Whew — Thursday. I made it. Or rather, “I MADE IT!” I can’t believe i just taught the same lesson four times a day for four days — sixteen times the same lesson. THE SAME STINKING LESSON!. I thought i would go absolutely stark raving mad before it was all over. And yet I somehow made it through.
I did realize in sixth period — or was it fith period? They’re all running together for me — that I didn’t do the student handbook stuff with them today. And to be honest, I’m not even sure when I stopped doing it. Did I do it with third period today but not the other periods, or did I just neglect it completely today? I really don’t remember.
When you teach the same thing over and over, it really becomes difficult to remember what you’ve done when. I would get to a point in the lesson and think, “Wait didn’t I tell them this earlier? Or was that last period?” And honestly, I could just as easily ask myself, “Or was it the period before that?” Every period seemed to blend into the next; the last four days have been a blur, a smear of repeated instructions and jokes. I found myself saying even the same off-the-cuff jokes as well, repeating them if they amused me even vaguely the first time I made them. The pinnacle of the dad jokes joke? I thought of it in fourth period today (Or was it third? Or fifth?) and repeated it the other periods. It’s no longer off the cuff if you’re doing it with intention, is it?
Still, there was a certain ease to the week. I never had to stop and think, “Wait, what am I doing tomorrow?” The answer was always the same.
I remember reading a book — a Malcolm Gladwell book, I think — about the value of repetition for toddlers. It was about the show Blues Clues and the fact that apparently, the series aired the same show every day of the week, thus repeating the week’s episode five times. It had something to do with the comfort of predictability. When the kids watched the same show for the third or fourth time, they knew exactly what would happen next, and that gave them some kind of comfort. It reminds me of E and his ability to watch the same episode of Mighty Machines over and over. “Deep Underground” was a favorite — he must have watched that ten or more times. If streaming the show on Netflix could somehow wear it out, that’s just what he did.
Yet despite all that, the repetition didn’t do anything for me but tire me out. If I had to do that one more time, I think I’d mutiny. “Mr. Finlay, I refuse to do that lesson one more time! Not even once!” Mutiny on the Hughes!
I’m also a little surprised that I managed to write four times in this journal about essentially the same thing: the first week back. The days, despite their repetition, have had a certain different quality all their own. In fact, the word count shows that I’ve done more each day than I did the previous day, which was the opposite of what I expected.
Random Picture from the Past
Living in Lipnica, I spent a lot of time with friends in this bar or that bar, talking and just passing the time. One evening, sitting with my best friend, I snapped a picture. I had my camera with me because it was the last night that particular bar was going to be open. He turned his head just as I snapped the long exposure, and the resulting image was otherworldly — haunting and somewhat terrifying.
