A cup of joe for the working man
The caffeine rushed through my body, sending electrical currents down to my feet and back again. It was my first day on the job and, being used to the college schedule of afternoon classes and late night chat sessions, I decided I needed a little extra pick-up that morning. Rushing out the door I swallowed two cups of coffee.
Once at the school I made my way to a seat in the large, puke-green auditorium, among a mass of anonymous teachers dressed in shorts, t-shirts and clutching clipboards to their chests. The muffled voice of the keynote speaker creaked through the PA system and I noticed my heart begin to race: buh-bump, buh-bump, buh-bump. He discussed the "glass ceiling" a vague concept I tried drastically to grasp, being a new teacher at a new school I didn’t want to miss anything or stand out in any way. My pulse began to bang on my eardrums, drowning out all surrounding noise. Feet tapped, legs shook, arms quivered. I tried adjusting in my seat, but a loud squeak from rusty hinges drew a glance from one of my new colleagues. Then, upon the mention of some metaphorical stream, like a storm-surge from a Caribbean hurricane, the thought of urinating came to me. I felt the pinch, the slight burn, my foot tapped.
Buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak, buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak.
I had to get out of there but this guy wouldn’t stop talking. Frantically I searched for an exit, only to notice I was trapped on both sides by older teachers, big ladies, probably from home-ec. Why do they even have home-ec anymore? I blamed Betty Friedan, Virginia Woolfe, any woman I could think of. If the feminist revolution had truly been successful there’d be no home-ec classes left and I’d have an easy way out to the restroom. Buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak, buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak. I shook my head at the futility of it all and gritted my teeth.
The keynote speaker was beginning to wind down his talk. He referred to standardized test scores, something about minority students, but my mind was stuck on condemning those two pig-faced teachers which cordoned me from the exit. They seemed so interested in whatever the speaker was talking about. I hated them, sitting there with empty grins. They were the problem with education. They were the blockages of the arteries in our educational system; funneling useful money and energy into useless programs and their own soon-to-be used retirement funds. Their husbands probably supported them at home and teaching was just a hobby. Buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak, buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak. I grew more fidgety. I had to get out of there. Buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak, buh-bump, tap-tap, squeak. Then, like a choir of angels, a siren-song of applause lifted into the arena, drowned out the heartbeat, the lady sitting to my left hoisted herself up first and I quickly followed.
Like passengers at the end of a trans-continental flight teachers lined up and shuffled their way to the exit. When I finally got to the cold steel doors, I looked up and down hallways lined with orange lockers and realized I had no clue where a restroom even was. Stupid architects.