Happy everything good that lives no matter what.

I am so angry that I don't know how I will do this day.

Period.

Although I've always described my job as "a spit of a job", I always said it with great affection and even pride.  Though most people and even friends who might be expected to know better scoffed at the barely-there hours (midday every school day) and the educational requirements (you are required to be able to fool H.R. into thinking you know your own name), I knew that how I did the job mattered.  As I write this I am remembering times of great satisfaction.  If tomorrow's conversation with the building principal goes the way it might go, I'll write about some of those times and the children I'll never forget, the ones who made doing that job well worth giving it ten of my years.

Every year as the adults I work with and the children I work with change the job changes, too.  Sometimes the actual people are the same from year to year, but children and even adults change as they experience life.  I change, too.  And in ten years, people move on and new people come into the job.  This year the three people I spend most of my worktime with some of the truly nicest people I've ever worked with.  They have positive attitudes, all three of them, and good senses of humor and more importantly, good hearts.  I've looked forward to seeing them each day and that's quite a change from some other years when I worked with  ScaryIntenseWildWoman, AngryRantingScolder, the ever-feuding Mr. and Mrs. WeCheatOnEachOther, ImJustHereForTheMoney ....   I've worked with a lot of people in this job and the women this year are wonderful.

But as for the rest of the job, it's been a frustrating year.  Today the very last straw was placed upon the heap of irritations that everyone natters about but no one will deal with.  Usually I just try to let things roll off my back, remembering that it is, after all, a spit of a job with very short hours and rather decent pay.  I've listened to enough griping, griped enough myself, too and today when a teacher chose to treat me as he would not tolerate being treated, I did something shocking.  I didn't complain--much.  I didn't badmouth him to the other women--for long.  I didn't cower--at all.  I found someone willing to work an extra half hour taking my last group and I sought the teacher out and talked to him.  I told him that I did so because talking to him about our problem was treating him with respect.   I reminded him that he is a professional and I expected him to act like one.  I told him  that I insisted upon being treated with respect. 

Or I'm outta there.

So there I was walking out of Best Buy with still another headset, having replaced my little toy for the FOURTH time under the two year warranty, this time with a new model since the old one is no more.  I walked about five steps behind and a couple of feet to the left of a Best Buy employee who I assume was going to his car after a long day's shift.  He was unusual for a Saturday store guy because he was clearly post adolescent and wore a manager's uniform.  The color and trim of his hair and mustache, gray and neat, and his facial planes and the easy way he talked to me, a stranger, come with age.  And even allowing for length of experience on the planet, I believe that our conversation was a first for him.  It certainly was for me.

"Arms are too short",  was his cheerful opening remark.

"Yes", I agreed, though I wondered how he decided on this particular subject.   He reached behind him and though for a minute I thought his contortions were just for effect, I realized that he was trying to scratch his back. 

"There's that one spot you can't reach", he observed.  I immediately decided I did not have to act on my usual urge to help anyone and everyone around me, but I suggested "You can use your key.  That would help."  He had his keyring in his hand;  he'd been walking out to his car after all.   It was broad daylight on a road congested with Saturday shoppers which calmed the slight prick of apprehension I felt at this point.  Had it been night in an empty parking lot on a deserted street I would have simply fainted...or screamed.  Yes, one of those two things.  But things being what they were I figured it was safe to keep walking.

"Could you?"   He'd stopped and his tone suggested that asking a strange woman to trace over his back with the tips of her fingers was nothing unusual.  It would seem that I was a poor sport or overly selfish with the soothing power of my fingernails if I refused so I stepped behind him and put a timid hand to the middle of his back.

And I scratched.  Competently.

"Is that better?" I asked.  "On my shoulder blade" he replied.  I adjusted my location. 

"Lower."

So I moved there.

"Left."

And there.

"Lower."

Again, I shifted my touch.

"There." he confirmed.  I kept my fingernails going, wondering when an obliging backscratch crossed the line and became more of a carnal lumbar rub.  Mr. ScratchMyItch was in no hurry to have me stop.  After a minute or maybe two I ventured a "Is that better?"

"Oh, yes", he groaned.  "Thanks."

I looked up the definition for "conversation" when I began writing this post.  One synonym is "social intercourse".  I think this afternoon's conversation came very close to that.