Not much happens to me on a regular basis, which makes the whole blogging thing kind of moot. Haven't managed to lose any more weight, although we're starting to get back into a routine as far as working out goes. Oh well. My summer will be chock full (I hope) of weight loss stories.

I am a little depressed, though. The seniors at the school where I teach are, for the most part, done. Their last day of classes was yesterday (they get out three and a half weeks ahead of the rest of the students--when I was in high school, we got out in June, not May, and the seniors got done three DAYS earlier than everyone else. Big whoop). Since their lockers were all in the hallway outside my classroom, it's been oddly quiet all day long, which makes me a little sad. I'm used to hearing their ruckus ("Could you describe the ruckus, sir?") in the hallway, and the silence is weird.

Plus, I'm very fond of this particular class. They were my original freshman class when I started teaching at this school, so we've sort of grown up together. About a month into school that first year, I attended a new teacher orientation conference. One of the speakers talked about the movie Hook with Robin Williams. Primarily, she discussed the character who spends the whole movie looking for his marbles. Everyone in the movie thinks the guy is nuts, but he's really looking for a bag of marbles which were his happy thoughts. You can't go to Neverland without pixie dust and a helping of happy thoughts, so he'd been stuck in the real world that whole time, looking for his marbles. The point was, as teachers, we needed to decide what we taught for, our happy thoughts about being teachers, and always think of those "marbles". Well, I thought about it, and my students ARE my happy thoughts. They are the reason I teach. So, when I came back from the conference, I told the girls about the marbles. I explained that they were my marbles, and the nickname just sort of stuck. It became a running joke. Before every extended weekend or holiday, I'd tell them to be careful and make sure to come back, because I "didn't want to lose my marbles". At the end of the year, I gave each student (98!) a handwritten note and a bag of three marbles, which stood for Faith, Hope, and Love. I told them not to lose their marbles. One of the girls gave me a huge jar with 98 marbles, inscribed with the initials of the members of the class (one per marble), so I could always remember "my marbles". (I keep those on my desk to this day, and the girls have asked to have the jar placed on the table at the front of baccalaureate to represent their memories of their freshman year.)

Anyway, I've always referred to their class specifically as "marbles". They all know where the marbles are that I gave them (although I suspect they've lost some other figurative ones along the way!), and I've even given marbles to the members of the class who arrived after freshman year. I've sort of adopted them all. As for me, I carry two marbles with me in my purse everywhere that I go, as a representation of the two members of the class who tragically passed away (one the summer between their sophomore and junior years and the other in January of their junior year); I may have "lost" those marbles but they will always be with me.

At their senior day assembly yesterday (where we give out the academic and service awards to the seniors and heap love and attention on them), they made their dedications for the yearbook and the literary magazine. The yearbook was dedicated to a teacher who is retiring after 31 years, and (as I totally tuned out the presentation to plan what I was going to say when I got up in a moment to give my newspaper editors their flowers for their hard work all year) I realized everyone was staring at me and that they had said my name, because they had dedicated the literary magazine. To me. I managed to not cry (although I cried a bit in the car on the way home) but I'm sure I'll bawl at graduation. I sit right in the front row, according how they line the teachers up every year, and I've already warned the girls not to look down at me (especially the ones who have to sing).

And now they're gone. My seniors, my marbles, are not in the hallway today. They have not come in to use my printer to print some last-minute assignment. They have not come in checking to see if I have any snacks stashed away in my desk. They have not come in to oogle the posters of Orlando Bloom, Heath Ledger, and Viggo Mortensen on my wall (because they've taken them: I promised them they could have the posters when they graduated, and darn them for taking me up on that!). They are not bringing me presents, or stopping in to say hi, or asking for help on their research papers. Because they are moving on. They are going out in the bright big world to do all the things that I know they can do. They are going on to do great things, fabulous things, earth-shaking things.

And I will just sit here, with my jar of marbles, and miss them so.