我很累

A large number of frogs were seen crossing the road heading away from their water source last week.  Perplexed by such a phenomenon the witnesses speculated about the cause of such bizarre behavior.  Could it be that amphibians possess some special sense that allows them to know about some sort of natural disaster before their human neighbors?  Soon the speculation become certainty.  The frogs were fleeing impending doom.  This can only mean one thing:  earthquake!

The first time I heard the story it was a large number of frogs.  The second time it was a few hundred.  Last night they numbered in the thousands.  I'm assuming each person was talking about the same event so I allow for quite a bit of exaggeration.  Around 12:15 last night I got a number of hysterical phone calls from students telling me with absolute certainty that there was going to be an earthquake sometime in the night.  Now I heard a few different time estimates, some told me 2am, others 3.   But they all agreed on one thing:  I needed to evacuate my apartment immediately and go outside in the safe parking lot.

As much as I value my life, I didn't immediately run outside to await with the rest of my more safety-conscious neighbors.  It was already past midnight, I had class in the morning, and the best reason people could give me for believing this story was, "I heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another..."

It is too true that often the rumors that circulate around here turn out to be more accurate than what you hear on TV but I just couldn't see the sense in waiting around outside all night for something that may or may not happen.  So I went to bed.  Around 4:30 I was awakened by a text message in Chinese telling me not to worry, there wasn't going to be an earthquake, it was just a rumor.  The message was sent to everyone in the city I think.  I spent about ten minutes trying to decipher the puzzle that is Chinese characters, eventually guessed that it was saying something about the earthquake not happening, and tried my best to go back to sleep.  The damage had been done; however, and the little sleep I got after that included dreams about my apartment crashing down around me.  So when the sun finally rounded this edge of the world it lit upon a very tired and unhappy teacher.

It turns out I wasn't the only one who slept poorly.  I had class at 8am, and about 10 minutes into what ordinarily would have been a semi-interesting activity I noticed about half my students blatantly sleeping, mouths hanging wide open and bodies sprawled across desks.  The ones who weren't quite so obvious about their exhaustion were trying desperately to fight the heavy eyelids waging war against them.  Any other day I would have had fun with their struggle, and deliberately slammed books near the napping students, or called upon them to answer a question I'm sure they didn't hear.  But I had a little sympathy for their plight since I wasn't in much better shape.  We struggled through a torturous 2 hour class period together and were relieved to hear the bell ring out the freedom to nap.  I hope in the future my students won't worry about me so much, and will leave me in blissful ignorance when they hear of a coming disaster.

"I can live for two months on a good compliment."

-Mark Twain