posted on Aug, 12 2013 @ 03:01 PM
Good morning, all! Five ....five meteors I saw. One fireballish one and the rest thin streakers ...haha last time I saw a thin streaker was in college
... and desert hits a new low in humor ... now Spira OTOH ..."I'm fairly certain the penis is not a spiritual antenna" ...OMG, OMG, that's
hilarious! ...desert falls off barstool and RAOFLHAO ... I think I'll have that printed at the bottom of my Bethlehem-themed Christmas cards , "Just
a reminder: a penis is not a spiritual antenna."
olaru!! Good to see you! I think I'll pass, thank you, on those monsters. ...And now that you're here, I think it's finally time to tell you all
what I retired from. Those monster drinks reminded me. But, first, a guessing game. Prize is ... is...a buffet on Taco Night to be put on my tab ...
ok, let's start ...
desert retired from 30 years as a :
1. solar architect
2. accountant
3. high school math teacher
4. seamstress for the band
5. one of the above
ok, now that your answers have all been recorded .. is it #1? No. That was the woman who designed the mountain home in the Sierras that my ex ended up
with in the divorce, after he spat out over the phone, "And, besides, you wouldn't want me as a partner in the cabin!!", and I thought, "Hmmm. no,
I wouldn't."
is it ...#2 ? No. desert abhors paperwork, but to be honest, desert, like nature, also abhors a vacuum, hence the space around her is always filled
with objects, which she tries to abide by the rule of an odd number of objects displayed, and because she is also a visual filer, she would have no
clients, as her office would look like the aftermath of an F3 tornado, turning off potential revenue as people assume she could never find their
paperwork but they don't know that, unlike tidy people, she could, yes she could, find a needle in a haystack, a trait of visual filers, yay!.
how about #3 ? hahahahahaha ...you'ld have to be nuts to want to teach math to teenagers ...hahahahahaha
is it #4 ? Oops, sorry, that would be a fantasy job. ...we all have them, right? Doesn't everybody have a fantasy job? Si o no? Oh, come on, who
doesn't dream of being a president, royal, or premier? ...Anyone?
ok, just check #5 and you're all correct and you can all enjoy a Taco Night buffet for free.
Well, the real answer was, yes, #3. Guilty as charged. That 30 year career was the conjunction of loving mathematics and ending up loving teaching
math and working with teenagers. Yep, nuts. Guilty as charged. lol Actually, teaching was the furthest thing in my mind when I graduated from college
but became the closest thing in my heart. The how and when, those particulars about that conjunction, I can leave for another time.
For now, I'll just say that retirement at this time was something I thought would never happen. I was not alone in leaving this career last year; on
my campus alone 10 others left with me. The bug was put in my ear last Fall, when a colleague, for whom I have greatest respect, looked at me straight
in the eyes and said, "Why are you still here?", after we were both commiserating about the unusual school year so far. I had just told him that I
had no bills other than utilities, my condo was payed off, and that I could conceivably live with the retirement amount I would receive at this point
(putting in a few more years would put me at the max). I thought, "He's right!" It took me 40 minutes of signing retirement papers at an
appointment with a district retirement person, and my Life would be set on a new course.
Four years ago, I was putting on five shows (believe me when I say teachers, unlike when I had them in high school 40+ years ago, no longer sit at
their desk in front of rows of students) for 140 students a day, then for the last three years, we all had to put on six shows a day for 160+ students
(my total was 190 then last year 240).
The school I worked at all those years was considered the "inner city" school in my town. It was the oldest, with old classrooms and lower
socio-economic level. Being the smaller size town here, however, I taught every socio-econ level, from children of wealthy farmers and professionals
to children of farm workers and welfare families (admittedly the majority). Although I started out teaching the upper level math classes, I gravitated
to the challenge of explaining math to those students whom, admittedly, most teachers would prefer not to teach.
A good friend one year exasperatingly asked me why I wasn't teaching calculus. I told her that those upper students already had good teachers, and,
besides, to the students I taught, fractions were abstract! The joy of understanding math was the same, whether it was finally understanding calculus
or fractions. So, as a teacher, it was that joy on a student's face that mattered, not necessarily the topic. I will admit that teaching those top
students was akin to riding a Thoroughbred, whereas what I was doing was more like driving a stagecoach, managing a team of horses. Yeehaw!
TBC