My Excitement Knows Some Bounds

OK, I take it back. I AM excited about the last day of school. It's tomorrow, you know. A teacher only has so many last days of school. It's nothing to sneeze at. Another year come and gone. Just when you get the kids broken in, they leave you and you get a new batch to train.

Much like my gal Hillary was likable enough during the 2008 Democratic primary, I am excited enough about the last day of school. I'm not excited like some freaky European soccer fan, or a 17-year-old law-breaking idiot who runs out onto the baseball field and gets tasered. It's more of a Snoopy kind of excitement, nose tilted up to the sky, arms outstretched, dancing that little happy dance. That's me. I'm Charles Schulz excited. Maybe that's not a good comparison. He is dead, you know.

To up the ante of my excitement, Mr. Principal has finagled a true early out for his Newmentia faculty. For some reason, the district is letting the students out at 11:45 instead of the usual early out time of 12:45. That was a good enough deal from the outset. But now there's some tasty butter-cream icing on that summer vacation cake. (That's for you, Mabel). Since we have to haul ourselves to graduation Friday evening, early enough to get a parking spot, drape ourselves in academia rags, parade through the packed gymnasium to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance, sit obediently during the lead-up to tassel-turning, and then race like a gender-ambiguous 800-meter Olympian to get out of the gym ahead of the silly string explosion, throw our robes at the gracious office secretary, and peel out of the parking lot faster than a funny-car drag-racing champion, we are being permitted to leave at 1:30. HEY, it's an hour-and-a-half compensatory interlude that Elementia and Basementia don't get. So it's a big deal.

As my old high school friend Mooner would say, "I'm so happy I could just sh*t!"