I use the notes app on my phone to jot down small moments at work. They’re are all unified by…something. I don’t know what exactly. They’re off-beat. They give me inner peace. So I call them my Zen moments. Here are some from the first twenty weeks of school:
Moment of silence. Kid with a broken leg tears down the hallway on a scooter at 60 mph.
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An old sub walked past me in the hallway, well dressed aside from a post-it note stuck to his tie that said “sub.” I never saw him again that day, haven’t seen him since.
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“I hate this damn guardrail!” Girl climbing over the parking lot guardrail, to her friend.
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A kid playing “Schism” by Tool on his bass during advanced orchestra. It was an annoying riff when I was in high school. Now it is nostalgic…and still annoying.
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Kid filling up his water bottle at the water fountain. He starts cackling. Water is overflowing his hydroflask. He takes out his phone and points it at the fountain. I ask what he’s doing. “Dude, it’s almost at ten thousand,” he says excitedly. I now think about his excitement every time I fill up my water bottle.
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Girl walking calmly to her car with her peers at the end of the day, holding a big red rag against her bloody nose.
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Rainy Friday, tiny rubber ducky in the middle of the road at the entrance to the school.
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The Marine Corps visitor on the morning live stream announcements forgets words to the Pledge of Allegiance.
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As I’m leaving one afternoon, I noticed all the students walking out of the school had stopped in their tracks and were looking down at the brook, an area where some students cut through to get to the stadium lot. My first instinct is that there’s a fight going on down there. But it’s actually a deer, back legs stuck in the wire fence, flailing. Traffic continued moving before I could see it break loose and continue its journey toward the busy parking lot.
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“He’s so weird…he’s probably on his phone watching Instagram reels.” -homeroom student to her friend, describing another student.
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Going over capitalization rules, when to capitalize the names of members of the family. Student asks with false innocence how and when to capitalize sugar daddy.
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Reading a passage out loud.
Me: “Cardiac arrest…”
Student: “POV my dad.”
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I share a homeroom with In Sim, the most famous and eccentric member of the English department. One morning I walked into the classroom and said hi to her. She looked up, stared at me for a moment, said, “Yeah, I’m gonna go wash my hands,” and walked by me.
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Me: “What’s that you’re putting up?”
Freshman: “Marketing stuff”
Me: “Cool”
Freshman: “I guess. I don’t know.”
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Ran a boy out of the bathroom who was holding a cafeteria tray and eating his lunch angrily while gossiping with a friend. I informed him it’s bad for your health. “School is bad for my health,” he retorted as he walked out.