Last night I experienced one of the less cool aspects of my job: not having a sub trained in my position, and having to miss a certain 8th-grade graduation.

Sometimes because of the timing of a show’s opening in relation to the Tony awards and when Tony voters are coming to see it you can’t train a sound sub, which is at least a two-week process, for a while.

And sometimes the show gets a closing notice before that even happens. Sadly, we did get a closing notice for July 1 but that’s not what this post is about.

This post is dedicated to #3, whose 8th grade promotion I missed last night, who is attending her very last day of middle school today.

She is beautiful and she makes me laugh and I am pretty sure that neither she nor I are ready for her to be in high school yet.

I am also certain that neither her father nor I are prepared for her to look this grown up, but it’s happened.

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Text exchange with her earlier this year after her field trip to the Franklin Institute:

Me: How was the field trip?

#3: Mmm the busss ride was rlly good. The actual place not so much.

Me: Oh that’s too bad- he was a really interesting dude. Guess they didn’t really bring that through?

#3: Mmm noooo maybbbe they should paint his statue pink.

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Texts we exchanged yesterday:

Me: Hope you’re enjoying your last day of middle school!

#3: the last day is tomorrow… haha but thanks

Me: Well it’s kinda silly that you have to go in after you graduate, isn’t it?

#3: yeah but we also have the pool is party 2mom.

Me: That’s worth going in for.

#3: I guess… all the guys r obsessed with one of the teachers with big boobs so now theyr even more obsessed since she’s going to the pool partyy

Me: That’s pretty much how they’re going to act for the rest of their lives.

#3: Ugh!

I was pleased to note that her text spelling has improved somewhat over this year, and that even though she still seems to have something against apostrophes, she did use more than one ellipsis.

When I came home from work Tuesday night she had just finished up a collage for one of her teachers: on a background of crazy colored and patterned tape, she had cut out and artfully arranged all her test grades for the year.

She had a bunch of writing on her arm and at first I thought it was some sort of home-made tribal tattoo. Then I thought it was a cheat sheet for a final.

“No,” she said. “I’m done with my finals. It’s the mean, median and mode of all the Facebook Likes on the pictures we put up from the 8th grade dance.”

Just in case you teachers thought they weren’t paying attention. . .