School is finally out. I think from the time 2020 rang in until the end of school in May 2021 was at least 7 years. At the same time, it flew by. It’s crazy to look back at all that happened this year. I won’t go into the C19 part of it…I think we are all sick of that.

I had a rough class this year. They were one of the chattiest classes I’ve had so far…and I have had some chatty classes! There may or may not have been a day when I took off my shoe and chased a kid who seemed unable to close his trap. Think what you may about that action, but it solidified the student’s standing as my favorite for several months.

Why do I like and even end up loving the kids that drive me crazy? Personally, I think it is a survival technique. When I get to that point where I want to hit them with my shoe …I have to turn that energy to love to keep the shoe in my hand. I blame my mother.

When I was a kid, my mother’s ‘motivator’ was a yard stick. We’re not talking about those flimsy things you get at Home Depot that resemble a very long paint stirring stick. These yard sticks were made of mahogany and and could double as studs in your walls. You did not want to get smacked with one of these. When mom would get upset, she would start looking for the yard stick. Sometimes she would even ask us where the yard stick was. We NEVER knew…weird.

Anyway, mom would get fired up, locate the yard stick, and proceed to chase us down. It was a good cardio workout for everyone involved. What happened more times than not was a good whack to the back side. What happened on those ‘other times’ was the best part. Sometimes, she could not catch us. She would even advise us to slow down or to ‘come over here’….neither of these things happened. What did happen was we would all see a twisted humor in this activity and start to laugh. Laughing would ease our terror as well as ease the grip on that motivator. Mom would still try to smack us, but we were all laughing so hard it had lost all the power.

We knew mom loved us, even as she chased us down with her deadly weapon, but more so when we could all laugh about it. Laughter is a love language at my home. How about yours?

If we can laugh, we connect. If we can laugh, we can relate. If we can laugh, we can make it through. We spent a lot of time laughing during this past year. We played a lot of games, watched a lot of movies, tickled, told jokes, and acted stupid.

In spite of the craziness of the world with masking, shots, hiding out, wearing out Amazon, and wondering if we would ever see anything close to ‘normal’ again, it wasn’t that bad. I was lucky enough to have a job that I loved. I worked with people that also loved their jobs. We laughed a lot. Sometimes we laughed at our students, sometimes at each other, and sometimes at our self.

It was a good year….even if it did last 7 years.

Cause I said so.

Photo credit: depositphotos