At least the school desks aren’t covered in plastic.

I’m sorry to say this, but teaching is a young person’s game. It’s not really an endurance thing. No, there are veterans twenty-five years in who can run circles around me. What I’m referring to is technology, and if you’re going to use technology in class then you need to know how to use it. So I’m not talking about Sage and his like. I’m talking about the teacher down the hall. I call her Gram-Gram because she needs me like my grandmother does.

You got it—she can never get her VCR to work. Now not only do I have 45 minutes to take roll, teach, review, evaluate and discipline, but I have to be interrupted by one of Gram-Gram’s students she has sent down to come get me because she is having trouble. I always hate the little bastards she sends too. You know well and good her students know how to get the tape playing. Hell, kids today probably know how to access their MySpace page on a VCR. In fact, they probably wasted ten minutes giving her false information on how to play the thing, so they could get out of doing work.

Even though every time I get there and that stupid 12:00 is blinking at me, the problem is always something different. Frankly, I’m amazed that she has had so many problems with one machine.

It’s moving too fast.

“You pushed fast forward instead of play.”

None of the buttons work.

“This is the remote for the TV.”

The tape won’t go in.

“It’s upside down.”

Can someone get this woman something that she can handle—a chalkboard or something? One time she asked me what I thought about these “digital camera thingies,” and my stomach contents about evacuated. Appropriately, she offered me a hard candy right after that.