One Less Thing to Worry About by Jerilyn Ross

Author:Jerilyn Ross [ROSS JERILYN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-51479-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

JORDANA: “ANXIETY MAKES ME GOOD AT WHAT I DO—

WITHOUT IT, I'D BE LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE”

I first met Jordana at an early-morning aerobics class I went to when I was single. The class, made up of professionals working out before work, was mostly female and entirely sleep-deprived. Afterward, we'd shower, gather at the mirror, and share news about our jobs, families, and love lives.

We were always hurrying and doing several things at once, but none of us could multitask like Jordana. She would fly around the locker room, yanking up her pantyhose and working gel through her dark spiky hair while delivering hilarious anecdotes about life as a music teacher and choral director in an inner-city middle school. She was always in a rush and frequently dashed into class late, dropping her stuff and taking a spot at the back of the room. When she learned what I did for a living, she whooped with delight. “You could have a field day with me,” she said. “When it comes to anxiety, I'm right up there with the greats.”

Jordana was in her late forties but looked at least a decade younger. Petite, energetic, and very attractive, she charmed us with her self-deprecating sense of humor and kept us hysterical with stories from school, such as the time they had been on a bus en route to an out-of-state choral competition and three sopranos had thrown up on the altos; the time a baritone had toppled off a riser in the middle of “Ol' Man River;” and my favorite, the time she had sent fifty kids home with permission slips for a field trip to New York City's Times Square to see The Loin King.

“It's always something,” she'd say. “I'm always running late and I end up rushing around and screwing up. The other morning Chico spat up a hair ball on the white carpet and it took me fifteen minutes to clean it up and then I couldn't find my earring and spent ten minutes looking for that. So what are my choices? Do I leave the cat mess and worry all day about the carpet getting stained, or do I take the time to clean it and have a heart attack because I'm late for work? Do I spend the day worrying that I've lost a diamond earring, or do I take the time to look for it and make myself late again?” Jordana said she couldn't leave the house until everything was just so, so it was hard to get out on time—missing eyeglasses or car keys, mopping the kitchen floor, scrubbing the shower stall, closing the curtains throughout the apartment, phone calls from students—all these things conspired to make her late. When I asked how students got her home number, Jordana said she gave it to them because she felt it was her responsibility to be reachable. “These kids don't have a lot going on, and the chorus means a lot to them,” she said. “They need to know they can count on me to be there for them twenty-four–seven.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.