new job

I began a new job yesterday! I left the work force nearly 30 years ago when I married and began a family. I officially retired as a Dental Hygienist six years later when we moved from Texas, where I was licensed. Now things have come full circle and I am working again, although not as a hygienist. I work for a local school district as an ESP substitute. That includes sub work in the library, office, study hall, and as a teacher’s assistant. Yesterday I worked in the attendance office of a middle school. I’ve come full circle again, and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of being back in school. The tardies and absences, forgotten homework and lunch money, basketball try-outs after school and visits to the nurse all brought back memories of my school days and the joys and challenges of being a young teenager. Those were the good old days. But there have been changes, too. I watched the detention kids while their teacher took his lunch break. Infractions included mouthing off to teachers, calling them astounding names; something my generation never dared to do. And then that afternoon a little 7th grader came to the office needing me to reach her mother; her belly-button ring had caught on something and ripped her tissue so much as to need stitches. And to think that someday, these will be someone’s good old days.