16September 2000
I used to hate being in the teachers' lounge. Not because teachers' lounges were usually small and cramped and smelled of whatever weird, possibly expired food the teacher no one wanted to get stuck talking to had brought, but because I used to get jealous listening to my coworkers talk. I used to sit with the pre-K and kindergarten teachers when I was working in an elementary school, because they were usually younger, and didn't have anything to say that would make me wish I were them; but the older teachers—the ones that taught middle school when I was in elementary, and all of them when I moved into high school—were constantly on about their significant others, their families. Their kids.
Things were different this year. I felt like I fit in—maybe not completely. In f
