From Teaching to Temping

I shielded my eyes from the brightness of the welders' sparks as I walked through the factory at break. They had given me factory glasses to place over mine, and I took heed. I'd remembered seeing a sign in a shop class that said, "Better to look funny than not to look at all...Wear your goggles."
Although working for a temporary job that once I'd figured out the routine, bored me silly, I resorted to my own fantasy world of denial. "I am not an engineer's secretary. I could say I'm a teacher, but more than that...I'm a writer, simply disguising myself as these roles, particularly the former. The former is definitely not what I truly am."
There was something about walking through the factory section that made me feel I was in a different dimension, like Walter Mitty, whose daydreams were introduced by the onomatopoetic sounds, and, lo and behold, he in his mind, was a pilot of a World War II airplane, fighting the enemy, much like Snoopy on his doghouse, playing the role of the Red Baron.
Ah, little did they know, these employees, that a bona fide writer was walking through. What a sense of importance! I had the power to take their grueling activities and transform them to a new height. Perhaps, I would write a screen play about them similar to the movie with Sally Fields, fighting for the rights of the workers.
What adventure!
Yet another time, I'd been called by another temporary agency to do a "clerical" job, so they claimed. But alas, the clerical job included walking around the factory floor weighing papers for boxing. Up and down the aisles, walking, walking, walking...like a restless panther in his confined cage, repeating to myself, "The mind in its own place, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."* This was truly hell. I would not let anyone know I was a teacher. They would make my life miserable, as miserable as they did my husband, when the cigar and tobacco factory workers knew he was a radio broadcaster and were all shocked that he could keep up with them. One worker even tried to drop a bail of tobacco on his head, until he proved he could keep pace.
But then, the moment of truth for me. A former student recognised me. "Hey, you were my sub at school"
"A teacher?"
Word spread.
Endless ribbing, smiles, laughs, jokes....
Couldn't take it much more, "The mind in its own place can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."* Time to get out of hell, stop walking like a caged panther, stop weighing and considering.
Teaching is not the caliber of writing or acting, but better than this faux role, remedied at the end of the day with feet soaking.
There was a short time I was answering the phone at yet another factory where the bosses' son wrote letters in cursive I could not decipher, and I had to somehow, type.
I had to check with the boss to figure out what the sloppy writing, bad spelling, grammar and punctuation actually said.
And what's worse is the picture of their house made me realize they lived in a mansion... Paris Hilton in the form of a son.
Answering the phone, I said, "Screw Factory." But what I truly wanted to say was, "Screw Factory...Screw you!"
Ah, I want to go back to refereeing hoodlums, intolerable disciplinary problems, shouting above the crowd, enduring the condescension of "real" teachers, who didn't fully comprehend that you are one, in community and theater education, especially drama, having skills in drama teaching they didn't have. One day, I saw a sign on a teacher's desk that said, "There's no Substitute for a good teacher". Well, that certainly got my day off to a good start!
"For the mind in it's own place can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,"*
and "It's better to look funny than not to look at all."

(*Milton's "Paradise Lost".)