The One You Say Goodnight To...

Otherwise known as The Imperfection of Connection... 

This afternoon I went to a gathering with the English Department from My Small Town High School.  I was invited mainly because I worship the ground that a certain recently-retired teacher walks on, who was also attending the gathering.  There are three reasons why I love about being around these fabulous people:

1.  They always have great stories.  I eat their tales from the classroom up.  I can't repeat them on Single because they usually involve students and that would cross the blog's ethical line.  But they are descriptive and fantastic... and I feel so very privileged to be among the few who get to be entertained by them.

2.  English teachers almost always get into some kind of discussion about parts of speech, or grammar, or some other nuance of their profession.  Whenever this happens I feel like I have behind the scenes knowledge of what my teachers really did after-hours in high school, and I am mesmerized.  I am a geek that way.  Again, I come from a family who is often irritated when the evening news uses a word incorrectly, or fails subject-predicate agreement in a sentence.  These are my people.  I most definitely belong.

3.  At least half of them read my blog.  I am in awe that they actually enjoy my writing and occasionally discuss the posts amongst each other at lunch.  The posts have brought a couple of us closer together because they give us something to talk about.  They encourage me to write and make me feel like this body of work means something.  It's a very good feeling.

Tonight I also learned the reason why most of my readers' comments are Anonymous.  I can't believe I didn't think of it before, but in my eternal denseness... I lacked common sense to figure it out on my own.  I have striven to maintain my school's anonymity in writing the blog (although if someone truly did a bit of research it wouldn't be difficult to figure it out).  In the spirit of that anonymity, my colleagues have posted as Anonymous.  They also take tremendous pleasure in making me figure out who it is that is actually doing the posting.

Great.

The host of tonight's gathering is a friend whom I have known since middle school, who is now an incredible English teacher with a brilliant son who is a senior and in my care with a last name who falls under my part of the  alphabet.  When I entered her home, another teacher-- a young'un with gorgeous hair, biting wit, and a sweet heart who consistently cracks me up and makes me feel good for being me-- looked up from her bar stool and charmed, Hello Beautiful.

I was home.  At least... I was home until I took my leave to go to salsa class.  Even I know that English folks need to be without their hangers-on for a least a little while when they socialize.

This afternoon on my way to the gathering I heard a Kina Grannis song on the radio.  I will be The One You Say Goodnight To...  I had the song in my head and favored the group with a single line from the adorable, happy tune that hails as my new anthem.

For now, I have found my one to say goodnight to, even though he lives a tremendous distance away, and we are still figuring out how this will work, if it even can.  But in the meantime, we say goodnight after talking, texting, and lol-ing.  It is a connection of the new millennium. 

It's not perfect, but I kind of like being connected.