer.
This morning, realizing the inevitable, I thought to pack sunglasses.
"Remember that song, Welcome to the Jungle?"
She laughs and comments that our kids are too young to have ever heard that song, but perhaps they should.
My husband finds it amusing that I once owned a Guns N Roses t-shirt. I was a sleeper-in-class, who never once lived up to my potential. i refused to write with capital letters. I was one of the senior skip day organizers. My friends were vandalizers. When I graduated, I slipped the principal a plastic roach as I dutifully shook his hand.
Now, I am the adult in the room, the order-maintainer, the crisis-averter. I am the one who carries the roll book and attempts to gather students as they spill into the parking lot. I order them to keep walking all the way to the fence so they can be counted.
They evidently don't realize that bomb threats get you out of class for a longer period of time than fire drills. Or maybe the world has shifted post Columbine, post 9-11. Maybe bomb threats are not as surreal and practical joke-ish as they once were. Maybe the pull of the fire alarm lever has a visceral rush, the opening of the safety box, and the red promise of release. Maybe that moment of physical contact when the lever switches and the alarm begins sounding in its blinking-light splendor is more thrilling than an anonymous call from a pay phone would be.
Whatever the case, there are six days of school left and the halls are full of barely contained energy. The teachers are tired. The kids are like cans of coke that someone shook and put back in the fridge. They are waiting to explode into the promise of summer.
This morning, realizing the inevitable, I thought to pack sunglasses.
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