November 3, 2010
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The Daily News1 Wow.
2 Back to normal.
3 I must tell you, I had NO idea what winning a World Series does to a person.
4 Almost the moment the Giants won that final game, I absolutely fell off the Earth.
5 I simply was struck dumb.
6 It isn't often that I have absolutely nothing to say.
7 But it all caught up with me, as it did with a lot of people.
8 The moment outshone the words.
9 I tried writing the DN, but it felt that nothing I could put into words could match the feelings of exhaustion, emotion, and finality that coursed through me.
10 I wrote something, but can't even remember doing so.
11 I know one thing: I stayed up all night, even though I slept.
12 KNBR played each game all summer at midnight, at least I THINK it was at midnight. I would often put it on right before I would go to sleep, especially during some of the tortuous games.
13 The other night, I fell asleep at the computer. The radio kept blasting all around me, but I fell into a dizzying stupor.
14 So I listened to the entire game, all through the night.
15 Yesterday morning I awoke from a night of what seemed like no sleep, and listened to the Murph and Mac show on KNBR.
16 Brian Murphy, who wrote a coffee-table book on the history of the Giants, was stumbling and mumbling the same things that traveled through my own mind: the words couldn't overcome the emotions.
17 Now HE was taken to the stadium as were many employees of the Giants. He hadn't really missed a live game all year, as far as I could see. So his voice croaked raspiness and disbelief, and somehow, he made it through not only having watched the entire game from the highest seat in the stadium, but he somehow did an all-nighter, and never slept, but simply started his job immediately following all that incredibly emotion.
18 He just kept telling his audience that he thought reporting back to everyone what had just taken place would be easy, but that it was much harder than he thought.
19 Tell me.
20 Yesterday vanished. I died, and felt like a ghost. I somehow managed to get throught the school day, but clearly was a corpse.
21 I don't think my students noticed, because I have certain things that happen on certain days, but the unreal, unearthly day traveled around me like a juggler having madness balls frozen all around him in mid-air.
22 I taught, answered emails, graded papers, all seemingly normal, but something was eerily unreal all day.
23 During my last class of the day, while students wrote vocabulary sentences on the board, a student saw a card on the rug in front of the room. I never saw it, but he turned it up and showed it to me.
24 It was a nine of clubs, and it formed an "H".
25 I didn't buy it. I'm fairly certain that this guy "planted" it just to mess with me.
26 He swore he found it.
27 I say no way.
28 I tried not freak out too much. I had an interesting experience with a nine of clubs last year, and wound up tearing it up and throwing it into the recycling.
29 So even that didn't really penetrate the absolute strangeness of the entire day.
30 I simply couldn't get anything done. I couldn't write the DN. I couldn't MAIL the DN. I couldn't manage to text back all the people who texted me when the Giants won it all.
31 I managed to get out to the polls and vote, which I'm quite glad I was able to do. I also found my way to Kinko's in order to have some sort of lesson plan for today.
32 I had another teacher take my shift at supervising the volleyball game last night; I simply couldn't do it.
33 Last night I sat down to write today's DN and conked out again at the computer.
35 Brian Murphy thought that he was going to die yesterday morning.
36 I totally relate.
37 Last night I was out at like around eight p.m., once again completely unable to think, or to write, or to grade any papers.
38 I couldn't even muster the power to write a recommendation for one of my best students, something on which I pride myself. I'll get it done today, but usually I'm pretty amazing at getting that done for people. I've missed one or two over the years, but most times I've been sensational in that area.
39 Anyway, last night I awakened at 11:30 p.m. and was finally rested enough to get to the keys and hammer this guy out.
40 The words still don't seem to want to do what I want them to do, but Murph had the same thing happen. Someday, maybe. But right now, no way.
41 So today at 11 a.m. San Francisco throws one of the biggest parties of the year, certainly the biggest one since the turn of the new century. I'll miss it, of course, because of work, but somehow I don't mind.
42 Anyway, yesterday during the said vocabulary sentences, a student wrote "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays" on my board.
43 I laughed, figuring that we are nowhere near the holidays.
44 I then realized that it is November!
45 But it's still eighty degrees outside. But my garden still has color. But we're still playing baseball...
46 And Thanksgiving is in a few weeks.
47 Unreal.
48 Unreal.
49 I still feel this was all a dream, very much like Bottom in Midsummer.
50 So if I WAS able to relate this strange weirdness, then I guess I succeeded.
51 Either way, I notice that it is also Wednesday, at least I THINK it's Wednesday.
52 I hope you all cut school and work and hit the Giants' parade.
53 I'm trying to think of how a teacher could sleep on the job.
54 You enjoy it all.
55 Thanks for listening.
56 Peace.
~H~
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