Some days, you just can’t get anything right. I got to my first class at 8 a.m. on time, but my student wasn’t there. Her boss said she was supposed to be in, sat me down and gave me a cup of coffee. About 10 minutes later she walked in and gave me a look that let me know right away I’d goofed.
But, despite the fact that she’d informed me last week that today’s lesson was canceled, she figured that since I was already there, we might as well have a lesson. Actually, that one worked out to my advantage, in the end.
Then, with a student who spends her weekends at an intensive course in international diplomacy, we were talking about mistakes you can make in public speaking. As a teacher, I’m sort of an expert in that subject. I recounted a story about a class of 6th graders (?) I was teaching, in which I had them all ask me the question “Do you like ____?” One of the students asked me “Do you like black?” To tell the truth, it’s not my favorite color. I said no, and then happened to glance at the other side of the room where I saw the goth student, a very sweet young girl, looking like I’d just slapped her in the face. (Maybe I was being oversensitive and paranoid, but that’ s the impression I got.)
Anyway, just as I finished recounting this story, I realized that my student was wearing black. She often wears black, and looks good in it. She’s got black hair. Black is probably her favorite color. How is it I stumbled into that conversation without thinking of that?
After that, I came home, had an instant soup for lunch and it was already time to go pick up Isabel from school and take her to ballet. Helena had asked me to go to the Post Office on the way, and I was patting myself on the back that I had remembered to pick up the letters off the printer. I got to school, Isabel came out and suddenly I realized – I hadn’t brought her ballet clothes.
Strike 3.
Let’s hope I do better tomorrow.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
One time I had a long conversation with a woman who works as a school administrator at a particular kind of school. We talked about how some of the schools in the area seem to have hiring problems and somehow because they, the people at this kind of school, idealize about so many aspects of life they don’t really look at people with a good dose of real world skepticism. I said, “sometimes I think they are looking through rose colored glasses.” At the end of this long conversation I realized that this school administrator was literally wearing rose colored glasses.