There are two moments in my professional life that I can think of where the memory of it just makes me cringe and I can feel the bottom of my stomach filling with dread. The first moment was during an Ancient Egyptian PowerPoint presentation where my third graders performed in front of their peers, parents, and the principal. Two boys were talking about the god Thoth and what he was known for. All of a sudden, a noise interrupts. That familiar four-note melody that's immediately followed by a pop-up window displaying a message: "hello?" Danny had decided to IM me right at the moment when I could receive the maximum amount of embarrassment.

In that split second, while my students' faces turned towards me in bewilderment, I panicked. I quickly exited out of the message box, closed my Buddy Window box, and then acted like nothing happened.

Then all of a sudden, like a zit that keeps reappearing even after you pop it, another window appears with the same AOL tune: "are you there?" You see, I hadn't exited out of AOL Instant Messenger. I had merely closed the window. But I thought I had gotten rid of the problem!

So I quickly exited, told the boys to go on, and proceeded to call Danny on the phone to warn him not to AIM me anymore. But you see, there was a performance going on, and parents were there, the principal... Just thinking about that experience makes me feel ill. I ended up calling Danny and whispering so softly that he couldn't hear what the heck I was saying.

"Stop AIMing me," I managed to say.

"What? What are you saying?"

And then I feared that he might AIM me AGAIN to write "what are you saying?"

So I said in a louder whisper, "Please stop AIMing me. We're having a PowerPoint presentation right now!"

He answered back, also in a loud whisper, "Why don't you exit out of AIM?" Ha! Like I didn't think of that already.

Well, I couldn't stop the current performance, but when the next pair was up, I quickly exited out of the program and just tried to pretend it never happened. I sometimes relive that moment in my thoughts, when I saw my principal widen her eyes at this sudden interruption. I had a couple of nightmares about it. I also think of alternate solutions I could have used in that moment.

All I can say is, I'm glad that Danny used neutral language. Can you imagine the humiliation if he wrote something like, "hey baby, how YOU doin? You're hot!"

The second moment happened today. It is every teacher's worst nightmare to wake up in the morning and realize that she is late for school. And it happened to me. My principal called me today at 8:40am. I was totally and utterly in bed, sleeping. Didn't hear the alarm clock. Probably slept through it, or turned it off without knowing it, or set it to PM instead of AM so it never rang. I don't know. All I know is, I was late, my principal had to call me to wake me up, and I made everyone worry about me. I hate being irresponsible like that. Right now I'm trying to find a balance between receiving the grace that my colleagues extended to me and being hard on myself for being so stupid. :(