Monday morning, at about 8:10 a.m., I nearly fainted in front of my class. I had just distributed answer documents for the all-important state tests we take every year, when I felt overwhelmed by nausea. I took a seat at my desk and enlisted volunteers to finish passing out test materials, fearing “passing out” was about to take on a far more literal meaning in my life. The test must go on, you see. Nothing in education is more important than these damn tests. The principals practically have aneurysms during the test administration and then develop ulcers awaiting the results.
Sitting at my desk, I started to see little black flies swarming the classroom, but I knew they were just on my eyes. Then the pins and needles started all over my body. You know how you feel when you have food poisoning or some other really bad gastrointestinal distress and you’re lying on the bathroom floor moaning and praying not to die (or perhaps begging to die)? For a few moments, that feeling washed over me. Twenty-five teenagers stared at me. I asked a student to go to the phone and call someone. T0 tell the person on the line I was sick. That I was fainting. I told her the extension. Through my fainty haze, I directed a student to make an emergency call. To the copy room.
No one came. I looked at the floor. Figured, I should lie down. Didn’t think I’d make it from the chair to the floor without losing consciousness. I’m not sure exactly what happened next, but I do know that I felt a soothing hand on my back and cold water on my lips. Someone in the class had the sense to get the teacher next door, and she ran right over. I started to feel better almost right away. Maybe it was the comfort of being taken care of. Possibly, whatever happened in my body had run its course. Probably both. Ten minutes later, or so, a substitute appeared in my room to take over the testing.
Because this was STATE TESTING WEEK, and fainting pregnant ladies in their 8th months aside, the testing MUST proceed without a hitch. When our scores come back and it turns out that our students aren’t as proficient in science as they should be, it could be lousy teaching, it could be the fact that 90% of our students speak a language other than English at home, it could be that the students bubble abcdeabcde until they’re done and then go to sleep. But it’s also possible that they will have done poorly on their tests because their 8 months pregnant teacher fainted at her desk and distracted them.
My bad.
They love that expression. Thanks, “Clueless.”
I’m fine. I had a low blood pressure episode. I drank some Gatorade, put my feet up for the rest of the day, and was good as gold for the rest of the week. I distributed answer sheets, double-checked version numbers, read scripted directions and kept them quiet like a champ.
And only about half of my students were disappointed that I survived.
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Not just a piece of paper
Celebrity gossip is one of my escapist behaviors. We all have them. Some are more or less destructive than others. I look forward to receiving the latest issue of US Weekly on my Nook every Friday. I check in on Celebitchy.com pretty regularly, though I have vowed to never comment on a Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie story again. Their followers, the Brangeloonies, react to criticism of the sainted pair not unlike a Muslim discovering an editorial cartoon that depicts Mohammed.
It’s ugly. And scary.
At Celebitchy.com, the mood is very anti-Chelsea Handler of “Chelsea Lately.” You see, she has committed the ultimate crimes of being both a friend of Jennifer Aniston’s and not being stunningly beautiful. I like Handler. I have seen her stand-up live. I have purchased and read some of her books (okay, I borrowed it). I watch her show.
Last night, blissfully unaware that I was about to be up until the wee hours of morning sitting in the steamy bathroom rocking my two-year old through a bout of croup, I watched an episode of “Lately” recorded earlier in the week. It featured Eva Mendes as the guest, and she and Handler discussed how they are both anti-marriage. Neither woman sees marriage as necessary. They agreed it was old-fashioned, out-dated, and not a true sign of commitment.
How does either one of these women claim the authority to judge the value of marriage? To know what marriage is and what it isn’t, having never entered into it? One of my biggest pet peeves is when marriage is referred to as “just a piece of paper.” Really? A legally binding document is just a piece of paper? So, the deed to your house is just a piece of paper? I can move my stuff in anytime? My college diploma is just a piece of paper? A search warrant? Obama’s birth certificate?
Ask someone divorcing a spouse who owes money to the IRS if marriage is “just a piece of paper.”
Handler has been an outspoken advocate for the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Why should they pursue this goal if it’s nothing but a piece of paper?
Before I myself was married, I might have agreed that a commitment of monogamy doesn’t require a marriage license. I know enough about history to understand that originally marriage was all about keeping property in the family (and daughters were property). Princesses and princes were traded in marriage to make and secure political alliances. Marriage for love is a modern and perhaps quaint idea.
Odie had no interest in remarrying when we got together. I didn’t bring up the idea for a few years. His first marriage was brief, his divorce messy. To this day, he feels pain, regret and self-loathing over how he failed in that marriage. One day, I went with my sister Beezy to see “Thirteen Going on Thirty.” We both love Jennifer Garner (who is another much-loathed person on Celebitchy.com), and we love the men in our lives so much we would NEVER ask them to go see a Jen Garner romantic comedy with us. Ever.
At the end of the film, the protagonists marry, and the last scene is them sitting contentedly on a couch in front of their brand new nuptial home. My heart ached a little. I realized that I wanted the whole deal: the dress, the commitment, the public acknowledgment, and YES, the piece of paper. I broke the news to Odie.
“Some day, I’m not saying right now, but some day, I’d like to get married,” I admitted to him later.
“No more Jennifer Garner movies for you.”
From then on, however, we were on the marriage track. Odie said my timetable was definitely speedier than what his would have been, but acknowledged that had everything to do with his shame and nothing to do with loving me. We were married a respectable four years after we began dating.
I felt different being a wife. Right away, there was this sense of being part of a new family. We were in this together. Husband and wife. Eva Mendes told Handler there was nothing sexy about the words “husband and wife.” She claimed that being in your fifties and referring to your man as “boyfriend” was sexy. Let’s see how she feels about it when she’s in her fifties.
I am not suggesting that marriage is for everyone or that I am somehow better than Mendes and Handler because the man of my dreams got down on one knee on top of a mountain at sunset and gave me diamond. I am, however, willing to bet cash money that if this scenario ever presented itself to either one of these ladies, neither would scoff that marriage was just a piece of paper.
Because that’s bullshit.
I have a dear friend who has chosen not to marry. Any man would be lucky to have her, but it’s not the life she wants. I respect her choice. And I admire that she doesn’t need to defame marriage as an “institution.” I don’t disrespect her by suggesting to her face (0r behind her back) that she just hasn’t met the right man.
Feminism means nothing if not the right to make choices. Marry or don’t. Have children or don’t. But we need not ever believe that our choices should be everyone’s choices. And while I’m all for criticizing things I don’t know about, it’s REALLY irritating to me when other people do it.
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