In the short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, a man gets famous for having enormous wings, marveling his neighborhood. Eventually though, when a better act comes along, he starts to fade in popularity and relevancy. Today, I was hoping to avoid any type of positive or negative attention, but much like death, it came for me.
First, we went to Shutters on the Beach for our fifth day of professional development. It was a nice location, but I could only imagine how much more useful that money would have been allocated for say… a salary bump. In the morning we did Yoga, which reminded me much of the time a few months ago when the yoga instructor was very mean to me. I sat in the back to avoid negative attention, but somehow this new yoga instructor also picked on me. Desperate to redirect attention away from myself I told her my name was Ryan instead of John. She still wasn’t as mean as the hot yoga instructor (and I’m talking about the type of yoga, not the character traits of the female) down the street though from the school, and I thanked her for her time after the lesson.
Afterwards we took a color personality test. I always get blue, and I noticed the different colorful traits of my co-workers. It’s a good thing I’m colorblind and don’t actually see people for the color they are, but for the personality traits inherent within their souls.
Anyway, the key takeaway from the PD was of course to eat as much as possible for brunch since there wasn’t any lunch being provided. Wanting to avoid any attention on myself, I wanted to shine the light on various other figures in the room.
Mother-to-be eating her heart away.
Watermelon eaters chewing with their mouth open.
Office staff probably talking shit on teachers.
Who knows what these losers are doing?!
Anyway, it was time for the “team-building activity”. The activity? Build a kite. It was definitely hard, and I don’t have much to say about that. We had two math teachers on our team and still did terribly. The condition of the kite in the upcoming picture very much parallels my expectations for the school year.
That being said, broken wings, and in this case broken kites can always be repaired with the right type of people in your life (and the right setting).
After PD, I went to Alhambra and subsequently moved to my new place. The hardest part was of course the mattress disposal. I had to sneakily move it out of my apartment into the trash can in broad daylight (3 PM) without anyone seeing).
Almost there!
Yay I did it!
I went back to Orange County to have some Pho with friends and then chill at a Soju location. I caught up with people I haven’t seen since a) elementary school b) middle school and c) college. We played some games like Titanic and rekindled old memories. I also had a debate with one of my friends on why teaching is a better profession than lawyering.
Happiness comes in many forms, but in this case, it’s in the shared relationships with these losers. We went to sing karaoke afterwards, myself obviously invested in the Linkin Park songs (in loving memory RIP), and belching each song as loud as possibly until my lungs collapsed.
By the time Vietnamese songs started playing, I was ready to leave. I bounced out of there just like the man with enormous wings faded into the debris.
