Monosyllabic vocabulary lessons

My job is trying to eat my weekend.

Act one:
Yesterday morning I had to wake up at 8:00am. (To my readers with little kids… yes, I know, that’s probably deliciously late for you.) My tutoring company had scheduled a free proctored practice SAT for 9am. I’ve signed up to proctor most of these tests because they’re like a paid study hall for me. I sit there, get caught up on work and get paid $50. Besides, my husband is rarely awake, showered and caffeinated before 1pm on a weekend. So usually, it makes sense for me to do this.

Not yesterday. Yesterday, nobody came. Not one kid. Now, it’s not like they cancelled or just didn’t show. Nobody signed up. And I knew this on Friday. Both my boss and a co-worker suggested I didn’t have to show up. But did I listen? No. For some strange reason, I got it in my head that I should still go… “Just in case.”

“What if a kid forgot to sign up but still comes?” I told my boss. “They could be sitting there for four hours waiting to get picked up.” Yeah, right. Every kid who can afford SAT tutoring probably has his or her own cell phone. The real reason for my early-morning burst of dedication? I was trying to impress my boss. So when 8:00am rolled around and I had to yank myself out of a nice sexy dream I was having, every fiber of my body wanted to stay in bed. My boss would never know, I kept telling myself. But now that I had agreed to show up, I knew I had to.

So I drove 20 minutes over to the local high school where we’d rented a room. (Just to add insult to injury, we normally hold these proctored tests at a tutoring company that’s just down the street from my house. But yesterday we had to use this other room because we were using the other space for a meeting… that also got cancelled. Grrr.) After waiting 20 minutes for nobody to show, then drove home, climbed back in bed with my husband, fully clothed and tried to remember where my dream had left off.


Act two:
Right smack in the middle of yesterday afternoon at 3:30pm, I had another work-related commitment. I was supposed to meet my boss for a “SAT consult.” (The way our company works - when a parent calls about SAT tutoring, we go out to their house to interview the student and provide info about our the SAT and our services. We do this for free because it helps us to meet new people and often, we make useful connections.) Luckily, I reasoned, this client’s house was only 10 minutes away from mine. Should be no big deal… right?

Nope. My boss was 20 minutes late. So by the time I drove there, waited for him, talked to the family and drove back home, the whole thing had taken 2 hours. Why did I agree to do this in the first place, I kept wondering? Yes, my boss is training me to do these consults on my own so he can focus on other tasks. Yes, it’s been hard to find times to meet that work for both of our schedules. But two hours on a Saturday afternoon?! I was trying to impress him again. God, I thought, I am vastly over-qualified for this part-time job! So, why do I feel the need to please this boss so much?


Act three:
When I got home, my husband and I decided to go for a walk. We live right on the edge of a beautiful residential neighborhood and we love to walk up and down its hills. We look at the craftsman houses and talk to all the local cats. On our walk, I talked to him a bit about this irrational fear I bring to every job I have: that I’m not doing enough… not working hard enough or earning my keep. I talked to my psychiatrist about this on Thursday. I don’t want to be like my mom… filling up every possible second with some “task” or distraction or work. This is my opportunity to figure out how to spend my time doing things I actually like, my doc said. You know, pastimes, hobbies, ect. Stuff other than sleeping or watching TV, my husband said.

When we got home from our walk, there I had a voicemail message. The father of the student I’m tutoring today at 1:30pm called. Could I call to confirm that I was coming tomorrow?

Yes.

Could we move the lesson a little earlier, he asked?

Maybe…

Say, before 11am, he wondered?

NO. That would mean we’d start at 10am. I’d have to leave my house at 9:45 which means I’d have to get up by 9:30am. Not on a Sunday, buster. No way. That’s sacred New York Times reading time.


Scene four (and the last):
So I woke up this morning to realize that I never called that guy back last night. We went out with friends and I forgot to call. (Yeah last night... we went go-kart racing. Good lord. Those cars go fast. If I ever had a death wish, I surely don’t any more. I was puttering around the track like a little old granny compared to the rest of the drivers. They were all guys…) So I grumbled and crankily pried myself out of bed and called the guy. Told him I couldn’t meet any earlier. He was fine with that. Whatever.

Then about an hour ago, my phone rang. What now, I wondered? It was my 3pm student. Could we move our session back a bit?

Maybe… what time?

Oh, like maybe 8pm? You see, she’s doing a charity car wash right now and then she’s got a birthday party she forgot about this afternoon. They’re going into the city to see “Chicago” and then having dinner but they should be back by 7:30 probably. Oh yeah, and she has a math test tomorrow.

NO. I told her, no. I almost never tutor later than 7pm on a weekday, and certainly not on a Sunday night. She can call me if she wants, but I can’t come that late. Sorry. I hung up the phone and turned to my husband.

“So, did you hear that? I told her no. 8:00-9:00pm is too late on a Sunday, I think. See, I’m learning to say no. Aren’t you proud?”

“That’s great hon. So, you stood up to a little girl!” He laughed.

“Nooo… she’s not a little girl. She’s a sophomore. I think she’s 15.”

“Ok, that’s not so little.” He started chuckling again. “Well, that’s progress. Maybe someday you’ll be able to stand up to a fully grown person!”

doormat available at: http://www.plowhearth.com