"Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were." (Lord Byron)

I just got back from teaching the fifth session of my "Fun With Shakespeare" class where we are reading and discussing Hamlet. The class is being held in our clubhouse on Fridays from 3pm to 4:30pm. I believe it will take two or three more sessions to finish the play. Yes, I did retire--from North Shore H.S.--but not from teaching. I few years ago I stopped teaching this class after have read several plays over the years since I've been here--Pater Noster in Condoland--but I haven't held a class for several years until now. Just had the urge to teach Hamlet since we're so much alike. But after our last class, I'm really going to retire from teaching because I'm exhausted for hours after coming back to the apartment. I certainly didn't expect this reaction to happen. I used to teach five classes in school with no sweat. Now, after an hour and a half I am sweating as though I've taken some laps in the pool! I've discovered that teaching is damn hard. I'm not going to do it anymore.

My teaching ability is not the only thing that's changed in twenty-five years. I used to be lean and trim, and running 26 miles was a piece of cake. When I was 57, I weighed about 157 pounds and swam 80 laps (one mile) in the pool every day. Now I'm terrified about standing on a scale. At the doctor's office, when the nurse asks me to stand on the scale, I feel like giving her a whack aside the head--of course, I don't put that into action because I'm civilized. Because I don't get a whole lot of exercise these days, when I observe my body that once was "lean and trim", my gorge rises at it. I will probably never go to the pool or ocean again. I haven't been there for twenty years, anyway. Besides my teaching career being over, so is my acting career. I don't get around much anymore. (Sounds like the song I once knew in my heyday..."Missed the Saturday dance; might have gone but what for...awfully different without you...etc.) Whose song was that, anyway? Lena Horne? Billie Holliday? Groucho Marx?

A President who admits a mistake? Isn't there a rule against that? Is it an impeachable offense? Henny Penny, the sky is falling!