A case of the Mondays

I haven't had a case of the Mondays in a long time. Maybe it was the snow. Maybe it was anxiety over my father's surgery (he's doing fine). Today, though, was a Monday kind of Monday.

First it was the whiteboard markers. I'm used to one or two drying out on the same day, but today all five of mine were dried out. I stole a few from the teacher next door. All of his were bad. I stole a few from the teacher down the hall. His red one worked great, too great. It wouldn't erase. So then I had to wash my board before setting off to look for more markers.

Then one of my classes was one book short, so I ran down the hall to copy a couple of pages. The copier malfunctioned after just one copy, and I couldn't fix it. So I went back to the class, told them they'd have to share, then turned around and started cleaning the board. After a few minutes of cleaning one of my students finally cleared her throat and asked, "Um, are we supposed to be doing something?" I had forgotten to tell them their assignment. So they all had been sitting there waiting for instructions while I was cleaning my board, blissfully unaware that they were not hard at work.

And then, and then, I forgot the word, "continent." I actually stared off into space for a moment, my mind blank, and finally said, "you know, those bodies of land made up of many countries." (yeah, I know, except for Australia, Antarctica, and Greenland) One of my students looked at me strangely and said, "continents?"

And what did we learn today, class? Yes, that's right, I have off days, too. Sometimes I even misspell words, dangle my prepositions, and split my infinitives. But rarely on Tuesdays.