Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2004
With that big old forehead, posted at 6:49 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com March is still my comeback month, despite a sort of mediocre day. First of all, I was late for the first time ever to school. I mean, I've been later than I'd like to be before, and even late getting into the building, but today I was just plain old late - like, my ass was rushing into the door of the school as the bell rang. I just had a weird morning (took some medicine in my ear that made me dizzy and unconfident driving, but I still left on time to get there, but the traffic was horrible and I got cut off, etc), and paid the price. Luckily, my colleague invited all my students into her classroom and waited for me. Some folks were worried that I'd gotten into a car wreck since it's so uncharacteristic for me to be late. But, luckily, it was nothing. And, truly, I guess getting into my classroom at 8:26 instead of being there by 8:25 isn't that bad. My kids are so good in that class that they didn't miss a beat.I had some great class discussions today about Scout and Jem and Tom Robinson and Lizabeth (from "Marigolds") and their coming of age moments. To Kill a Mockingbird is all about busting people out of labels and stereotypes and transforming them into real people, and I just love tracing it in the characters' eyes. The kids were really good in their discussions today.
Oh, and this is a reason I love my job. I laughed so much today. Since I have a 27-man baseball team, one kid asked me off the the side, "Hey Coach, are you able to notice me out there? See me hit yesterday?" and another kid overheard him, and said with a big grin on his face, "Jerel, nobody could never miss you with that big ol' forehead of yours." I just love these kids. There's another joke a kid told that I think would lose all meaning if I tried to transcribe it because it was all about the timing of it, but I was laughing so hard that I had to bite my cheeks to regain composure.
Baseball practice still is fine, but I'm not as pumped as I was on Monday. I'm debating whether my decision to keep two squads worked. I noticed less intensity in today's and yesterday's practices (with just the A squad) than in Monday's practice with the entire squad. Also, a kid, my best pitcher, quit the team today. I've coached him for three years and he's always been erratic, but I was convinced that he had matured this year. He's joining the Marines in a couple of months and is really into that, and I just kept thinking that he's got to be okay to play. But he fell back to his old persona far too quickly, like the big baby that he is. Can you tell I'm a little bitter about it? He says it's because there are too many kids on the team. Well, now there's one less.
I have a work meeting at the restaurant tonight from 9-11 pm. Not looking forward to that on a school night.