The Independent’s schoolteacher /diarist returns to waiting tables on the side, and reads her own eulogy aloud in class.
Nov. 27, 2005
I’m headed back to the waitressing world. A new place, a new cuisine — I’m excited. As much as I love having this extra time to myself, I also enjoy keeping myself busy. The people at the new place are really friendly, really laid-back. It will be a nice change of pace from the old place. And the hours won’t be as demanding. I’m definitely looking forward to meeting new people. The more I involve myself with different parts of the city, the more at home I’ll feel. I start Monday.
Nov. 28, 2005
Today was up and down all day long. It actually kind of started last night with lots of happiness because Dennis came back from Amsterdam after being there for a week for a bachelor party. He came home tired and smelly and late, and I went to his house late to say welcome home.
I love his family. Over Thanksgiving, when my mom and Frank came down to visit me and have dinner here in New Haven, I talked to my mom about Dennis’ family. We were in the kitchen, and my mom was making her apple pie. (It’s so good I won’t have anyone else’s.)
“Mom,” I said. “They’re so much fun. There’s so much energy and laughter and being loud. I feel so comfortable with them. I feel like being with them is the personification of my own energy.” I went on for a while longer about his mom’s cooking and how I’ve tried so many new kinds of foods since I met them. (Rabbit on the fourth of July, the dumplings that I can’t pronounce no matter how hard I try, white fish, cold cuts at 2 in the morning, peach schnapps from France, spicy turkey, lots of food from Queens and Brighton Beach.) My mom continued making her pie in silence while I rambled on about how much I love their family.
Suddenly, she stopped, frowned, and pouted. “You’re not going to love them more than me, will you?”
I laughed out loud. “Mom! You’re my MOM. I came out of your WOMB! It’s impossible not to love you the most!”
“Good,” she smiled. “Because I’m just learning how to cook really well and experiment with things and I want you to like my food!”
I laughed again. Why is it that moms get so sensitive about their food?
But I digress. Dennis’ family is one of the coolest I’ve ever met. So I went over there last night to see Dennis and ended up spending an hour talking and laughing with him and his parents over a spread of cold cuts and iced tea and jams and homemade meat-stuffed pastries at the kitchen counter. And I felt really good.
So I woke up happy, too, but that quickly faded once my first-period class came in and I had to pull one student out into the hallway to talk to him about his rudeness and interrupting. God. That brings me down so much. I am, at times, so excited to be with my students. But there are some who are just so infective, so negative, that it’s hard for me to maintain positive emotions. And it’s very hard, at times, not to see the entire ninth grade as obnoxious and disrespectful and rude because of those two kids in every class who bring everyone down. I cannot begin to describe the difficulty of getting through some days. Not all days. But some days.
Some days I don’t want to get up in the morning. Some days I don’t want to drive to work or walk into my classroom. I don’t want to correct papers; I don’t want to go to meetings. It’s real bad.
But then there are those days when it seems like I can do nothing but connect with my kids in a positive way. They make me laugh.
Nov. 29, 2005
Oops. I was interrupted last night by a knock on my door. It was Dennis. I mostly spent the rest of the night venting to him about my day. I slept well, but then woke up crying not wanting to go to work today. Long story short, I got over it and had a good day.
On Monday night I had my first training night at the new restaurant. It went well, albeit it is completely different from the old place. I think I’ll like it there very much, but it’s quite the change of pace. I looked at my schedule for the month and I’m on it only three times, so it definitely will not be as overwhelming a commitment as the old place was. I’m looking forward to how friendly a place it seems, how laid back it seems. I’m also up for the change of position — “I’ll be bartending, too. I go again tomorrow for another training shift, so I’ll get a little more familiar with the place and learn how to make more of their drinks.
I’m not really worried about working there. I don’t think it’ll be much of a challenge trying to balance two jobs now — “I certainly won’t be working as often or for as long at the new place, so I’m looking forward to that. It’s just a job to help them out and to make a few extra dollars.
Now onto today. After numerous pep talks between last night and this morning, I somehow got motivated to change my attitude and approached my first class of the day with creativity and with humor. I wrote a eulogy for myself, to model an example for my students so they’d be able to write one for themselves (or someone they know, or a pet, or a teacher, or a person who’s already died, or a celebrity — ¬¶), in order to prepare them for writing a eulogy for a character in the book we’re reading. I surprised them with my own eulogy; I heard giggles through the room when I announced that in her thirties, Gina created an screenplay that won an Academy Award for best actress and best screenplay, and that she never married but remained instead with one man for her whole life who became a “common law” husband.
Gina left behind two children, a dog, and a cat, as well as countless hundreds of students whose lives she touched through education — “in New Haven, New York, and New Zealand, at both the high school and college levels. Gina was also a well-traveled person who established an entire School of Writing at an elite university and became its dean. I’m not even sure that’s possible, but I wanted to demonstrate that the sky’s the limit for possible outcomes of a single life.
Anyway, for the entire 52 minutes of first period, my students were totally engaged, either with writing, reading, listening, or sharing. It was awesome. Some kids wanted to write two eulogies — “one girl used her eulogy to reveal her crush on an older boy. (“During high school, _______ was loved by a younger girl who thought he was fine, but he ignored her.”) Another kid listed one of his achievements as having “the hottest girlfriend in the world.” I’m excited to work with my other classes on the same project. I think the more they can write about themselves the better.
After school, I came home and fell asleep. I planned on seeing Dennis later, which I did, but not where I expected. Instead of him coming over here after work, I met him and some friends at Toad’s Place to see Mos’ Def. I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that music is not my scene. I didn’t know how to move to it. Plus, I was frustrated — I was psyched to see my friends and to hang out with them, but I had no idea how packed it would be. I’m short; I couldn’t see a damn thing. Usually at Toad’s, I have no problem scooting toward the front of the crowd. But when I say it was impossible tonight, I mean it. I tried everywhere but couldn’t see anything. One guy, while shuffling his six tall friends in to stand in front of me, actually said, “Sorry, shorty.” So that was kind of it for me, and I needed to leave. I dropped $40 on a show I heard for only about a half hour. Money’s not the issue; height is. My stepfather always says, “There’s only two good things about being tall: getting things down from shelves and watching parades.” It wasn’t quite a parade tonight, but damn, did I wish I were tall. I usually don’t care so much about my height, but it really brought me down tonight (no pun intended, whatsoever.)
So now it’s 12:30 and I’m going to bed. I have to be up for a day-long field trip to Quinnipiac University tomorrow. Every year, we split up the 9th grade to visit Yale and Quinnipiac. Our school pushes college from Day One, and it’s so cool to see the kids when they’re on campus. They’ve behaved very well, almost quiet. Last year, I brought my 10th grade Advisory to Boston to look at Northeastern, MIT, and Harvard. I hope to go back again this year to look more seriously at colleges for students who are focusing their college search on the Boston area. Another advisory group went to NYC, and this year another group will go to Providence. I like how our kids’ visions for themselves change once they see all of the different things that are out there.
So it’s bedtime now. Tomorrow will be a long day and I need to get whatever sleep is available to me now.