Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Everybody come and have a look.

The Carnival of Education is up, over on the Education Wonks' blog. I always click on the Carnival's every link, and this week is no different.

I did find an entry that brought back many memories: memories which now are funny but which were at the time truly excruciating moments in my life. Check out Median Sib's post.

Last Monday when I had my wisdom tooth removed, the nurse who assisted the surgeon was a former student. She was smart, competent, gentle, very good at her job, and had been a nurse for many years. To me, however, she was a thirteen-year-old girl who bawled uncontrollably at every sad story or film, had a hard time telling the difference between fantasy and reality, and she was putting her fingers in my mouth.

Because of the history of one of my sisters, I get a mammogram every year. Not as much fun as a candygram, but the end results are more useful. Both ladies who are in charge of the mammograms in one of our two-giant-hospitals-in-spite-of-the-fact-that-it's-just-a-small-town are former students. One of them couldn't spell 'cat' on the best day of her life, and the other was playing touchie-feelie with the little boys whenever my back was turned. Both of them put their fingers on my, um, mammogramable items.

I see former students all over the place. Usually I love it. I taught middle school for 26 years and I can close my eyes and see them all, in my classroom, in their assigned seats, looking just as they looked when they were twelve, and thirteen, and fourteen.

I think that's why it's so discombobulating when I am thrust into a position wherein THEY are in charge of ME.

One night I was walking down the stone steps of the school and I slipped on a wet leaf and went crashing all the way to the pavement. Two of my little boys carried me to the gym, like Miss Dove on her way to the Hospital, and deposited me in my ticket-selling chair. After the basketball game was over, I went to the emergency room and discovered that my ankle was broken. Was that dedication? I don't know. I only knew that if I had left early, there would have been no one to take care of things, money-wise, and a lot of kids would be disappointed. Whenever a former student takes care of me now, I get that same sensation of disorientation that I got, sitting on the crossed arms of those two sweet boys, all those years ago.

I think the worst was just after Belle was born, and I was in my hospital bed awaiting whatever indignity was next on the list. I didn't have to wait very long.

Four little girls young women came into my room, called me by my maiden name, and struck up a conversation. We laughed over the fun times they'd had in my study hall only a few years before, and we laughed over the fun time I'd had putting them in detention from time to time because of that very thing. All of us were in stitches. And that was very appropriate, because after we'd all calmed down, they told me they had come to check my stitches.

I'm not going to tell you what they put their fingers on.

(Blogger hasn't let me post any pictures for several days now; so to get the general idea, click HERE.)

Definitely, so far, that one was the worst.