Interviewer (gray-haired, liney-faced, concerned Republican principal):
"What kinds of responsibilities, outside the school, do you think teachers have in their communities?"
[Weighty pause.]
Me:
"Well . . . above all, teachers are role models. So you can't just throw on a tube-top and go down to buy a keg at the local 7-11 without considering who you might meet in line at the register. You know?"
Today I stole a huge, empty cardboard box from the media center at the high school where I'm student teaching. Andy and I are going to assemble the box in the football field next to our house, and take turns taping each other inside and tackling it.
It turns out that we both used to do this for fun as kids--not with each other though. We discovered our shared penchant for box-tackling during a conversation the other evening.
Box-tackling? Perfectly normal, say we.
Anyway, I had to ask one of my students to help me load the box into my Golf, because the back doorhatch is broken and the thing was too huge to cram through the side doors. (When I carried it through the hallway it completely obscured my tiny birdlike body; it must have looked hilarious to innocent bystanders and the school principal, who I passed with a smile and without explanation of any kind.)
I probably shouldn't have told my student what the boyfriend and I are actually going to do with the box. I'm sure word of my eccentricity will get around. Perhaps it will simply add to my pedagogical mystique.
I'm waiting for Andy to get home so that I can reveal the surprise waiting in the car. Feelin wiggly, feelin wiggly.
