Miss Terry: Teacher and Mother Extraordinaire?

At some point in the last 2 years, I've become a mother.

Not literally, of course. Breathe, Susan, breathe.

I've started calling students "sweetheart", "darlin'", and "sweetie" when they come up to my desk to ask me a question. I keep a supply of, um, feminine products ready and available for any young girl who might come to me crying and not knowing what to do. I will, probably one day soon, start carrying around a miniature pharmacy in my purse for life's little emergencies. My wall is littered with not-so-artistic drawings of butterflies and cats and Georgia Bulldogs and puppies and the bridge that leads from mainland Georgia to St. Simons Island, just as a proud parent's refrigerator might be.

The fact of my change in status from cool, unattached single 20-something to mother of 78 eleven-year-olds didn't really hit me until this morning at about 7:40. I found myself standing in my classroom, brushing a child's long, red, hair so that I could put it up in high pigtails in order for her to match her "twin" for Twin Day of Homecoming Week. I had flashbacks to my sitting backward on my mother's toilet seat (lid down, of course, haha!) while she french-braided my hair for when I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (one down each side) or for football games when I was the drum major my senior year in high school (a single braid down the back). It's a very mom-thing to do, fixing a child's hair. And I, apparently, have made that step.

Anyway, enough of that scariness.

Here's a picture of my twin and me. Matt (my brother-in-law, Amy's husband) is on the right, and I'm on the left, just in case you couldn't tell us apart...