We Are Not Amused

My high school friend Christine (Dr. Christine to you) is the head of the history department at her tiny Maryland college. It’s been a tough year for teachers everywhere, and higher academe is no exception. She’s grown increasingly frustrated with the schedule her school has set, forcing her to cram a semester’s work into 7 weeks of Zoom, and she groans that she’s committing educational fraud.

          Happily, after several false starts, her retirement is at last on the horizon if she can just make it to June. But not too soon, since her stove and fridge are circling the drain.

          Being a historian, she’s coping like a queen. An actual queen, in fact. On the night before Victoria married Albert, some accounts have it that her mother supposedly said, “On your wedding night your husband will expect you to do things you find unpleasant. Just close your eyes and think of England.”

          Christine told me she plans to get through this last year of teaching by closing her eyes and thinking of appliances.