This Explains So Much.

The setting: an empty classroom, re-arranging desks. The desks look like this:



The staff are dragging the desks back to their appropriate positions and it is making a noise that makes me start twitching involuntarily.

"Do you want to see the Ms. D----- method of moving desks?" I ask my co-worker.

Sure, she says.

So I demonstrate the procedure, one that was executed religiously in my classroom, always with one student modeling and the rest following row by row, noiselessly, punctuated with lots of praise from the teacher.

Since we did a lot of turning our desks around to face one wall or the other, I taught my students that they stand next to the desk, lift the whole thing up, and shuffle their feet until the desk faces the desired wall, then place it back on the ground. In other words....

"LiiiIFT! Aaaaandddd pivot."

I totally stole this procedure from Friends when they are trying to get the couch up a narrow staircase and Ross is yelling fruitlessly "pivot! pivot! pivot!"

So I am lifting and pivoting and Elena says "Gosh, Mary, you're like a 65 year-old ballet teacher. 'Pivot, children!'"

And I am thinking yes, yes I was a 22-year-old 65-year-old ballet teacher, for better or for worse, that is basically how I approached my work and why it felt so weird/awesome/fleeting.