My job has been a point of contention for the past several months. Prior to this I loved my job. I never dreaded Monday, ever. However, presently I dread Monday through Friday. I recently took a vacation to get a much needed break and then added a sick day to further contemplate my work situation. On the way to drop off Ella at school on my last day off, I asked my seventh grader if she would rather switch jobs completely or go for a supervisory role in a job that has been causing strife. Ella stated neither, ” I don’t ever want to do what you do.” Touche, Ella. I don’t either, but here I am.

With the whole day ahead of me I had so much optimism. I decided since I had all this extra time I would dye my own roots instead of going to the salon. In the midst of this adventure, I remembered an incident in 2nd grade when my the teacher asked me to correct some papers. I never was asked to be a helper, mainly because this teacher didn’t particularly like me. I wore glasses and I would sometimes forget them in the morning and would come to school without. This teacher would yell at me for forgetting. I remember being anxious on the bus when I would realize I didn’t have my glasses on days I forgot.

When I would arrive at school the teacher would zero in on my naked face and yell, “Where are your glasses!?” with more emotion and contempt then necessary to be honest. I would try to tell her that I didn’t need them to see, but to correct a condition that is called a strabismus. This is when an eye turns in due to a muscle weakness issue and the glasses are supposed to help. Unfortunately, as a 2nd grader I don’t believe I knew the term or was good at communicating my health issues to this teacher, because she was always super pissed about my lack of glasses. On one particular day, she asked me to hand out papers, but then grabbed them out of my hands stating loudly ” Oh, forget about it, you can’t see!” Oh, Miss Horn, I could see. I could see that you were a wretched bitch, but I am getting off subject.

The day she asked me to grade some papers I was over the moon. I remember the grading utensil was this awesome wax red pen that needed to be peeled instead of sharpened. I felt pretty important. However, I realized when I was grading the other papers, I had the right answers misaligned when I was comparing them to the students’ answers and marked several papers with LOTS of red before I realized my mistake. There was no way to correct all the red. Well, I felt the same panic today while I was attempting to dye my roots. I was so far in there was no turning back before I realized I was in way over my head. I just had to keep going in spite of myself.

If my teacher would have seen the disaster that occurred in my bathroom today, she would have confirmed, not just by the forgetting of the glasses and wrongly marked papers, she was right. The little shit couldn’t see! No glasses would have helped me today. My lesson is no matter how bad your work is going don’t dye your own roots.