It's like the first day all over again . . .

You'd think after a decade of teaching that I wouldn't be wide awake in the middle of the night before my 10th year of teaching. Yet here I am, holed up in our office going over - yet again - our new American Lit textbook, trying to fine tune what I'm going to do tomorrow.

So much for getting up and running in the morning. Hopefully, I'll be able to sleep easier tomorrow night with that first day in the books. Actually it will be Kristie's turn to be nervouse for she starts her new job at UND on Wednesday.

Even KoKo is sound asleep, and she was all worked up about her first day of seventh grade tomorrow. I thought of that earlier and tried to remember my first day of seventh grade. But outside of meeting my best friend, Lon, for the first time in English class, I don't remember much about it.

The same is true for the first class I ever taught ten years ago. I just know that sometime during the day, my mind tells me it was first hour, but I am most likely wrong about that, I asked the class to have all 60 eyes facing me up at the board. It was at this time that a young boy, Mike, shot his hand into the air. Great. My first question of my career. But it wasn't a question, just a simple statement (and one that I haven't forgotten after all this time) - "there are only 59 eyes," Mike said. Then he pointed to the boy sitting across the row from him, "Elliott here has a fake eye." What do you say to that? Elliott was all too happy to agree that he did have a fake eye. Though I wanted him to take it out, I refrained. Humor saved the day for I asked him if he ever took it out and put it in his food. That way he would actually be watching what he was eating. This broke everyone up. Of course, I worried that he would actually do that later that night at supper with his entire family. But he must not have.

And I didn't quite feel so sorry for Elliott. I soon found out that he ritually tortured and bullied Mike, who I think actually like the abuse. So Mike was able to get one back on Elliott.

Maybe I should try that "let's have 60 eyes up on me" tomorrow and see what happens.