The Incorrigible Night Owl

I was in my closet considering purses the other day (what, like you don’t mull over handbag choices?) and I happened to find, in one of the candidates, a miniature composition book that I used to carry around for use in jotting down notes or reminders. (I’m notorious for this, by the way; I am forever switching purses and leaving items that I don’t need or no longer want in the old one, then rediscovering the items months or years later, like a really boring time capsule.) Apparently the last time I used the particular bag where the book was found was May of 2008, as I found paperwork from my ’08 trip to AROTR in it. This lead me to spend the next five minutes pondering whether or not the innernets at large would consider that fact to be an indicator that I own too many purses.
Later on I was flipping through the composition book. Mostly the pages are filled with records of debit card transactions and random notes meant to jog my memory (“Drop pressing Get Tylenol JZ haircut”). However, one page bears the following inscription:
“I’m about to be made responsible for a pack of deranged rabid howler monkeys!”
That’s it. No elaboration or explanation. Just that rather pessimistic declaration which I, apparently, felt the need to record for posterity and possible further use (on this blog, no doubt).
If I had to take a guess I would imagine that the statement was triggered not by psychotropic drugs, as one might assume, but by the advent of Vacation Bible School, for which I always volunteer. I would’ve been with the 2nd/3rd graders that year, who, while considerably more civilized than the Kindy/1st grade group, are still a handful. Actually, now that I think of it, I remember why I would’ve been expecting the worst. The first two years I helped with Madalyn’s class she was in the Kindy/1st grade group, and a wilder bunch of heathens I’ve never encountered. Then I took the following year off, not because they’d broken me but because I had a newborn Eliza at home. So I missed the first year of her being in the 2nd/3rd grade class and, consequently, didn’t know how they’d behave and expected them to be just as exhausting as my first two groups had been. Therefore, as Monday approached, a sense of impending doom settled over me like a blanket of smog over Van Nuys, and probably lead to that note in my composition book. All for naught, that, as I ended up being pleasantly surprised at how much more mellow the kids were at two years older.
I could go on more about the composition book and how every. other. entry. in the transaction record section is FOOD, but I wouldn’t want the gimmick to die of overuse.