This is the End

"Adiós amigos...." I chanted to my class.
"Ya, me voy"
"¡Ciao!"
"Ciao, darling!!"  one of my new fourth graders exclaimed, pushing his shoulder forward dramatically and raising his chin.
I might have a keeper.

I stood on the corner of the busy street in front of the school, watching school buses arrive and walkers and bicycle riders navigate the intricate network of crosswalks, attempting not to get killed by speeding motorists.  It is my new duty assignment; no more easy-ass coffee clutch hang out with the kids in the mornings and afternoons, seated on a stairwell landing.
This new shit is war.

"The wood guy thinks we have termites.  The inspector can come Friday afternoon.  Can you meet him?".
"Of course,"  I answered, picturing our house falling into the ground.  

I came home from Madrid almost ten years ago to the day.  There wasn't gas in any of the stations and when I turned on the television, American citizens were trapped on roof tops while a horse trainer appointed by George W. Bush failed to coordinate any type of federal rescue effort after Army maintained levees allowed the seas to wash away one of the best cities on earth. 

I stood, holding the front door of the school open on Open House night.  I sensed someone coming up to me quickly and felt a hug happening and ending.
"Oh hi!"  I said, greeting the wife and daughter of the man that just hugged me.  The man that I made out with once like, twenty odd years ago.
"You are in my class again!".

If I could braid the weeds growing around my house and the dust forming on the inside, I think it might make a neat, apocalyptic landscape.   But if I am too lazy to clean, I am definitely to lazy to braid.

"In, two weeks, I will assume my new position in the Central Office" my principal at school announced.   Great.  One of the only bosses I've had that actually gets me is going on to bigger horizons. 

"You won't believe the crazy letter we got from your stepfather's brother!"  my mom exclaimed.
"The end is near, the rapture is coming, he has done his own algorithmic shit and he says its next month....or on Christmas" she spat out, bursting into laughter.
"We have to accept Jesus in our hearts or else, mark of fucking Satan, it's over!".

A mental picture of dead people in blue track suits wearing brand new Nike high tops flashed through my mind.

"Do you think we should, I don't know, call some type of authorities about this?".