1 Yesterday when I was just about to lose it, Avengers shot down out of the sky and joined me in an epic battle against all the Evil Forces.
2 Grades are due today. Two computers couldn't get the job done.
3 My daughter Nicoley Boley Macaroni flew in and with one touch took care of two years of insanity, and suddenly everything got done.
4 Thanksgiving came in over the wire with my daughter Caitlin's ability to arrange and change, and fix all that is not right.
5 Rene managed to miraculously arrange new teeth for her brother who can't eat without them. A dentist friend is going up to Martinez to fit him with some new choppers.
6 I turned the entire semester around and got all my grading done AND have engagingly incredible lessons for the rest of the week.
7 All challenges were met with certain doom as the result of all of us coming together as a team.
8 I slept through the night and I don't care. Insomnia is overrated.
9 I'm beginning to get the entire Avengers' thing.
10 This Brave New World keeps trying to throw crap at all of us, more crap, perhaps, than has ever been thrown at people in quite a while. I'm talking not only about my family, but also your family, your friends, your lives.
11 I don't know about you, but I will always fight.
12 And so will my family.
13 And so will all of you.
14 Yesterday was the academic equivalent to yet another doomsday. If you have followed this folderol, you must know by now that my mortal enemy is grades. And meetings.
15 Whatever bothers you the most, you must always add "And meetings" to the mix.
16 And technology, which is always certain to fail right when you need it the most.
17 That's when we turn to our personal Avengers.
18 Yesterday I came out of a fairly productive meeting, and still stumbled home like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life. Meetings are my personal kryptonite.
19 Grades are due tomorrow. I have worked on them almost twenty-four/seven. Like how I took the time to write that out? It is grammatically incorrect, but I didn't really give a poop. Never do.
20 Grades are like those irritating things that flew out of that snake-like monster in the Avengers. They go down easily, but they are relentless.
21 My laptop, which is in the warm area of the house, refused to go on, except in "Safe Mode."
22 Swell. I made my way to the frosty sunroom, which is the real-life equivalent of the Fortress of Solitude, buried somewhere in the icy mountains of Comic Book Land.
24 I turned on the teevee. On the television there was this HGTV episode about a couple who bought a beautiful house, paid well over the asking price only to learn that its infrastructure was teeming with bugs, rats, squirrels, and other pests which were eating all of their insulation and chewing through all of their electrical.
25 In other words, right when I was finishing up the biggest task of the school year, I was watching a symbolic story of a beast invading someone else's life. Beasts and monsters invade all of our lives on an alarming scale; have you noticed?
26 Fortunately, she was on one of those shows where a crew of young bucks with sledge hammers and sideways talking were going to rescue them.
27 And there's always some butch dame making sure all the macho men get it right.
28 Avengers.
29 I quickly changed computers yesterday. Making the grade deadline is alway a thrill ride. The second you post a new grade, or a new zero, a parent will write an email protesting it, and you will have to go back to that one child, look up all of his or her stuff, write an email back to the parent explaining that Johnny can't turn in all fourteen of the assignments he skipped in October, and delicately send it off.
30 It is an angry, burning Hydra that needs a certain sort of sword.
31 All jobs have them.
32 All of us encounter them. Every single day.
33 College students in particular are at the mercy of them. Especially college students in grad school. But they all know how to battle them.
34 We all know how to battle them.
35 We turn to our own Avengers.
36 Yeeeeee-uh!
37 Perhaps.
38 Unless you see it all a bit more symbolically.
39 Moving On, Part the First: Does it ever occur to you that others are praying for you?
40 It never occurs to me.
41 I pray every single morning at around 5 a.m. when the radio pops on and the coffee starts on its own, a real-life Disney thing.
42 I don't remember who said it, but I always loved the concept that there are no atheists in trench holes.
43 Each time I do my Heidi unit, I think more and more that maybe I'm on the wrong track with ghosts.
44 Maybe I'm dealing a lot more with angels.
45 Maybe Avengers are symbolic of the angels we perhaps experience every time a real-life disaster, or miracle, enters our lives.
46 Yesterday at least nine things miraculously turned around for me and my family.
47 We have been going through just as much as are all of you.
49 We had our symbolic World Series victory last night, complete with last-minute miracles and celebratory plates of BBQ chips-and -parmesan, and with celebratory tankards of Crystal Light.
50 Last night the particles rained down.
51 Yesterday the clarion call to celebration with the angels opened the skies and let us all see eternity.
52 Lost loved ones partied with us, because there was at last proof of immortality.
53 And there was proof that we all have our own Avengers, whatever you wish to make of that.
54 Yesterday was pure victory. All the evil forces that were coming at all of us fell to a sledge hammer of love and support. And of ridiculously silly mixed metaphors.
55 Yesterday we won.
56 All of us won.
57 At least for now.
58 So I'm off to the wars once again, but like all of you, I am not alone.
59 Fight the bastards with everything you have.
60 We will all win. In the end, we will all win.
61 Peace.
~H~
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