I Hope Nobody Raises a Stink Over This Fundraiser

Let the record show that since I retired 4.5 years ago, I have not darkened the door of my former workplace. Oh, there are no hard feelings involved. I loved my job, even though it was, at times, frustrating enough to grace the pages of my supersecret blog. Heeding the Truth in Blogging Law, let me elaborate that perhaps I shadowed the door a few times. But I only dashed in and out, to deliver my special holiday Chex Mix to a few associates who had been able to tolerate me for 18 years.

Anyhoo... you can never really go back. My best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel has never even set tire on the parking lot. I'm pretty sure one of my former lunchmates goes back for athletic contests. And there were a few retirees who used to drop in for lunch, back when I was still working. The thing is, it's never the same. We didn't begrudge them having lunch. But it threw off the dynamic. They were out of the loop. We didn't want to tell tales in school! Not because we were perched upon our high-horses, looking down our noses at gossipmongers. But because there would be too much explaining involved.

Anyhoo... I don't stalk the school website to see what's going on. I DO read the local online newspaper. When it has articles about my former workplace, I click on them. It's still at the point where I know about half the people.

Tuesday, I saw that there had been a fundraiser for making Christmas brighter for some students.

OH MY GOSH!

It involved a contest between two teachers. One I'd worked with, and another who'd been a student who subsequently became a faculty member. Not just any contest. An EATING contest. No, it wasn't Nathan's Hot Dogs. It was White Castle belly bombers!!!

You will never grasp the magnitude of my fascination and horror! I devoured that article! There were pictures! I even sent a text to Genius to tell him to check it out. One of the teachers was the one who hosted an annual Halloween haunted house for the students, at his parents' house. It will forever be remembered by Thevictorian family as "The night 3rd-grade Pony closed his eyes and had to be dragged through by Hick, and the night 6th-grade Genius was indignant over being pelted with babydoll arms and legs as he walked under a tree."

 

Anyhoo... I'm pretty sure Genius looked up the article, because he responded with "Wow." Which can have many different degrees of meaning.

 

Let the record also show that Genius was banned from eating White Castle belly bombers when he was living in our house. We might eat them in secret if we were on a trip without him. And if HE bought them for himself, it had to be a night he was not sleeping at home. It was THAT BAD. His digestive system lacks a certain enzyme to break down those little fried onions, I guess.

 

Good memories. Though perhaps not quite tasteful.