A Day in the Life of a Commuting Teacher:

3:30 am: You get out of bed to go pee. As you stumble back to bed in the dark, you pray it’s some wonderful time like 1:00 or 2:00 am so that you have a few more hours of guaranteed sleep. But as you slide back under the covers, you check the time on your phone and it’s 3:30. Damn.

4:50 am: Cell phone alarm goes off. It really doesn’t matter what ringtone you have chosen. Whether it’s the Blues, Samba, Piano Rift or the iPhone factory settings, it sounds like Death has come knocking. You never actually get up at 4:50; but recently changed your alarm so you can experience the joy of hitting snooze once or twice and still be out of bed and in the shower by 5:10. When a carpool buddy and 27 children are waiting for you, it’s time to get your ass in gear.

5:15 am: You stand in the shower wondering if you have the flu. It’s hard to tell if you’re sick because getting up at this hour, daily, is sick. Even on days you really are sick you go through the entire getting ready process as a test. If you still feel nauseous and headachy by the time you’re ready to go, you might actually be ill and it’s time to call for a sub.

5:30-6:00 am: Make lunch, eat breakfast and get ready while watching the 5:00 morning news with Walt Gray and Deidra Fitzpatrick. No interesting news, but you do need the weather and traffic. You normal routine is to get dressed using only the light of the closet. When your significant other groans and covers his face with the covers because this one closeted light-bulb is disturbing his slumber, you wish to trade places, just for a day.

6:10 am: Meet the carpool buddy. If it’s your day to drive, get the caffeine going. If it’s not, thank goodness! Slip off your shoes and get your feet in there under the floor heater on the passenger side. About a year into commuting, you adapted just like any other animal that has escaped distinction. You extinct is to try and compensate for lost sleep whenever possible. This advanced ability of yours allows you to fall asleep before your carpool companion has driven past 2 exits and you sleep soundly until the wheels hit the off-ramp. This is no joke. The phenomenon of perfectly timed sleep has been observed in many a carpooler. On weekends and evenings, the most advanced carpoolers can even sleep soundly on a five-minute car ride to the grocery store if they’ve roped that useful significant other into playing chauffeur.

7:10 am: Wipe the sleep from your eyes; climb out of the car; and get to work.

7:30 am: Use the bathroom before school starts. While washing your hands, you look into the mirror and realize your shirt is on either inside-out or backwards. Just a symptom of getting dressed in near darkness.

10:10 am: While reading with a small group of students you reach down to scratch your leg and realized you only shaved your left leg. Personal hygiene really works best when you are fully awake and functioning.

4:30 pm: Time to hit the road again. You turn on the radio and since none of the same music stations have signal out here, you resort to the old standby: NPR. “All Things Considered” is interesting two or three days/week, but why can’t “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” air on a Monday afternoon? It would start the work week off right. At least you have all the episodes from the last 3 months downloaded on to your iPhone and can try to play along and remember the news trivia that was big and important during the week of February 12th. That’s not all. You also have about 6 audiobooks on there, but those are hard to get through when you are carpooling. David Sedaris makes a joke about his boyfriend doing “faggy things like picking wild flowers” and all of a sudden you feel uncomfortable sharing a small sedan with a rather conservative 60-year old music teacher. At least he’s not driving and in control of the radio today. Classical music makes great background music, but it certainly doesn’t make 50 miles pass by very quickly. For now, he can deal with some Rhianna or perhaps some Angels and Airwaves.

4:40 pm: The drive home is usually more interesting. You tend to stay awake more whether or not it’s your turn to drive. As you cruise along the scenic Highway 99, you take in the local landmarks. The dilapidated “Chicken Kitchen” just outside of Stockton, the drive-through in Lodi that looks as if it was made of Lincoln Logs and has a sign advertising “Chicken Croissants.” Every time you see that sign you wonder if a comma is missing, but you never stop to find out. Perhaps no one does, as you’ve never actually seen a car in the supposed business. Lodi is a great place to keep your eyes on the sky, as sky divers plummet from an airplane and land what appears to be mere yards from the freeway.

4:50 pm: Ah, a couple of adults are trying to cross 99 on their bicycles. You must be in Galt. Be cautious here. This is a reoccurring phenomenon in Galt. Apparently the bicycle overpass just half a mile down the road is too far for these Galtians. They make it to the center divide before attacking the next two lanes of traffic. You swerve to miss a rotting dog carcass and hope the cycling citizens make there appointment at the tattoo parlor on time.

5:00 pm: If you are taking 5 today, as you sometimes do (depending on the carpool meeting spot), “The Dawn of Civilization” comes into view. This is actually the unimpressive skyline of Elk Grove. If you stop at any of the Elk Grove exits, you will find the civilization here is gray, cement, uninspired and not too impressive. What is so enchanting about Elk Grove is that as you drive North on 5, it magically appears out of nowhere. It doesn’t slowly come into view on the horizon. All of a sudden, it’s just there. Elk Grove is good for two things and two things only: caffeine (there is a Starbucks at every exit) and hope (you know that Sacramento is minutes away).

5:15 pm: You exit the freeway. Praise Allah!! This feels wonderful. Sometimes it feels as if you must have driven from Bakersfield. Other days, few and far between, the drive feels suprisingly short. These must be the days when Ann Taylor has some juicy news from Capitol Hill or Meeeeeshell Norris has a hilarious interview with a plucky old woman living in the Appalachian and complaining about a hive of 4,000 bees living within the walls of her mobile home.

10:00 pm: Shortly before hitting the sack (or passing out on the couch), your significant other complains about “having to get up early.” You know that no words are needed here. Instead, you cast a cold eye on him that immediately puts him in his place. “Oh really?” this look asks, “You have to get up early? Early like seven? Or heaven forbid, early like six-thirty.” Poorly chosen words from your mate. Because God only knows you would exchange him in a second if it meant you could sleep in one more hour.

See it to believe it.

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Over break I…
1. Baked a lot of cookies
2. Walked on the Golden Gate Bridge
3. Ran 20 miles

As a my students held up 1, 2, or 3 fingers, Hector, sitting directly across from me on the couch experienced his not-unusual diarrhea of the mouth.

To no one in particular, but loud enough for everyone, he blurted out, “Number three is the lie. Run 20 miles? A woman can’t do that.”

My eyebrows shot a few inches up my forehead while 26 students sucked in a collective gasp (I later reflected upon this and was thankful for their joint shock at the statement.) Rather than rant or rave, I find that a calm seriousness really is most effective and helps everyone to sit up a little straighter in this type of situation.

“Oh really Hector?” I asked. “Women can’t run 20 miles?” At this point I think the class is waiting for some real fireworks. They should know by now, that’s not my style. “I find that interesting,” I continued, “because I myself have done that probably 10 times.”

“Oh…” he sank back into the couch cushions. “Um…is a marathon 20 miles?” he asked, a bit meeker than his first declaration. This is probably when he remembered that I shared with the class that I had run a marathon in Sacramento a month before, one in SF a few months prior, and another when I had them back in fourth grade.

“No. Actually, a marathon is 26 miles. And I’ve done that 5 times.” A matter of fact tone paired with eye contact is really much more powerful than raising your voice.

“And you know, there are women who have run over a HUNDRED miles, at once, without stopping,” I added.

“Oh.” Poor Hector. Maybe the devil is back to speaking to him in his head (see previous note, “Fabulous Student Quotes.”) Or perhaps his parents just need to move a few hundred years forward in time. I suppose it’s better he learns it now from his fifth grade teacher, rather than some teenaged girl that slaps him across the face a few years down the road.

“I guess we won’t be skipping Women’s History Month this year,” I noted. And so we moved on to the week’s spelling words.

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