Mr. Locke’s Classroom

On my second day of class, I missed the bus (actually it’s a shuttle, but saying I missed the bus sounds more dramatic).  Amy drove me to the seminary, and we got stuck in traffic, so I walked into class ten minutes late.  And then my preceptor (it’s a Princeton thing, I’ll talk about it later) made a remark about punctuality, glancing my way…

But before I feel really sorry for myself, I must note the irony of the situation, and the hundreds of Sunset High School students who  — if any of them still actually read this blog — would be cheering right about now and saying, “Now you know how it feels, Mr. Locke!”

So yeah, I was a bit of a jerk when it came to issuing tardy passes in my days as a high school teacher.  And yeah, I guess what comes around goes around.  I’m ok with that.  Tomorrow I’m taking the early bus.

On the class front, I’m actually starting to enjoy the study of Greek.  Having majored in English, learned French as a child growing up in Belgium, and studied Anglo-Saxon just so I could read Beowulf — I must have a thing for languages, or at least I’m able to convince myself that I do.  We’ll know tomorrow — our first quiz  is over the Greek alphabet, and conjugation of verbs in the Present Active Indicative.  And twelve vocabulary words (mostly verbs).  I’d type them here, but I haven’t quite learned to do Greek characters on my keyboard (anyone?).

I’m far less confident about another thing I’ll be doing tomorrow — playing French horn as part of an ensemble for our first chapel service of the summer.  Not sure how I got wrapped up in that.  Yes I am; I searched out the music director, told him what I played, and volunteered to help in any way I could [what a total band geek!]. I’m playing horn on two songs, and piano on one.  I did practice, and my mind played the horn part perfectly.  My fingers and my embouchure were slightly less cooperative, though.  But I enjoyed the brief diversion from things academic, and might be inclined to make this music thing a habit.

This afternoon, after studying with a few friends, studying on my own, and practicing tomorrow’s music in a practice room, I wandered down to the bus stop to catch my ride home.

And I missed the last bus home.

Again.

And Amy had to come pick me up.

Again.

On our anniversary, no less.