I'm a Gray-Hair, I'm a Croc-Wearer, I'm a Late Debt-Payer, I Take My Notebook On the Run

Well, the school year is simply flying by. Only 173 days left for me. That's 172 for the kids.

Yes, I returned to work last Monday for the annual all-school catered breakfast and full-day meetings. Let me tell you this about that: festival seating is not my friend.

Every year, from way back when I was but a toddler learning at the knee of my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel, our little group sat at the same table. Sure, maybe there was one year when we sat at the one right next to it. But we were creatures of habit. Anybody could tell you where anybody else would be sitting. As a precaution, I was assigned table duty. That's because my room was the closest to the cafeteria. So I would go in about 20 minutes before meeting time and mark our territory with a folder, itinerary, pencil, pen, water bottle, set of keys. Reserved. That's just how it was. Until this year.

Perhaps I grew lax. Fat and sassy from years of giant cinnamon rolls. Perhaps the cinnamon rolls are to blame. We have not had them for several years, since our caterer went out of business. Scrambled EggBeaters full of red and green peppers are not such a drawing card. So excuse me if I was five minutes late in going out to stake our claim. We're down to only three regulars now, anyway, for the breakfast.

OUR TABLE WAS TAKEN!

TAKEN! Like seats at a showing of Checkmate at the Paragon, until Elaine was overpowered and had to go watch Rochelle, Rochelle at the Paradise Twin.

What a fine kettle of fish THAT was! Nobody ever wanted our seats. Until now. Because this year, we were the row that was allowed to feed first at the breakfast buffet. Uh huh. Every year, a different row of tables gets that privilege. I swear the sequence is written in stone and given to Price Waterhouse for safekeeping. So now I had let my cronies down. All I could do was stake out the very long 8-person table vacated by the usurpers. How pitiful it looked, three seats saved.

I abandoned my post to go sign in at the table out front by the trophy case. Of course it's nothing as simple as signing next to your name on a printed list. You must go down the table gauntlet, like a child in a birthday party spanking machine, except nobody touches your butt. There are MSTA reps to contend with. I don't go for that check-withholding stuff, so I am one of four folks who get their form and send it in with a check. For this outlay of low three-figures, I am allowed to pick up a pocket calendar with the MSTA logo.

What I really wanted was the little mini flip-top spiral notebook. To get that, I had to join CTA. I have a love-hate relationship with CTA. That's the Community Teachers Association, I believe. Our local organization. I don't mind forking over ten bucks to join. But I draw the line at forking over thirty bucks. Which is what happened one year when I paid the building rep, who gave it to the treasurer but forgot to record it, then put me on the delinquent pay list round about December, so I paid again, because nobody believed me, only to find myself put on notice like a check-kiter on a convenience store cash register list in April for not having paid my dues. I put my foot down. Demanded that records be checked so I could be allowed to vote on next year's calendar without paying triple. Well. What do you know? The records showed that I had already paid twice that year. So I was handed ten dollars and allowed to vote.

Woe was me. I had only a five and four ones in my pocket this back-to-school breakfast morning. What I wanted to say was, "I will gladly pay you one of these days for a membership today." But I didn't. You know they would have not appreciated my smart-buttiness. So I looked really sad, and said, "I only have nine dollars. But I can bring you a dollar tomorrow." Because you know if I waited to pay until tomorrow, that sweet swag pile would be gone, baby, gone!

The rep and treasurer looked at each other. Like they didn't know where to find me to break my legs with a baseball bat if I didn't pay up. "I guess that's okay. Go ahead and take a notebook." The librarian was sitting at the end of the table. "I'll cover it for you." I snagged a little blue spiral, happy as a clam. There was a pile of Sharpie Accent Pocket Style Highlighters in the colors of the rainbow, but I did not push my luck. Imagine my chagrin when I returned to my breakfast table in the middle of the cafeteria and saw that some people had three mini-spirals and a couple of highlighters.

Even Steven then smiled upon me, because instead of my new breakfast table going to the buffet last, as per the usual schedule...we were sent second! I guess even Price Waterhouse screws the pooch some days. And I was again rewarded by a pan of EggBeaters that did NOT have peppers, and was not floating in steam water. Uh huh. I had some eggs, bacon (though it was as see-through and floppy as onionskin paper), sausage links, biscuit, gravy, cantaloupe chunks, and watermelon cubes. It was actually tasty, and I was finished before the speakers began.

Then the day took a dastardly turn again. We finished that three-hour meeting with fifteen minutes to spare. An announcement was made that we should report for the technology meeting in the main computer lab. I took time for a potty break, which would have been so much easier from my other table, since it is where we can sneak out unnoticed during the PowerPoints to do our business. I grabbed a bottle of water, and paper for taking notes, and my laptop, which was a required item. I scrounged four quarters from my top desk drawer, and hurried to the CTA treasurer to clear my debt. Didn't want my mini-spiral to be repossessed. Then I headed on down to the lab to get a good seat. One my my cronies was there, also. We grabbed the prime area where the desktops had been moved aside. Three other colleagues were chatting, waiting for stuff to start. Then another came in and announced, "Um, the meeting is in the library, and the guy is waiting for everybody so he can start."

Well. Wasn't that a fine how-do-you-do! This misdirection was bigger than the Great Mabel Chinese Buffet Lunchtime Debacle. We snatched up our stuff and hurried across the hall. Thank goodness the only people at our regular table there were the tech guys. I shoved my laptop down and said, "Oh, are you guys sitting here?" They retreated to the back of the room, to the counter along the wall with the library desktops. Touche'. Score one for Val.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Will I make sure to stake out my table earlier next year during the back-to-school breakfast? Not likely. Nobody will want the area that goes last.

Besides. It will be my last year. I won't even notice a stolen table with my head in the clouds.