The Daily News
1 Last day of school.
2 Always filled with other-worldliness, coincidences, stress, and surrealism.
3 The other-worldliness begins with the disappearance of the seniors.
4 The rest of the school holds on to normalcy for dear life, but there is still this sense of sadness.
5
6 Anybody looking?
7 No matter how much I try to avoid massive coincidences, they happen on the last day of school.
8 First off, I had to say good-bye to my Disney class. I simply adore my Disney class. The good-bye had to be graceful and perfect.
9 I did it in grand style.
10 Right before my final I had my entire Disney class sing Happy Birthday to my daughter Caitlin.
11 It was awesome. I put her on speaker. She was amazingly awake, even though she usually is a late riser.
12 It was triumphant, because one of my very first lessons of the school year is a story about her learning the difference between good and well.
13 I’ll tell it in its entirety some other time, but it had to do with her chewing gum, swallowing it, and me carping at her about that.
14 She said at a very young age that she had chewed it good.
15 I corrected her. We were on a walk, stopping every once in a while and sitting on the curb to crunch autumn leaves and stuff. She was Hello-Kitty little.
16 She kept asking me for more gum, but she kept swallowing it. I would ask, “What happened to the last piece of gum? Did you swallow it?”
17 “No,” she would insist. She would then pause and look back up at me. “It went down my throat.”
18 This happened several times. I was a softie and would explain that “swallowing” and “going down your throat” meant the same thing.
19 She just wanted another piece of gum.
20 At one point I tried very patiently explaining that she needed to stop swallowing her gum. I heard somewhere that horrible things happen to gum-swallowers. I told her that.
21 She looked up and said, “I chewed it good.”
22 The English major in me corrected her. “You chewed it well. You do things well sweetie. You do good things, but you do things well.”
23 She paused. Then she said, “May I have another piece of gum?” I was impressed with her usage of the word “may.”
24 I figured she understood, and gave her another piece.
25 After a fashion, we crunched a few more leaves, listened to some birds, and watched the sun start to set.
26 She eventually asked for yet another piece of gum.
27 I asked once again if she had swallowed her gum.
28 She once again told me “No.” She again paused and said, “It went down my throat.”
29 I finally lost my patience and told her emphatically that NO, she could NOT have another piece of gum, and that she continued NOT to understand the difference, and that NO, no more gum. Absolutely NOT. Done.
30 She stopped, reflected, and then looked up with the sweetest look ever. “Daddy?” she said.
31 “Yes?” I asked, still a bit annoyed. She looked at me with absolute sincerity.
32 “I chewed it well.”
33 Moving on, Part the Second: Looks like I got the story out in spite of myself.
34 Where were we?
35 Ah yes. Coincidences.
36 No shortage. Here are a few: Yesterday I jokingly mentioned that the greatest movie of all time was a low-rent film called Mitchell.
37 Caitlin’s hubby Josh told us about it and how the movie was ridiculously low-budget, but that its treatment on Mystery Science Theater made the combo arguably the greatest film ever.
38 Last night I had the teevee flickering as a lava lamp, and suddenly looked up. There was this obscure movie on. It was called The Outfit, for the record. Helene noticed that one of the actors in The Outfit was Joe Don Baker.
39 Who is Joe Don Baker?
40
41 The guy who played Mitchell.
42 Another coincidence. Yesterday I told my Disney class that I loved them because nobody in that class annoys me.
43 They laughed. I told them about a nice kid who had come into another class the other day, and he was tardy. He came in late, and started playing with a hacky sack. It was a bit annoying because I want to say good-bye to each class in its own way, and I had just settled into a little bit of sentimentality right before the final when the door opened and this guy came in and was in a totally different mood.
44 Nice kid, just bad timing. And it was annoying.
45 So yesterday I had a sweet, graceful moment with my Disney class. First I told them I loved them because nobody in their class ever annoys me. I told them about the guy who had come in late the day before. They had a laugh, and then they fell into doing their final. After about ten minutes, my door opened, and I saw a woman I had never seen before, and then the door closed.
46 The door opened and I saw her again, so I walked over to the door and moved outside.
47 It turns out that the lady was the mother of the kid who had come in late the day before. She asked if I could write a recommendation for her son. I was happy to do it. She left with a smile.
48 I mentioned that coincidence quietly to a couple of my Disney kids. The ones who sit in front of my desk are particularly aware of the coincidences. One girl, for example, is the girl who blurted out, “I LOVE Peter Pan!” right after I had written “Nice hook” on a paper I had been grading. What are the odds of that student’s mother walking in right after I had mentioned him?
49 Last night I went to write this stuff, and I clicked on the teevee. For some reason it was on NBC. I have no idea what the show was called, but I looked at the screen. It said at the bottom of the screen “Coincidence, or Divine Intervention?”
50 It was the end of that segment.
51 When I was writing about Caitlin earlier in this piece, I heard a commercial on TCM that had Judy Garland say, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
52 Caitlin and Nicole played Toto in my version of The Wizard of Oz years ago. That show had tons of Heidi trips.
53 There is a special going on right now about Marie Dressler. I don’t even know what it is, but it is on TCM, my lava lamp into the past.
54 It just mentioned Anna Christie, a film directed by a director named George Francis.
55 My real name is George Francis.
56 I’m not making any of this up.
57 All this happened within the last two days, and most of it last night as I wrote this.
59 Moving on, Part the Thoid: They’re still talking about George Francis and Mary Pickford. I’m recording it.
60 The last day of school.
61 The stress.
62 We have to get all our grades into the system by four. We also have to get signed out, which means making sure that everybody we have annoyed throughout the year needs to sign a sheet of paper. It’s stressful because everybody is now annoying everybody else. I have to lock stuff up in my room because some outside group will be using my room this summer.
63 I feel like I won’t get out for another week, but I want to be gone by this afternoon.
64 Am I creating my own stress?
65 Moving on, Part Four: To say this is all surrealistic is an understatement. I had planned on talking about the surrealism when I started writing all of this. I never expected all of this when I awakened and started to write it.
66 The special is coming to an end.
67 It is the last day of school, and all is right with the world.
68 This is the final Daily News for this school year. It’s fitting that a bunch of coincidences rained down on me last night.
69 Thank you all for enjoying this go round. It is a year in the life, I imagine. That was sort of the theme for this year’s DN’s. I hope you enjoyed the entire thing and that you got some insights into this amazing profession.
70 Have a wonderful summer.
71 See you in August.
72 Take care. I’ll miss this.
73 I gottago.
74 Peace.
~H~
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