One More Jiggle of The School Handle Before We Go

We began 9,000,000 years ago, in August 2008. A time before the "Great Recession", Barack Obama as President and Twitter. A time of blogposting about our newfangled APS Superintendent Winston Brooks. A time in which the name "Michael Phelps" meant only Olympic idolatry, instead of cheesy commercial endorsements and bong hits.

It was the beginning of School Year 2008-2009. As crooned by that immortal singer of down by the school yard song, Paul Simon, "time it was, and what a time it was, it was". Whatever the Hell that means.

Still, for your humble blogger, and for the school in which your humble blogger professionally toils, it was, truly, a time of innocence. A time of confidences. For mid-August 2008 was just before both our school secretaries retired. Both innocence and confidence went down the toilet immediately thereafter, remaining at the bottom of the toilet like some...okay, it's too early in the morning for further visual imagery in this regard.

Still, from our position deep within the bowels of the toilet bowl, my staff and I plunged forth through a school year swirling with foul debris, spinning in a veritable miasmic whirlpool of unsanitary effluvia.

Okay, I promise to stop now.

And now it's May, 2009, and we're all a little bit wiser, a lit bit older, and far more smelly and crap-covered. In fact, it might take a while for, as that mohawked, firearm wielding movie character Travis Bickle said, "a real rain to wash all the scum off". About 85 days of rain, perhaps.

And that's good, because that's about the length of this year's Summer Vacation, give or take a day or two. Waking up this last day of school morning, 2009, those 85 days ahead appear as the single greatest mental shower in history. A psycho-shower (ha, ha) of "Silkwood" intensity. A purging unsurpassed by any possible combination of water, soap and therapy sessions.

A real rain.

But for a few more hours we're still down here in the bowl. In fact, my little Special Education Department has a Department meeting on this, the last morning of the school year. That can never be good. Having a Special Ed. meeting the last day of school is like Richard Dawkins asking for feedback on atheism and evolution at a snake handling church service in Tennessee. That's not good.

But it will soon be good. Very, very good. Congratulations to all the students, teachers and such for surviving another long, beautifully putrid swish in the bowl. While the kids go crazy and try to sing the immortal lyrics of that song by the former fake-devil worshiper now golf-obsessed singer Alice "School's been blown to......pie....ces" Cooper, try to remember how that combination of facial muscles works that results in a smile.

It's been a while. About 9,000,000 years.

Have a great three, or 85, day weekend everybody.

P.S.: As noted earlier this week, I'm posting my upcoming bike tour at Crazy Guy on a Bike. I'm taking a hiatus here at Babble for a month or so, and those few, few readers out there who give a darn can find my posting through late June at CGOAB. Stay vertical.