I know this is probably stupid to even talk about, but it’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep thinking about Monday morning. I’m sixty-one years old and I’ve only been teaching for three years. Most guys my age are looking at golf courses or fishing trips, but I had this idea that I needed to keep serving after I hung up the uniform. I thought I could bring some of that military discipline to the classroom and actually help these kids. But looking at it now, I think I just traded one kind of exhaustion for another, and I’m starting to think I’m just not cut out for civilian life even after all this time. This morning during the assembly, it happened again. The gym was packed—over five hundred kids screaming and the principal trying to get order over that crackly PA system. I looked down at my hands and they were trembling. Just shaking like leaves. I had to shove them into my pockets so the other teachers wouldn't see. I told myself it was just the coffee. I’d had three cups of black coffee since 0500 because I was up late grading papers, so that had to be it. It wasn't anything else. Just too much caffeine and not enough sleep. That’s what I keep telling myself. The truth is my classroom is a mess. They shoved thirty-two kids into a room meant for twenty-four because the school district can’t find anyone else to hire.