Last Day of School

I've had my eyes on June 7 since about mid-September, but there are days that I thought it was NEVER going to get here.  Still, time marched on as it always does, and I finally arrived at the last day of school.  Wooooot!

I woke up so excited to get to school.  We only had a half day, and I had fun activities planned for the entire morning.  I had even roped Rex into coming with me.  He seemed less than thrilled, but I didn't really care.  I figured he would have fun once he got to school and realized how awesome my kids are.

When we got to school, the middle school girls fell in love with Rex.  It was actually kind of creepy.  I don't think middle schoolers know how to express their attraction in an appropriate way, because here are some quotes that were said to me throughout the morning:
"Mrs. Webb, I'm going to steal your husband when you're not looking."
"No offense to your wedding or anything, but your husband is waaaay more attractive in person than he is in that picture on your desk."
"I want to take your husband home and keep him in my basement."

And this is my personal favorite, said TO REX:
"I just really like you.  You make me want to kidnap you, take you home, and lock you in my freezer or something."

What the?!?!?!?!  Middle schoolers are weird.  This brings me to my next point:  even though I'm not going to teach middle school next year, I did not feel sad at all in embarking on my nine weeks of paid vacation.  I was really ready to be finished.  Apparently that was not the case for my kids, though.  I projected a "Countdown to Summer" countdown on my wall that counted down the time left in the school day.  When there was about one hour left, the entire middle school completely fell apart.

I've never seen anything like this in my life.  The students were sobbing.  SOBBING.  I don't use the word "crying" here because it's not descriptive enough.  There were less tears at funerals I've been to.  I'm not just talking about a few weirdos, either.  I mean the girls, the guys, all students in grades 6-8 were congregating in the hall to hold onto each other as if the "countdown to summer" was actually "countdown to your brutal execution."  They were holding their friends as if they would never see them again, even though the vast majority of them will be back in the fall. I didn't really know what to do, so I just grabbed a box of Kleenex and ventured into the hall.  All of the Kleenexes were gone in about 20 seconds.  Once my kids saw that I was okay, they said things such as, "Mrs. Webb, aren't you going to miss us?"  I tried to express my deepest remorse at having the school year end, but I'm not sure how genuine it sounded.  One student said, "I bet she's just barely holding herself together because she has to be strong for us."  Yeah, we'll go with that.

Rex looked completely flabbergasted.  He hid in my room and played a board game with the handful of students (probably five or less) who weren't lamenting the coming of summer break.  When I came back into my room, he passed me his phone so I could see the message he'd written to me: "THIS. IS. INSANE."  There's really no better way to describe it.

When 12:00 finally came, the students went outside for dismissal.  Actually, let me rephrase that:  I practically kicked them out.  No one wanted to leave.  Each time a car picked someone up, a whole new wave of sorrow came over the crowd.  I think I will always remember this one particular incident:  Maia's ride arrived, and as she got in the car her friend screamed (SCREAMED)  "Maaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! Noooooooooooooooo!"   as if she were watching Maia get run over by a car instead of getting into one.  I think the entire school could hear her screams.  It was really, really weird.  It was also kind of scary.

Anyway, when I finally packed up all of my screaming, sniveling middle schoolers into their cars to go home to the horrific fate known as summer vacation, I went back inside to clean out my desk and get everything set for summer.  Rex was a huge help, and we were done in about forty-five minutes.  After that, we went home and took a three hour nap, because that's just how exhausting that half day was!

Once we woke up, we decided to kick off summer by going to Olive Garden.  Yum!  On the way home, Rex pulled into Barnes and Noble because "What better way is there to start off summer than by getting a new book?"  I knew I loved him.  So the first part of my day was completely nuts, but it ended up okay.

And now......SCHOOOOOOOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!  Life is good.