Cloth cut and gathered
Then stitched and sown
I rented the suit and tie
She made the dress her own

A true story, my first wedding. Submitted to Weekend Writing Prompt #376 – Handmade

Today I’m feeling:

A little down with a headache behind the eyes.

I didn’t sleep particularly well and woke up at one point with a disconcerting dream where I was trying to find my friends in an AFL stadium but ended up outside, around a car parking area and went through a fire exit door that led into a dank dark wide stairwell and off to the side, a cavernous tunnel dug through the concrete, dirt and rock, the pathway littered with old beer bottles.  Obviously, a place for nefarious folks to gather. 

As I stepped through, a dodgy youngster stepped out of the shadow, saying, ‘Well, well, what have we here?  Welcome to The Pricks.’  I replied with a ‘What?’ And attempted to get back to the fire door to exit, somehow knowing and submitting to the fact that I wasn’t going to make it and my legs were as if stuck in treacle.

Unable to face my fate, I woke myself up, wondering who won the football and scared to go back to sleep.

Health:

Physical: 6
Mental: 8

Today I’m grateful for:

My old student Cake, who is in grade 10 now, is in the Science Program and aiming to be a doctor.  She took me to the stand where she was demonstrating what worms are made up of and how they work.

She looks and behaves so grown up now that last Thursday, when students don’t need to wear a uniform, I mistook her for a teacher!

Also, Jet, who showed me a little about how Instagram works and Tonaor, who showed me how to follow everyone in their class.

The best thing about today was:

Watching some of my students perform a dance routine that I had seen them practising for the last few weeks. I thought that they were just doing it for fun but I was amazed at how professional they were when they were on stage today.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I arrived back at school at 10:20 to discover that today is Science Day and many of my 10:30 grade 12 class were taking part in it and those that weren’t wanted to go and watch them.  Well, ok, I guess. 

I didn’t know anything about this (though I do know that tomorrow is another event that disrupts my classes) but I rolled with it and went to check it out for a little while too. It was pretty fun, though I’m not sure how the sexy dancing competition fit into the theme of the event but everyone seemed to be having a good time. 

After an hour, I headed back for more coffee and reading and writing ( and my final grade 8) class, asking to skip today to go to the event, but we all knew that it would be finished by then and they were just trying it on. 

I took it easy with them, though and we had a fun class practising what we did yesterday, introductions and asking conversational questions and I came up with an interesting idea for them to try next week. Basically, getting each of my grade 8 classes to go and record themselves interacting with each other, having the same type of conversations. It will push them a little and will show me who is motivated.

Something I learned today?

In the Middle Ages, what we now call a hedgehog was called an urchin. That’s a fairly useless piece of information.

I also heard about a Palestinian man who went to register the birth of his three-day-old twins and came home to find that Israel had bombed the apartment where they were staying (as they had been displaced) killing the babies, their mother (who was a well-liked doctor) and grandmother. 

Sickeningly, some Israeli online commenters said that they were happy to have taken away everything from this man.

This is how terrorists are made.