Thou shalt not kill

When Obama was elected into office, I knew the impact of an African-American taking office was a monumental event for our country, but especially for the population I teach. I went about trying to find out how I could get an inauguration newspaper for each one of my students, to laminate and give to them as a keepsake. It took me about a week of volleying phone calls with several offices to convince the Seattle Times that they should donate 25 issues to my class. In fact, the company "politely declined",citing financial concerns, but eventually, an "anonymous donor" finally came through. I coordinated picking the papers up from their downtown office, battling rush hour traffic, and after 2 attempts, finally got all of the issues. I told Josh of my plan, and then took individual photos of all of the students making the peace sign while holding up an Obama pop-art notecard. I planned to put the two together with their Journal writing from that day reviewing the election. Now, this all happened in January, of course. Here it is June and I am just now getting around to putting this into fruition. But that's okay, because it's a lifetime memoir and it's going to be a great end of the year gift.

I looked high and low for those papers over the weekend, to no avail. I remembered that they were in a large Eddie Bauer shopping bag, small, but also easy to spot. I asked Josh this morning as I was getting ready for work if he recalled seeing them in the office (where I had placed them for safe-keeping). He responded immediately with, "Oh, yeah. I tossed those months ago." I looked at him, stunned, in disbelief. He must be joking, right?! I said, "Wha- Huh?" He said, "Oh yeah. You never used them and they were just taking up space so I recycled them."

Oh. My. God. I have never wanted to be more single in my life.