highlights.

Do you remember the highlights magazines we used to have when we were little? I do. And I remember loving them.

I go to work fairly early. Earlier than most, I would say. On my training plan at Starbucks, dealing with ambiguity was not my strong point. I like being prepared, even though I am a procrastinator. As a procrastinator, I simply do my preparation at the last minute. But it always gets done, in the wee hours of the morning if necessary. This disdain for misunderstanding and unpreparedness is what gets me to the seat at my desk while the rest of my building is empty. I sit there with my IPod turned up loud, and I go over the material we are going over in class. I make sure I understand the answers so that I can better explain them to my students. And each day, I am usually doing this without the lights turned on. I realized today, when Gyselle popped in and turned my lights on for me a few minutes before class, that this actually happens every day. Someone other than myself flips the switch for me. Upon entrance of my classroom, it does not dawn on me to turn on the lights. I am nose deep in a book, and all of a sudden, there is light because someone else thought to turn it on.

Today, on my run-slash-walk, I wore a shirt given to me by my friend Carly. It says something about South Korea having Seoul...get it? While wearing this shirt, I passed a Korean women with a shirt proclaiming her love for New York. I chuckled at the juxtaposition.

Same walk, same day, I happened to be exploring previously un-entered streets. One of the businesses had some shrubbery planted in pots to add to the "curb appeal" of the place, as my mom would say. There was a peculiar looking flowered plant that grabbed my attention. I slowed, leaned, and realized that it looked peculiar because it was fake. There were fake flowered plants stuck in the dirt pretending to live amongst living plants. I wondered why.

A girl in my class, who is slightly shy and sweet as ever, lost a tooth today. I watched her as she came up to the desk to retrieve more tissue, so as to hinder the excessive bleeding, and I began to remember the days when I did in fact read highlights magazine, and fiddle with loose teeth in hopes that they would finally come out.

Today, as a woman of twenty-five (not eighty-six as some of the boys in my class have assumed) I enjoy planting real flowers, I am appreciative when someone flips the light switch for me, I still miss highlights, but would certainly not go back to the losing of teeth just to attain a dollar from the tooth fairy.