First period is almost over. First period, that wonderful class with but a dozen plus students in it. Oh that wonderful time of day.
One of the students is standing with her back against the wall. She had been preparing to stand by the door to wait for the bell. But as she stood, she set her backpack down and backed up to the whiteboard that runs along the side of our classroom.
“My back hurts,” she announces. “My back huuuurts,” she repeats, when she hears no sympathetic reaction from the others.
But I feel her pain — literally.
“I feel so old,” she says. “I’m only sixteen, but I feel so old.”
Scratch that. I feel her pain — figuratively.