I Wept Teaching A Class Today

Today was my last day work­ing in Colorado Springs. I fly out ear­ly tomor­row morning.

Because I am so pas­sion­ate about InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., about the graph­ics indus­try, and about shar­ing my enthu­si­asm for these things with oth­ers through teach­ing class­es, I often bond with my stu­dents. On many occas­sions stu­dents treat me to lunch or go out to din­ner with me after class. I’ve made quite a lot of friends from this work. Leaving, as I must inevitably do, is often some­what sad­den­ing for me.

Still, nev­er have I shed a tear for, much less dur­ing, a class. Today I could­n’t stop the tears.

Oh, I was­n’t sad. I was laugh­ing so damned hard for so long that tears streaked my cheeks.

The whole group was like that most of the day. After lunch (no alco­hol for any­one, mind you), we were bust­ing a gut. My sides still ache hours later.

It was one of those group laughs where some­one is doubled-over, about to top­ple out of her chair; some­one else does; anoth­er per­son is smack­ing the table, beg­ging for relief, and; every­one is laugh­ing so hard they fall silent. Then sud­den­ly the silence is shat­tered by the des­per­ate, ragged draw­ing of a breath. Guffaws fol­low, fad­ing away to silence once again as laugh­ter grows too loud for sound.

There I was, grip­ping the sides of my podi­um work­sta­tion for sup­port because my legs had aban­doned their post. My face burns, my jaw aches from being stretched to its gap­ing lim­it by unheard laugh­ter, and my eyes squeezed against the unbear­able humor. Still, tears broke free, fair­ly steam­ing on my cheeks.

I haven’t laughed that hard in years! Oh. My. God. It was a riot. Photoshop is fun. Teaching Photoshop is fun. For most peo­ple, learn­ing Photoshop is even more fun. But there was such a chem­istry between this group and I, that this Photoshop class almost imme­di­ate­ly crossed the bound­ary into hys­ter­i­cal, start to finish.

Their jokes, my jokes, spo­radic sit­u­a­tion­al humor–it was all per­fect­ly amus­ing. And, through all the laugh­ter, we hit all of our train­ing goals–and more–which is a won­der­ful accom­plish­ment on its own.

With few excep­tions, each gig gets bet­ter and bet­ter, each group of stu­dents more inter­est­ed and inter­est­ing than the last. This last class, though, I think will be dif­fi­cult to top.