Monthly Archives: August 2020

All through my years of teaching, I have been known as the disciple of the Major Dramatic Curve.  Ever since graduating grad school I have used this form as my start to the school year.  Over the years, I have tailored this simple document repeatedly to distill my thinking just as much as I could.  Every student I have had over the many years can recite this page by heart.  Just today, I ran across 30 copies of this page –  likely an overprint from years passed.  It made me a bit sad to toss them all in the trash.  But, just for old times sake, and for any student of mine that might read this blog in the future, I thought it would be fun to include it.  Here it is.  Major Dramatic Curve

I have written about my relationship with my alarm clock many times in this blog.  Our relationship has totally changed since I stopped punching the ol’ work clock.  In the first few days of retirement, I woke up automatically at 6:30 even though no alarm had been sent.  It felt too odd to stay in bed so I got up and roamed around the house looking for something to clean or fold.  So I thought the answer was to take that clock and hide it in the sock drawer as a punishment for waking me up too damn early for years.  But recently I have changed the game.  I have now returned the clock to its place on my nightstand  I still find myself rolling over at 6:30 but now I can give this clock a bit of a smirk, and I can roll to the other side and defiantly grab a few more zzzz’s.  I win!

I miss my keys – my school keys.  There were four of them that hung from my worn and slightly dirty red lanyard.  These keys did not come easy to me.  I started out with a much larger assortment of keys.  They didn’t want to give me a master key so I was getting a key for every door I needed throughout the school day.  But then, eventually, I proved trustworthy enough to get a master key that could open up a good portion of the school.  I went from 7 keys to four.  I was a hot shot.  I hung these keys from my pocket with pride.  There were a few times that they got “misplaced” as I handed them out to a student stage manager (totally against the rules I know) and times they lodged themself in between the seats in the auditorium.  I do remember a few rehearsals in which I had the entire cast walk each aisle of the auditorium for the search. But they always came back to me. It was an emotional moment when I had to turn the keys in  – – even sacrificing my red lanyard to boot!  And now they are handed off to my successor.  Sad.  I miss them.

Every retirement book that I have read tells you that the primary occupation of the retired is their health.  Health is my new job.  Health is what I do. Health doesn’t pay well – in fact you have to pay FOR it.  I used to make fun of “old people” for their non-stop chatter about their aches and pains; the newest procedure; their pending doctor visits; and every pill, potion, or elixir that is out there.  I mean – – didn’t they have anything better to talk about? Read more →

Although retirement has only lasted through one week of school without me  (Perish the thought), I still feel that 3:25 pm jolt.  3:25 was the time that school was dismissed for most of my career.  I don’t care if I am taking a nap (which is actually an excellent thing to be doing in the middle of the afternoon), driving a car, or folding laundry.  When 3:25 arrives I pop awake and look around me for instant chaos – but none arrives.  I don’t trust this quiet at 3:25.  I am thinking students are going to pop out of the doors and surprise me.  3:25 is an EVENT for me.  I feel a big shift happen at that moment – not a good thing or a bad thing – but something is certainly going down at that time – and I am not invited to the clock anymore. I don’t know how I feel about that.