Poetry and potato pancakes

I've been kinda insomniacky lately. I did not want to get out of bed this morning, and my students were exhausting. One, an ADHD kid, got twitchy and threw a book, hitting me in the shoulder. (He wasn't aiming at me...but ow.) And it was HOT in my classroom. Ugh. Before grad school, I was so exhausted from the heat and lack of sleep and stress that I wanted to curl up on the floor and cry myself to sleep.

Since my group of fellows graduated, I've been taking classes with a different group of fellows, and I kind of thought they hated me. See, the first day, I used the words "nebulous," "connotation" and "denotation"....all in one sentence. Yeah, it was ridiculous. So the next class, I was like, "Keep a lid on it, E.J." But did I? No. Quite clearly, no.

But Thursday, after class, another student came up and said, "Oh brilliant one, can you help me with something?" And I helped her. Since then, people have been coming up to me and chatting. Talking with them one-on-one after class gives me a chance to make them laugh and let them see my fun side.

Now there's one guy in my class, Chris, who I've liked since day one. After class, he and another girl and I were bantering and laughing. She assured me that their Fellows group didn't think I was pretentious, just smart. I felt better. Then Chris asked if we wanted to keep hanging out. The girl, whose name is Erin M., said she had a lot of work to do. Then he turned to me and said, "Are you still coming or are you scared?" "Me? Do I look scared?" I rose an eyebrow and he laughed. He said he wanted to go for coffee: "I've never actually 'gone for coffee.'" "Me, either," I replied. We agreed we wanted to go for diner coffee, not Starbucks coffee, so we had to wander for a while. While we wandered, we discussed favorite poets and authors.

We finally found a diner that looked promising. We had to order food to get a table, so we got some delicious potato pancakes. We dished on the exes and told worst-day-of-my-life stories. His ex was worse, but my worst-day story was worse. Then he paid for a cab for us to the Upper East Side. We rode up town with the windows down, chatting. He told me his favorite city is Chicago. When I asked why, he admitted it was because of the aquarium. Hee! I could see myself becoming friends with him.

Tomorrow, my entire school is going to a park for a field day. Pray for me.