Not So Bad After All

Okay, so I ought to be grading papers, or at least doing the dishes. But I just have to tell you about my day yesterday....

It all started when my eyes fluttered open in the early light of morning, instead of the darkness before dawn. With a gasp, I rolled out of bed and squinted at the clock. 7:23. Not too bad. If you're going to oversleep, 23 minutes is the way to go.

I rushed to Allyson's room, where she was lying sound asleep under the glow of the overhead light. Her alarm had gone off, but she'd been seduced back to sleep. "Get up, Allyson!" I shouted. "I overslept. It's 7:23."

She popped out of bed almost as quickly as I had. "I'm going to be late for school," she said.

"Not necessarily. Just pull on your clothes and brush your teeth. We gotta go!"


Ready before I was, Allyson paced around the living room while I vainly tried to wash the salad dressing out of a sandwich container. Today I was chaperoning a field trip, and I'd been warned multiple times not to forget my lunch.

"Are you completely ready? We can still make it," I said as I squirted dish soap for the third time. A glance at the clock told me we had 7 minutes to get her to the bus stop.

Allyson came into the kitchen and eyed me quizzically. "Mom, I'm going to be late. School starts in three minutes."

I crinkled my forehead in confusion. And then the horrible truth sank in. I had overslept by an hour and 23 minutes--on a field trip day. The bus comes at 7, not 8. I needed to be at work in under 45 minutes, and Allyson was indeed already late for school.

I pressed my fingers against my temples. There was no time to drive her to school, in the opposite direction of my work.

"Can you pour me a bowl of cereal while I call Ana?" I asked. "Hopefully she can take you to school."

"What kind of cereal?"

"Anything. I don't care."

I fumbled for my phone, which I had forgotten to plug in the night before. With trembling fingers, I dialed my neighbor and dear friend.

"Ana! Are you home?..."

She was, and she cheerfully agreed to drive Allyson to school.

I threw aside my finally clean sandwich box and started gathering up my things.

"But Mom," Allyson protested. "At least take some snacks. You'll have nothing to eat on the field trip."

"No time," I said frantically. "I've got to go now."

I picked up the cereal bowl, which Allyson had filled to the brim with milk, in her usual fashion. I started to complain about the milk making a mess in the car, but then I bit my tongue. "Thank you for making my cereal," I said. "Now head over to Ana's."

She planted a kiss on my cheek, and I walked as fast I could to the car, trying not to slosh too much milk.

I hadn't made it out of my cul-de-sac when the first corn flakes splashed out onto my jeans, first on one leg, and then on the other to make it symmetrical. Argh! I mopped up the mess with a used Kleenex and jabbed at my phone with the other hand.

In a maddeningly cheerful voice, Ms. Google Maps informed me that traffic was unusually heavy on my route, and the estimated duration of my trip would be... 52 minutes. Noo!! I could not miss that field trip bus.

I tapped the phone a few more times and removed my usual "Avoid Tolls" option. Recalculating, recalculating. The new duration was 40 minutes, putting me at my destination by 8:33--only three minutes after I was due to report to the girls' gym. I breathed a cautious sigh of relief, remembering that Ms. Google's estimates almost always come out on the short side, especially at rush hour.

At the entrance to the express lanes, I veered left instead of right and gunned the accelerator. If I was going to pay $10 to get to work, I was going to exercise my right to drive 75... or 80... but no, not 90. I let my foot up an inch, grinning as I flew past the snarled traffic to my right.

As I drove, I noticed that the tops of my hands were rough as sandpaper. My eyes fell on the sample sized cocoa butter in the care basket I'd put together during my stint as an Uber driver. Clutching the wheel with one hand, I used the other hand to tuck the bottle between two knuckles of my driving hand and then popped off the lid. When I tipped the bottle, a giant dollop of thick cream plopped out. I don't know why I didn't just scrape some of it back into the container, but I guess my brain was still addled.

I replaced the lid and then started rubbing the lotion in to first one hand, and then the other. Oh my!! My hands were horribly slick, and it was hard to hold the steering wheel. I rubbed the lotion up both forearms and then past my elbows, but there was still too much. Sighing, I added some lotion to the milk stains on my jeans.

At the end of the express lanes, I had to wait in some traffic. With a sinking feeling, I watched my estimated time of arrival going up, up (8:33, 8:35, 8:37) even as my phone's battery went down, down (25%, 24%, 22%). "Don't fail me now, GPS," I pleaded.

To make matters worse, my rumbling tummy reminded me that I hadn't had time for my... er... morning constitutional. And if I made it to school in time for the field trip, there was no telling when I'd have time for the restroom. Oh well, one problem at a time.

At last I made it to my exit, only to find an even longer line on the access road. A quick glance told me I wasn't making this light, nor the next one, most likely. My gaze shifted to the right, where a shopping center entrance beckoned. I battled with the temptation for a moment, not out of any virtue, but because I had just broken down and paid the two red light camera tickets I'd earned on one really bad day in December. The last thing I needed was a traffic ticket.

I glanced again at my ETA.

After a furtive glimpse over my shoulder, I turned into the large shopping center. As nonchalantly as possible, I drove through the empty lot, composing my excuse all the while. In my imaginary conversation with a police officer, I used an opener that I hear on a regular basis at school: "See, what had happened was..."

Luck was on my side, and apparently no one witnessed my little misdemeanor. I sighed with relief as I started down the 9-mile straightaway to my school. To my great delight, at the same time that the new song This is the Good Life came on the radio, I hit a string of six or seven green lights in a row. Good thing, because I am NOT going through any very-yellow lights any time soon. Now I watched the ETA going down, down (8:37, 8:34, 8:31).

At one of the longer lights, I pulled out my mascara. With hands all trembly from too much excitement, I managed to smudge an unusually large black spot onto my upper eyelid. I grunted with exasperation. Licking a finger, I carefully wiped at the smudge while trying to avoid my still-wet lashes.

Apparently, the cocoa butter had not been completely absorbed, and some of it got into my eye. Aiyee! Copious tears flowed from my right eye, clumping my lashes into one solid mass. Darn it!

I had neither the time nor the means to fix my lashes, so I just hoped that my glasses would hide the mess. If not, I figured the mascara disaster would distract people from noticing my especially lumpy eye bags; with all the wild temperature swings lately, my allergies have been in hyperdrive. To punctuate my point, I let out a tremendous sneeze, and then another one. One greasy hand on the wheel, I stretched for the Kleenex box in my passenger side floorboard... empty. Darn it! Would nothing go right today?

Well, one thing would. I whipped into one of the last parking spaces in the faculty lot at precisely 8:30. Woo-hoo!!

After a quick sprint to the side door and then what I hoped was a stately jog down two halls, I made it to the gym by 8:34. Not too shabby!

When I tried to hand off my purse to my neighbor and mentor, Kayla, I dropped my phone and a wad of small bills onto the hall floor. Sheeze! We both knelt to gather up my stuff.

"It's okay. You made it," she soothed.

I took a deep breath and decided that all my trials were over for the day. Surely it could only go up from here.

Or not.

Two of my seven girls were missing until the very last minute. One joined us after 20 minutes of socializing with the whole seventh grade, but the other one was apparently absent. We picked up a boy from the waiting list and headed out to the bus.

My stomach decided that we were stopping at the girls' restroom on the way out. Inside a stall, I gratefully blew my dripping nose and then stuffed a giant wad of toilet paper into my coat pocket in case of future sneezes. Whew! Two pressing problems addressed. Things were turning around at last.

Until I washed my hands. And splashed cold water up my coat sleeve. Darn it!

We were the last to board Bus 7, but no one raised an eyebrow. None of my girls wanted to sit with me, but I decided to enjoy the solitude rather than pouting.

On the short walk from the museum parking lot, I figured out that keeping this group together was going be like herding cats. As I turned to count to seven one more time, I tripped over a curb. The three girls straggling behind me quickly stifled their giggles. I grinned at them. "Did you see me trip over that curb?" I asked.

"Yes, miss," they snickered.

"It's okay. You can laugh. I'm not hurt," I said. For the first time since I'd woken up, laughter bubbled up inside me. In that moment, I decided to let go of my mood and just enjoy the day.

From that point, I delighted in a slew of little blessings:

• My on-the-spot helper Myra*, who held out a pen each time I needed it, before I even asked. And it wasn't just any pen, but an aqua sparkle pen. After my phone died an hour into our visit, she leaned in to tell me the time every 10 or 15 minutes. Thanks to her, we didn't miss our Space exhibit time, nor did we get left behind at the end of the day.
• My undershepherd, Alana, who could always spot the other six kids no matter where they might be hiding.
• Everyone's collective gasps of wonder in the gem room, which was filled with giant geodes and crystals of every imaginable color and shape. As we admired each new design, Andrea* would say she simply had to have this formation to decorate her room. 
• Shared laughter when I called my group pathetic for begging to take the elevator. "Sorry," I said. "I'm a compulsive rule follower." I pointed at the icons next to the elevator: a pregnant woman, a stroller, a cane, a wheelchair. "We don't fit any of those categories."
  
  "Come on, miss," they begged. "We're too tired to climb the stairs."
  
  I was panting pretty hard myself after climbing two long flights, so I relented just once. It was fun hearing their squeals as the high-speed car shot upward. I wondered how often they have an occasion to ride an elevator.
• Warm hugs from many of my students who never show any signs of affection in our own classroom. It warmed my heart that they weren't too cool to hug their teacher.
• All the kids' exuberance as they ran around under a glorious blue sky after lunch. A colleague remarked that seventh-graders really need recess, and I agreed.
• Savoring my $10 museum lunch of falafel patties on pitas. It sure beat the PBJ I'd planned to pack. (But I ruefully pined for the coconut water I'd wanted to spoil myself with. The clerk kindly informed me that it was $6.50, so I hastily put it back in the cooler and asked for a complimentary water instead.)
• Sitting with Holly* at lunch. I giggled inside when she told another student I was her favorite teacher. Just days before, she'd been seething with anger at me over some perceived injustice.

The last blessing came today during Good Things when Doreen*, an immigrant from Nigeria and one of my best students, said, "I got to spen' de whole day wit you, on de fiel' trip yesterday."

I beamed. "That was one of my Good Things, too, Doreen!"

Some days, I just love my job.

*Names changed to protect privacy.