"Finally read your blog." That's Reggie, older sister talking. "All it'd take is one phone call," she says, warning. "It'd be a spectacularly mucky end to a brilliant teaching career. Is that how you want to be remembered?"
Of course she won't make that call. But someone else might, out of the goodness of its heart, in my school's best interest, naturally. And perhaps because I'm a smart-arse who's had it coming and they've been waiting for just this opportunity.
I've been sobered - well, not literally - and sphincter-clenching since I read a brief report in this week's Age about Natalie Munroe who was suspended from teaching because of her blog. Of course, this was in the US, and in Oz we're a bit more relaxed, but I just got this feeling. Sounded like her blog was remarkably similar to my own, perhaps minus the expletives, which I thoroughly enjoying writing. (Oh-oh. Done it again.) Munroe got hung out to dry for far less, from what I can tell.
I've also noticed that one of my followers (and you know who you are, my witty friend!) is only a couple of clicks away from inadvertently betraying my precious anonymity. Thought I'd get done a few years back when one of my posts was published in a national teaching magazine. Happily, no one twigged to that one and my secret remained safe.
As I've said before, blogging is therapy and writing all that nasty stuff and turning it blackly humorous is illicitly thrilling - graffiti taggers get the same thrill, I'm told, as they darkly dart around defacing our burbs with their stupid black scrawl. That's not a bad analogy, actually, because while I'm venting, I'm also betraying my colleagues. And okay, they sort of deserve it, but I'd be mortified, and probably sacked, if I hurt such well-meaning, albeit boring people by lampooning them for my own psycho-therapeutic purposes.
So, unlike Hamlet, I've made a decision. I've deleted the blogs that could get me sent down. I dare say there will be others, cos the teaching world keeps throwing shit my way, and I have to deal with it somehow.
I'm not ready for retirement yet, dear sister Reggie. I'd miss the cut and thrust which abounds at my school.
And for anyone who cares to trawl back through the archives, there's still some stuff there, and if a certain person reads it and recognises his/herself therein, perhaps he/she will finally get the message and piss off.
