Starting year on a hot note

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

That’s a sign I had thought about posting outside the door to my middle school classroom.

Do you think it’s too cynical?

I didn’t really post the sign, of course. It would have sent the wrong message to my students, partly because I want to be welcoming but mostly because they haven’t completed enough of their classical studies to know that I would have been referring jokingly to Dante’s “Inferno,” in which the hero descends to the overheated underworld.

But I have to say that after teaching for a number of days to the buzzing accompaniment of fans — meant to make up for but sadly deficient at replacing a recalcitrant 40-year-old air conditioner — the quotation would have been somewhat appropriate.

We did seem to have our very own special level of, um, heck until AC expert “Bobby” — I know not his last name — crawled around in the guts of my hulky old AC unit and FIXED IT on Day 5 of school.

Whereupon the students all applauded.

Each day before The Blessed Event wrought by Bobby, “my kids” clamored for me to hie to the next building over, a beautiful new addition with working air conditioning and three bookcases per room, as well as a teacher’s desk “suite.”

But the slick and polished room isn’t my venerable room — which I love and in which I was and am most comfortable but for the now-gone heat — so I wouldn’t go. It’s difficult to schlep everything one needs to a place that isn’t really “home” and feel content, even if it would quell the near-constant complaints.

So instead, I “glowed” — Southern women don’t sweat — as the steam swirled in the room, as if my students and I all were eggs being poached for some giant being’s brunch. My papers curled; my books crinkled. A wall of heat divided room dwellers from hall passers.

But for my timely visit from Bobby — which I’m convinced would have been later had I not bumped into him in the hall — I still would be in a very large and humid boat. Many of the schools in this district have old AC units and there aren’t enough parts or Bobbys to go around.

I learned a lot on the three days without AC, although I’m not sure my kiddos did.

No. 1: My deodorant works, though I can’t say much for its purported antiperspirant qualities.

No. 2: I suspect my hair gel would keep my hair standing up in the midst of a hurricane, so at least I didn’t look like a drowned rat by the end of a hot day.

No. 3: Despite the heat, I love middle school so far. I think it may be where I’m “supposed” to land. (I know, I know. Tell God your plans and . . .)

At least I’m ambulatory. I started last year in a wheelchair before moving to scooter to crutches. (Broken ankle.)

And middle-schoolers are a near-constant delight, for the most part.

They smile a lot. They’re curious. They’re boisterous and not yet blase. I find myself talking to my husband in the twinkly way I talk to my students.

I’m enjoying the heck out of myself in my ripening old age.

Thursday’s my birthday. (I’ll be 58.) I’ve promised my students a small celebration.

Just in case my AC celebration is short-lived . . .

Know anyone who does snow cones to go?