BUTALLTHINGSMOVEFORWARDTOWARDTHEIREND

this morning i was up at 4am--i am usually up at 4am, though NOT on the weekends--for a car wash fundraiser for our school's publications department (news staff and yearbook).

blu met me at panera. i was late (i'm NEVER late, but i lost my phone. couldn't find it after all). she'd had breakfast before i got there; she was starving apparently. i had an egg and artichoke souffle. mmm . . . and fresh-squeezed oj.

we had about 30 kids there trying to raise some last minute dough for the JEA convention in anaheim later this month. all in all, we brought in about $500; enough to pay for 5 kids (we're taking 12).

it was, as you can imagine, a lot of fucking work. fun work, just A LOT of it. i have grime all up in my nails and between my toes (i wore flip-flops). don't worry, though, gonna take a hot bath . . .

anyhow, there was a guy there, in a brand new mercedes SLK 500. predictably, my kids went ga-ga. they asked the man what one had to do to get a sweet ride like his and he said, "go to school for 20 years."

squatting on the pavement scraping tar off of his rims, i commented, "i've gone to school for 20 years and i drive a honda accord. so, maybe you should say, 'go to school for 20 years and major in medicine, law, computer science, or business.'" he laughed and added, "yeah. i'm a doctor."

but then, one of my students said, "but you love what you do, ms. b, you're not just in it for the money."

i looked up and smiled at my kid.

now, i don't know . . . i don't think that doctor is in his profession just for the money, but i'll tell you what, i'm definitely not in mine for THAT reason. trust me.

still, teaching was not my first choice. in fact, it wasn't even a blip on my radar (that is, until a friend mentioned to me that i might make a good teacher). i wanted to be a lawyer and i pursued that avenue until i found out it wasn't who i wanted to be. suffice it to say that i had enough bad (very bad) experiences interning to know that i could never make a "good" lawyer because in order to do so i'd have to be, at least in part, a bad person.

at any rate, what i mean to say with all of this is this: i didn't really seek this life that i'm living, but i'm delighted that it found me . . .