Back In The Saddle Again

I was going to open with "hard to believe it," but upon reflection I guess no,  it was all too inevitable that sooner or later given the chance to stand before a classroom and speak I would do so.  This time as a volunteer professor in an academy for mostly elderly people wanting to get off the golf course for an hour or so a week.  My stint is only eight weeks long, so not really the most profound thing I have ever done. I kept joking that this would be my "Norma Desmond" moment, but pathetically enough, it sort of is.  Eight hour and twenty minute sessions.  The first threw me off my feed I must say.  First off, I forgot that I would have to go to the central office to pick up the stuff they had photocopied for me.  And there I met a woman rushing in to drop my course because she said, until she discovered that I was in fact that instructor, the instructor in the room was dreadful.  Who could this person be, I asked myself as the normal confusion of an opening day was turning into psychic pandemonium.  Well, of course, the registrar or whoever in his/her infinite wisdom had changed the room assignments only in the preceding hour, and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.  It was only because a dear friend, a local academic habitué of the university, was by my side and guided me to the correct place that I did not lose it completely.  But the result was that I failed to perform the opening day administrative rituals along with handing out my photocopied material without taking the time to number the first ten pages, and within a very few moments I was so flummoxed that I ended up with my personal pages in as much disarray as my students.  All very unnerving for a grand control queen in the classroom whose teen years in theater had always guaranteed that every first day of class would become opening night on Broadway.  And just to make it all perfect, two old men sat in the corner in the back, the one having called the other on his cell, to shout out, obviously deaf as a coot, the correct room number, and other directional items, and the late comer to enter in full voice thanking his friend for the information.  I lost it, sad to say, but they were both so deaf that my shrill faggy huffing and puffing and outrage was altogether lost on them.  The subsequent hour was really quite good I think it is fair to say, as I both amused, instructed, and at the same time soothed my inner self.  The psychic effort was immense and I was entirely tired and shocked to discover that what I had certainly assumed was a good hour and a half of tense making lecturing was actually something about fifty five minutes.  And I had twenty five yet to go!  Ah, well, I wrote the talkative old fart an angry email telling him and friend to withdraw or change their ways.  My husband insisted that I could not address him as "you deaf old bastard."  Although he did say from the experience of twenty years teaching troublesome teenagers "you've got to nip their misbehaviour in the bud."  I'm ready to quit.  Seven more meetings.