Day 10 - On the Verge

Each May there's always a day that hints at the summer yet to come, and I think today may have been that day. I slept in and woke to a discombobulated sense of place and time that I can only attribute to an overlapping series of dreams I'd had the night before. Usually Saturday morning is solidly identifiable for me, but this morning, even though I had been teaching 24 hours earlier, I had to stop and think about what day it was, just as I do on 75% of the mornings during summer break. It was kind of a nice.

Early in the afternoon I drove a suburb or two over to the movie theater I frequent, largely because it's the closest one that can all but guarantee I won't run into anyone who would recognize me from school (such is the protected privacy of my introverted life). I rolled the window down on the way over and actually needed to wear my sunglasses for one of the first times in 2014. I passed a church parking lot that had a dozen Boy Scouts scurrying around to set up a plant sale. There were more people walking along the downtown sidewalks wearing shorts than there were wearing jackets, and none of them seemed at all bothered when a brief and gentle sun shower came up.

When I walked into the actual theater, the air held the slightly mechanically-tinged smell of air-conditioning. All of the previews I saw were for the kind of big, stupid comedies that are earmarked for summer releases, and in the moment I wanted nothing more than to see all of them. When the movie ended and I was driving home, I brought up the album "Celebration Rock" by Japandroids on the iPhone plugged into my car. I don't think I'd listened to it since last August, but something about playing it today seemed completely perfect, and it was.

I have twenty-two days with my students left this year. I know this well enough now that I don't have to pause and think about it; I can actually visualize the appropriately crossed off days on the calendar whenever someone asks how many days left. Officially I still have twenty-three, but I don't count that last one since its devoted to packing up my classroom and spending time with friends I won't see much of for a couple of months, and plugging my iPod into the classroom sound system to listen to an end of the year / beginning of the summer playlist I've already started compiling.

It's safe to say I've already started anticipating summer vacation.