All day I will talk nonsense. I will repeat a paragraph eight times in a day. I will point out its main idea, drag it out, make people paste it in a book, and read it back to me. I will pass out little pieces of paper with vocabulary words on them and glue bottles, eight times. Students will glue those little squares of paper in their books. We will use those words in sentences. I will become cranky by 12:30, though it is early in the day because I will have done this eight times already. There’s only so much I can do. It has to be a twenty minute memorable experience every time, eight times a day.
By the time my break comes at 1:00, I won’t be able to talk to anyone about anything. I’ll have the ability to stare into space, perhaps I can scroll through my phone and look at pictures. It will take a few minutes for normal speech and language to return. I hope no one asks me to do anything. I will have lost the ability to think for a few minutes. My mind will be numb save for a paragraph, a main idea, and two vocabulary words that went through my head eight times at twenty minute intervals, interrupted for glue and paper issues.
I will not just want to come home, I will need to come home to my sanctuary where cats roam freely and demand cream and treats. A place where I am warm furniture under a pile of purring affection and happy to be seen, then ignored politely. I need my hovel to restore my soul and rest my mind. My home where my loved ones are welcome and words are cherished and spoken from the heart is my sanctuary, a much needed blessed place of rest to do as I will and won’t.
Devonne Brown 
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