Posts

Showing posts from September, 2011

Reflections on a Decade

Image
I don't generally feel the need to commemorate September 11.  But it's inevitable that it brings up memories.  We can all remember where we were and what we were doing on that fateful day.  I was teaching seventh grade that year and a week away from major surgery on my neck.  I remember sitting in the classroom -- we were doing practice testing that day -- as another teacher came in to tell me that a plane had hit one of the Trade Center Towers.  A horrific accident, it must've been.  Until the news came of the second plane, and, later, the Pentagon and the crash in Shanksville, Pa.  I remember watching my kids taking their tests and thinking how their world was about to change, how they hung in blissful ignorance for just a little longer than the rest of us.  Then the calls started to come to the classroom from the main office, "Can you send Nathan to the office, his mother is here to pick him up?"  "Layla's dad is here to get her." "Please h

Recess

I'm back.  Did you miss me?  Did you even notice I was gone? Wait, wait, don't answer that.  I took a brief summer haitus -- I figured if Congress can do it, I can too.  I've been participating in straw polls, kissing babies, giving speeches, invoking the Constitution, and eating corndogs at a variety of state fairs.  Oh wait, that wasn't me . . . that was Michele Bachman.  Sorry.  I often get the two of us confused.  My summer wasn't quite as exciting as Michele's.  First off, I managed to make it another year without experiencing the joy that is the corndog.  I wasn't asked to give any speeches, and the only time I even came close to invoking the Constitution was one time when WH asked me to pick up my pajamas and I said, "It's a free country. I don't have to."  It didn't really go over so well, so I think I'm going to have to brush up on my knowledge of the Amendments so that I can find the one that allows me to leave my jammie