Decay and Attack

"Does a caged bird sing the same sad song?......... Always a captured thief....."

I drove my hooptie car next to the train tracks, headed to work.  It smelled funny and is still full of boxes - my teaching career - months after I was laid off. The sky was gray and wet.    

"It's something my body needs anyway....to spell relief.  What we had before was beautiful, if not very brief.  You gotta call that love, I guess its something... to believe".

I was definitely listening to the wrong music, unless I planned on driving my car off of a cliff. 
It is so hard to go to work.

My poor dog looked terrible that morning.  She turned her back to me while she laid in her crate, sad, long, tired eyes looking over her shoulder, legs curled and guarding the staples that created a line straight up her belly.  She could hardly hold her head up.

"We wanted to share how impressed the Fulbright group of observers was with what we do.  We were very proud of our school."
The next line of the all school email said that we shouldn't get a half day substitute teacher.  I am the one that did that.  To bring the Fulbright group to them.  My bad.

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

I've always thought service was easy, mainly because you really can be great and make a difference.  On your own terms.
But I feel really tired these days.

"I'm NOT getting a pass".
Terrell said loudly while stomping behind me to his seat, nearly brushing my back as he looked down at me.   I love how teenage boys in adult sized bodies always resort to physical intimidation, not against men, but against women, when they don't get what they want.  Something in me doesn't feel afraid, I just marvel at how pathetic and cowardly they are.
"You angry or something, you crazy.  I don't know what your problem is.  I'm not leaving".

I talked him out of the room and closed the door.  

I broke a bone in my foot over the weekend.  It is horribly swelled and bruised.  I am in a "walking cast', more like a hobbled, wincing, dragging cast.  I start to sweat and grind my teeth when I walk, grimacing. It hurts.

Terrell came back with his pass and threw it on the ground.
"Pick that up," I commanded, "you don't think I'm going to, do you?"
He picked it up.
And then I privately got in his face, "walking cast" and all and let him know he didn't have two choices, he had one:  SHUT THE FUCK UP.  

"You have no right to judge me, its none of your business.....I thought I had my shit together, I know what time it is....."


*Lyrics and title, Smoke, "Decay and Attack"
*Quote, Martin Luther King Jr., you know, my man Martin.