A sign, a grade book, and a bathtub are just a few of my memories of Hyde School

I had the honor of spending two days in Bath, Maine, recently, visiting with the eleventh and twelfth grade students of Hyde School. I taught them about storytelling, performed my one-person show in the evening, and hosted a story slam on the final afternoon of my visit. 

It's a fantastic school, filled with some of the hardest working teachers who I have ever met and a diverse group of students who are ready to take on the world. 

Great storytellers, too. They had incredibly compelling stories, and they told them so well. 

I had many big, beautiful moments at Hyde School that I will never forget. Moments with students and teachers that will stay with me forever. But a few of the smaller things that I loved:

This sign is posted in the main academic wing of the school. I just love it.

I met a teacher who is still using the identical attendance and grade book that my teachers were using when I was in high school. The nostalgia of seeing the grade book was almost overwhelming. I found myself staring down my French teacher, Mr. Maroney, arguing about a test grade, or debating my homework completion with Mr. Compo. 

It's funny how a single object can transport you to the past so quickly and easily.

I also took my first bath in a clawfoot bathtub. I was in Bath, Maine, and the bathtub was beautiful. It felt meant-to-be. 

The bath lasted about four minutes before I got bored and decided to take a shower and be more productive.  

I've never understood the allure of a bath. 

I don’t love bathing my kids. Except I often do.

I am not a huge fan of bathing the kids. I don’t mind shampooing their hair, and I don’t mind scrubbing their feet, but once the actual work is done and the playing commences, I become much less interested in the bath.

Perhaps it’s because of the way my dictatorial daughter demands that I play with her bath toys, elevating her preferred princesses over my second-rate charlatans and placing their words in my mouth to repeat again and again. 

Or maybe it’s the way I am forced to sit on the floor at the base of the tub and get drenched with bathwater as we play.

Or maybe it’s the sheer frequency of the baths. When I was growing up, we took baths once a week. In accordance with my wife’s wishes, my children are bathed every other day or so.

Whatever the reason, bathing is one of those things that I know I will miss when my children are bathing themselves, but it’s also something I really don’t enjoy very much.

Until I see moments like this.

  

As a parent, I have discovered that as important as my happiness may be, my children’s happiness often supersedes my own, and their happiness almost always results in my happiness.

I know this sounds like a fairly obvious statement, but this was not something I understood or perhaps really believed until I had children.

Even the stupid bath, with its stupid toys, is pretty fantastic when my kids are enjoying themselves.