what do you see?

What do you see when you look at this photo? A car? A particularly clean and shiny car that has been meticulously polished? A car so clean that even the tyres sparkle?

What do I see when I look at this photo? And what do I see when I look at my alphabetised DVDs, and my colour coded post-it stocks, and my overly sharpened pencils?
What do I see?
I see that I have a huge pile of exams papers to mark, of grades to collate, of reports to write; and the king of procrastination is sitting on his throne.

it snowed today - in my car

It's odd how events can build up detail by detail to a somewhat unexpected eventual effect.

Take today for instance. I bought a Starbucks latte - not unexpected so far. It was too hot to drink immediately so I set it on my dashboard and set off. I drove below a flock of starlings that made a mess of my car if you know what I mean. I drove to a drive thru car wash to clean it. For some reason the car wash wasn't working so I decided to drive round to the front to inform a member of staff. The windows had steamed up while I was stopped and I couldn't open them because they were covered in... well... So with my vision impaired I drove - bumped into a kerb - my coffee went all over the dashboard, the seats, the floor. I cried.

Luckily i had wipe things which I was able to use to clean up the dashboard and upholstery things for the seats and floor. Unluckily some of the coffee had gone down the vents and I couldn't get at it - so I left it to dry.

My car smells of stale coffee (It wouldn't even have been so bad if it was Costa Coffee - I like the smell of Costa Coffee)

The thing is, once I returned to the car after a while and the coffee in the vents had dried, I turned on the engine. Air came up through the vents and with it little flakes of dry soya milk floated up and around the inside of the car. It was a beautiful moment. Unexpected, slightly icky, but very very beautiful.

something special

Yesterday as I was driving home I had an idea. It was -5 degrees C and so many salt spreaders had been out that there was a thick layer of salt on the road and all the cars were covered in it. The car washes get closed down if the temperature drops too low so no one was cleaning it off. I got home and filled a bucket with warm water and set about making my car cleaner than it had ever been before. It positively sparkled and I immediately jumped in and went for a drive. where did I go on this momentous occasion? Tesco's of course. I went to buy groceries (and to attempt to impress one of the checkout staff) but for one glorious hour my car was by far the shiniest vehicle on the roads. I had a special car.

Why did I do it? Let's face it, looking down at it in the car park now it is just as covered in salt as the rest of the cars. But just for a short moment it was something different from the rest; and I've come to realise that the term special is just as relative as terms like better or faster or larger. As a special needs teacher that's a big realisation. You can't be special all of the time - sometimes being special is easier than other times - sometimes being special isn't what I really want or need at a particular time. What is important is that I am the best I can be in my own little world - and that I clean my car from time to time.