Summer Vacation

Tomorrow is my last day of school; Wednesday begins summer vacation. For the next eight weeks I will go to bed when I’m tired and will wake when I’m rested. I will eat when I’m hungry and have enough time to chew my food before swallowing. I can even go out to lunch! Like a grown up! I’ll go to the bathroom when my bladder is full and not when the bell rings.

I won’t wake up in the middle of the night on Sunday nights and wonder if I have all my photocopies made for the day and if my lesson plans are all set, then spend the remainder of the night tossing and turning. I won’t have to scramble to write lesson plans if I’m sick; I’ll just stay in bed until I feel better. I won’t walk around with the cartoon bubble above my head where comments like Jackass exist and I won’t be disrespected by teenagers and their parents. And I probably won’t have a migraine all summer. Unless we have major thunderstorms. But even then.

I will certainly more than once have to defend my summer vacation to non-teaching professionals who think we teachers have “the life” and can’t see beyond summer vacation. They won’t be bothered to understand the 20 minute lunches and sphincter challenges or how many things we have to pass up during the school year because we can't get that time off. They don’t care about the sleepless nights and lesson plans and migraine headaches. They won’t concede that their kids are a handful and after 10 months of spending more time with them than they do, we need a break. As do their demanding and ungrateful kids. (Well, most of them, anyway.)

At the end of August I will be refreshed, and broke, and I’ll start again—hopeful enough to think the next school year will be different and next June I won’t feel so beat up, realistic enough to refill my migraine medication.