My Real Life

Real Man and I went to the movies, the other day.

While we were there, right before the previews, I realized I had to run to the ladies room.

While I was in there, I happened to overhear the woman in the stall next to me conducting a business meeting.

In the bathroom.

Sitting down.

We both emerged from our stalls at the same time, and as I washed my hands, she finished her call.

She hung up, moved forward to the sink, looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and held up her phone.

“Always on call, these days. Right?”

I smiled and nodded, and felt the weight of my own phone, in my back pocket, but I couldn’t help but wonder…

Does the amazing technology we have, today, mean that we can never, truly leave work?

—–

One of the things I tell my students, and their parents, is to email me their questions any time.

I always have my phone on me, and I’ll get back to them very soon.

I do this, because if they are working on something at home, and they encounter an issue, I want to help them get it resolved, and answer their question, rather than have them stop the work and not have it done.

I don’t have it with me during dinner.

I don’t bring it with me when I’m playing outside with the kids.

It’s not out when we are doing something as a family.

However, I check it soon thereafter, and do respond as soon as I get the questions.

In some ways, it feels no different than how I often spend the weekend grading papers.

In other ways, it’s invasive.

But, for me, it’s a choice.

I don’t have to respond after hours or on the weekend.

I want to.

But, for so many people, that phone…

It’s not a lifeline.

It’s a tether.

A leash.

A way for a boss to assign just one more case for you to work on and have ready for Monday morning.

A way to make sure that even when you are home, your mind is on work and the things that you have to complete.

My neck feels tense just thinking about it.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I’ve been rewatching Sex in the City.

In the show, Miranda is a lawyer.

In the later seasons of the show, she is very conflicted about the amount of time that she spends at the office, and then the amount of work she has to bring home.

Every time I see her struggle, I think, “Thank goodness she didn’t live in the time of smart phones!”

You know, because she’s a real person.

I think about all the people that I see, nose in phone, everywhere I go, and I know that all those people aren’t on Facebook or Instagram all the time.

A lot of them are working.

And then I wonder…what are the jobs that don’t require you to be in contact like that?

Do sanitation workers have to respond to emails about the new trucks that they are using to pick up the trash on Monday morning?

Does my mailman have to respond to a group email that he receives on a Saturday afternoon about a meeting that they are having before running their routes on Monday morning?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that the blending of work and home time isn’t a healthy piece of progress in society, and we need to be careful that we don’t wind up working all the time.

A few weeks ago, I woke up and found a strange lump on my clavicle.

Well, not on my clavicle, but above my clavicle, at the base of my neck, a bit to the side.

And, it wasn’t just a little lump.

It was a big one.

I apologize for the visual, but the best way I can describe it is that it was like someone put a breast implant on top of my shoulders.

Weird, right?

It didn’t hurt, but it was unnerving.

And embarrassing.

It wasn’t yet sweater weather, but I started wearing a sweater to work to cover it up.

And then, after two days, I went to the school nurse.

She was stumped, and called the FastER in town, and put me on the phone with the doctor there.

He, too, was stumped and wanted me to come in for a closer look.

So, I went.

He poked and prodded, brought in another doctor to check it out, and in the end, put his hand on my shoulder and said “Well, you are just strange!”

I could have told him that without the $10 copay.

He was no closer to knowing what was up, so he ordered bloodwork and told me, if it hadn’t cleared up in two days, to call the local imaging center for a CT scan.

Two days later, not only hadn’t it cleared up, it had gotten bigger, so I called and scheduled the CT scan.

The next day, I got a call that the bloodwork came back and was clean.

So, hurdle one, cleared.

—–

The next week, I went for the scan.

It was a CT scan with contrast.

They hadn’t been sure that they were going to do the contrast because of my shellfish allergy.

They had me bring my inhaler, take Benadryl, and were prepared for disaster.

That really set me at ease.

The woman warned me, beforehand, exactly what it was going to feel like when the IV fluid was going in.

She said it was going to be hot, and then I’d feel flushed and hot from the chin to “the groin” and I’d feel like I had peed in my pants.

“The dye can’t actually make you urinate, but you will definitely think you did.”

Sounded lovely.

“The most important thing,” she told me, “Is that you don’t move. Not even a fraction of an inch.”

Okay.

I lay back in the machine and closed my eyes, and the table began to move me through slowly.

From the other room, she pushed the button that began the IV.

I felt it creeping up my arm, but it was freezing, and not even a little warm, like she had said.

I figured this was it.

The end.

I was having a reaction to the contrast, and that was why I was feeling it as cold instead of hot.

That my body was beginning to shut down.

To paralyze.

I was turning to stone.

And then…I began to flush.

My face felt hot and sweaty, and it traveled down my body until…

Oh no.

She was wrong.

I was the exception to the rule, and the dye had made me pee.

All over the table.

I was mortified.

I lay there in a pool of my own urine, and tried to figure out how to extricate myself from the situation with grace and just a little bit of dignity.

But, I never moved.

Finally, the table slid back out of the machine, and she came in.

“All done!”

I sat up, ready to explain what had happened, when I realized, I was dry.

And all the weird sensations were gone.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Great,” I responded. “I barely noticed a thing.”

—–

Fast forward a few days, and I get a call from the doctor.

“So, the results are in,” he says. “Everything is clear. There doesn’t appear to be anything there.”

“Wow! That’s great!” I say. “So, um, what the heck is going on?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he said.

“Hey!” I said. “I have an idea… maybe it’s bunched muscles or something? I recently started working out with kettle bells, and it works different muscles than usual, and it’s possible, right?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Right?” I asked, again, a little more desperately this time.

He hesitated, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it could possibly be.

Not cancer…the bloodwork was clear.

Not a cyst…the CT was clear.

So, what was it that he was so terrified to tell me?

What could it be that had him, a trained doctor, trying to find the words to say?

 

He cleared his throat and spoke softly.

“Actually…I think it’s just…fat.”

Now it was my turn to be silent.

Finally, I mustered an “Excuse me?”

“I think it might be a new pocket of fat.”

I thanked him and hung up and sat there, at my desk, incredulous.

Grateful, believe me.

Very grateful that it wasn’t cancer or anything dangerous or anything that would require surgery.

Yet…

I was dumbfounded.

Fat?

On top of my freaking shoulders?

I no longer have to just worry about my butt, my thighs, and my belly.

Now, I need to worry about collecting fat on top of my shoulders?

And so, if you need me, I’ll be doing bench presses in the basement so I don’t wind up having to wear a turtleneck bathing suit next summer.

But, hey, maybe if it’s migrating from other parts of my body,  I’ll fit into skinny jeans sooner than I’d hoped!

Monkey Girl has always been tall.

In nursery school, she was always the tallest kid in her class.

In elementary school, she towered over the boys.

By middle school, some of the girls had caught up, and by the end of 8th grade, the boys had generally caught up, and her friend group included some supermodel tall young ladies, and she was no longer walking around, hunched over, trying to appear as though she wasn’t the Big Bird to the Bert and Ernie’s of her peer group.

But, I will never forget those early years.

Because she was tall, everyone expected her to behave like an older child.

In stores, if she was acting two, when she actually was two, people would look and shake their heads, because they would assume she was four.

When I would pick her up from nursery school, they would say “Well, she was sucking her thumb again. We talked to her again and are trying to figure out a reward system to help her stop.”

I’d say “I’m fine with her sucking her thumb. She’s three.”

And they’d smile at me and say “She has to grow up sometime, Amy.”

I’d smile back and say “Yes. Some day. But not when she’s three.”

And when she was five and she was ready…

She stopped.

—–

Well, now I’ve got another tall one.

And he’s only gonna get taller.

But, right now, he’s only 11, (and he’d kill me if he ever heard me say this), 11 is little.

I’ll say it again…when you are 11, you are a little kid.

Granted, 11 today is different than 11 when we were kids, but at the end of the day, they are still pretty new to life and need to be treated as such.

And that’s hard to remember when you are eye to eye with the person you are trying to teach a life lesson to.

I curb the impulse to say “Knock it off and act your age” because he usually is acting his age.

He just looks like a 15 year old behaving like an 11 year old.

Age is not a license to act like an idiot, but it definitely is a reason why silly can sometimes be okay.

—–

I dropped him off at a 6th grade social tonight.

He walked in among the other kid; head and shoulders above them all.

I whispered in his ear, before he ran ahead of me “Make good choices,” and I think he probably will.

But he looked so grown up with his hair gel and size one million sneakers, and in my head, I finished my thought “…and if you don’t…let the adults remember that even though you look big, you are just a little kid.”

—–

So, if I was going to wrap up this post in a neat, little bow, I guess I’d do it by reminding you not to judge a little, tiny book by it’s great, big cover.

 

Being a teacher and a parent, the one thing I always make sure to remember is that all of my students are someone’s babies.

Even the ones that I have to physically look up to.