At a certain point, you'd expect to know what to expect coming back to school after being away...
but I suppose it's like a haunted house.. you know that shoddily-made mummies and cardboard ghosts or painted actors are going to pop out at you as you turn the corner, but that doesn't actually stop you from screaming...
So I suppose a part of me anticipated tossing and turning all night and dreaming nonsensical half-lucid dreams about co-workers and forgotten cupcakes...the revelation was a familiar one: Ah yes, that's right. School tomorrow. No sleep. Half-cracked.
And then there's that moment after picking up the kids from the cafeteria in the morning and watching them trudge up the stairs, in the customary scattered parade of bulky coats and heavy backpacks and and spiky hair and sleepy eyes and illicitly traded Pokemon cards (even at 7:30 in the morning...). The procession happens every single day I go to work (I generally try to use it as an opportunity, however brief, to look into their faces and see what I can see) but time off makes it alien again.
Yes, half of me anticipated my slightly addled confusion... how did we all get here? Do I know you? Who are these kids and what am I going to do with them all day? And what has become of the comfort and leisure that was all mine only a very few short hours ago??
But, just as in the rickety roller-carts of the haunted house, the other half of me was blindsided yet again.
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