I’ve been hiding a secret in the workplace. It’s hot and it’s illegal, although I didn’t know it at the time. But by the time I found out I was breaking the rules, I was already hooked.
For years, I harbored a microwave in my classroom.
Apparently, this is a no-no, but I’ve never had complete clarity as to why. Something to do with a fire marshall who thinks it could spontaneously combust while warming my Lean Cuisines. I never found out the specifics.
I’d brought the microwave in to conduct a science experiment, where my students compared how long it took sugar cubes to dissolve in heated water vs. room temperature. After that, it was just a fixture that I forgot to take home. At least, that’s the story I planned on explaining to the fire marshall and all powers that be should my secret ever be unveiled.
Maybe it has to do with standing on the edge of a pandemic, but I decided it’s time to come clean.
The truth is, I have a coffee dependency between 6 a.m. until noon that must be fed every hour upon the hour. This doesn’t mean I down an entire pot. Believe it or not, with the constant interruptions in teaching, it takes a six-hour span to finish a single cup.
As far as coffee goes, I can’t tell much difference between a Folgers crystal and a bean handpicked from the mountain ranges of Colombia. But the key is, every sip has to be exactly 205 degrees Fahrenheit. And so, throughout the day, I microwave the same cup ten times over, praying to the God of Coffee Beans each time that this will be the hour I get to finish it.
The microwave had been strategically placed snugly between my June box (where confiscated student toys are placed until the last day of school) and file cabinet. It wasn’t intentionally hidden from open view, but as the days ticked by and the papers around my desk piled up, it remained unnoticed.
This week, we’ve been told to clear our classrooms of all our “nonessential” teaching equipment–and as it turns out, my nonessentials took up more than three quarters of the hallway. File cabinets, bins, art supplies, science projects and bean bag chairs had been dragged out of the room to await their new home in storage, not to be seen again until fall 2021.
With everything cleared out, I could practically hear the echo of my own footsteps. In my head, I could hear the ghostly bustle of kids coming in with their backpacks–yelling their greetings to each other across the studio, carefully tucking their Beyblades away for recess over the clatter of the computer cart as they unplugged their Chromebooks. Eighteen desks were carefully arranged upon every square inch of the classroom, each no less than six feet apart.
In the very center of it all sat my microwave, fully exposed, practically waving at me from where it was hauled out into the open.
The math teacher on my team–who, in her amusement, had texted me a picture of it the day before–included but one word in her message.
Busted.
