So...I was nervous about the first day of school for many reasons. One, it's the first day of school, and for the first time I was supposed to be the teacher. This was more nerve-wracking than ever being an unsuspecting (nah, scratch that, I was always suspecting) student on the first day of school. Two, my school is/was extremely disorganized. My school is overcrowded and because so many students fail each year, particular grades are even more overcrowded. My grade, eighth grade, is one of those. I learned the day before the first day of school that no one - teachers or students - had set schedules. Thus, all homeroom teachers would be stuck with their homeroom class all day Thursday and Friday. The students are in the same room from 8:30 to 3:00. This really worried me. People who know and like each other get itchy after being together that long. How would I deal with all of my strange, new students for so many hours? I can't be "on" for the same group for hours at a time. I don't work at Disney World. Yikes. I later learned I'd be relieved for two forty-three minute periods. Yay. Three, I had no roster, no gradebook, no room keys, no school map, no idea how to complete any daily school procedures... I asked about all of these numerous times with little or no response. New teachers kept getting told that they'd find out things later. In my case, later never really happened.

I didn't get to go to bed as early as I would have liked the night before the first day of school. I still had to clean up my classroom and try and finish preparing it. Then I came home to figure out what was intimidating, comfortable, and cool enough to wear. (My classroom has no air conditioning, so "cool" means "won't result in pit stains on my shirt and pants stuck to my sweaty legs"). I took a shower and practiced my "Hello, I'm your teacher. I'm nice, smart, and will absolutely kill you if you mess with me" spiel.

I awoke throughout the night, because I was afriad of sleeping late. I always do this before something important and nerve-wracking. At one point, I thought I heard sirens and what sounded like a helicopter flying over my building. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Woke up again. Slept. Woke up again. At one point, my alarm clock finally went off. I shimmied into my clothes, put on a teacher face, ate a granola bar, and set off for school. When I stepped outside, my corner street was completely roped off in police tape. NYPD and FDNY people were everywhere. There were news crews. Fire trucks. Ambulances. People were crying and wrapped in American Red Cross blankets. Something terrible was happening as I tried to sleep hours before.

I was too nervous and practical to think of it as an omen.