The Banshee

The day started off well. Me. The coffee. Next to the window. Then the sixers started pouring in. Droves of them. It's really hard to get much done during the pre-holiday bedlam. The sixers were crazed today and the constant distractions caused me considerable consternation. I tried doing my calm breathing as I waited for attention, lowering my voice to a whisper whenever I spoke, glaring at a few kids with the evil death ray glare, and reviewing the rationale behind our procedures and systems for the 50,000th time. I'm sad to say that I finally blew during second period. One pesky sixer just drove me over the edge. After I decided to take a breath and stop the banshee imitation, we all calmed down. With 20 minutes left of the period, the sixer decided to have mercy on me and he started to write. The other sixers joined in. I sat with a few sixers and actually conferred with them about their stories. We had the radio on and I could hear sixers singing quietly along as they erased and revised. When it was time to go, I wished them well and told them to proceed on their merry way. A sixer packing up her stuff told me, "Hey thanks, this was fun. We should do it more often." I didn't know what to say, so I just smiled, "My pleasure, I enjoyed it too." I felt proud of myself for not ranting, "We should do this more often???? We should be doing it every single day!" I cut my losses and cleaned the desk, preparing the cabin for departure.
foto credit: Menosky. Did you know you could order customized m and m's? You can.