It’s A Hardknock Teacher’s Life
A ToC trying to keep it real, in spite of the odds.

Forty-Two Things

1. I was born on Easter Sunday.
2. I was born the year the Voting Rights Act was made law.
3. I lived in the Deep South for three years.
4. I never went to summer camp.
5. I was a Girl Scout.
6. I met several members of the King family, including Corretta, Dexter, Bernice, and Yolanda.
7. I went inside an actual slave shack.
8. I have lived in seven different places in my lifetime.
9. I was named for a little girl who appeared in a movie.
10. I was entered into a talent show pageant at 18.
11. I drove from CT to GA.
12. I have visited 25 of the 50 states.
13. I have had a seaweed wrap.
14. I met Angela Davis, and had her sign a book.
15. I met Cornel West.
16. I have been inside a prision.
17. I have been on an battleship.
18. I visited Disneyworld at 30 with my brother.
19. I know the history of Georgia better than that of my own native state.
20. I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.
21. I visited the Alamo.
22. I have been inside an ancient Mexican pyramid.
23. I have seen poverty so shocking it took my breath away.
24. I have never owned a cat or a dog.
25. I visited western Europe for the first time in July 2006.
26. I have never played a video game.
27. I have never changed a diaper.
28. I have never fed a baby.
29. I stepped on a hot charcoal briquette when I was nine.
30. I knew two people who committed suicide.
31. I have never experimented with drugs.
32. I have never eaten sushi.
33. I have ridden in a limo (but not for a wedding or a party).
34. I have a friend who has AIDS.
35. My brother and I purchased scalped tickets to see the Van Gogh exhibit in Washington, DC.
36. I met James Earl Jones.
37. I was flipped the bird by a student ten years ago.
38. My parents smoke cigarettes, but I do not.
39. I did not take dance or music lessons as a child.
40. I saw the Rolling Stones in concert in August 2005.
41. I weighed 5 lbs. 6 oz. at birth, but I was not a preemie.
42. I was the first Black teacher ever to teach at the school in Georgia where I taught for three years. I do not believe that there has been another Black teacher hired at that school, and I left in 1999.