With Great Power...

 "Are you the principal?"

"No," I answer, "I'm just the guy who worked here long enough to get a master key."

I have worked for the same school district at the same school site for my entire career. As I begin to wind things down, it occurs to me that I have scratched and clawed since the late twentieth century to stay exactly where I am. 

"Are you still the computer teacher?"

"Yes, I'm still the computer teacher."

This one gets lobbed at me by former students, some of whom are returning as parents of new students. Somewhere in there I managed a four year stretch of teaching my own fourth grade class, but mostly I have been ensconced in that corner right next to the south stairwell, next to the library. 

Waiting for my big break.

Over the course of a couple years it felt like I might want to take my act on the road. I could teach math in middle school. At least there they might get more of my "jokes." I studied for months to take my single subject exam, but eventually my confidence wore down because, as it turns out, my expertise in mathematics stops somewhere just shy of the requirements for middle school. 

It was, as I suggested once to my son who was in the fourth grade at the time, "Better get your help now. After this year it's all on you."

Nevertheless, there are those days when our principal is away from campus and circumstances lead the folks in the office to call for the one person who carries some mild authority, or at least a master key. 

That would be me. 

I am not the principal, nor do I play one on TV. Somehow I have managed over the course of three decades to evade anything that would have pushed me into an actual administrative role. I know where everything should be, and I can open just about any door in the place. Sometimes I will take on the complaints of an angry parent, when I happen to know that my principal is busy elsewhere taking on the complaints of another angry parent. Or maybe they want to talk to an "old-timer," since I can remember how things used to be.

Not very different, as it turns out.