The Over-Under on my Life

Or, why you'll never catch me in a skirt

Teaching is hard. Teaching grammar is harder, especially when most kids learn everything they know about writing from text messages.

For instance, I’ve all but surrendered on punctuation. I’ve been informed by teenagers—confidently—that one must never, ever punctuate a text message. Apparently, the correct form is to shove all the words together into one long sentence with no commas, no periods, and absolutely no clarity.

If you do punctuate, it shows your age. Worse, it reveals your tragic misunderstanding of the modern educational system.

Still, I persist. I teach writing all day. I cling to the idea that these kids might learn something whether they like it or not.

So my mind, naturally, goes to prefixes. I write OVER and UNDER on the board. We talk about how those small attachments change meaning entirely. Don’t blame me, I tell them. I didn’t invent English. I say Shakespeare did. That part worries them.

Then I move into the old bit by George Carlin—overwhelmed, underwhelmed, and why no one ever uses the root word whelmed.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

They look at me like I’ve just tried to explain algebra to a herd of cattle. I pivot to gerunds. Same result. I mention dangling modifiers and immediately have to stop and clarify that no, it is not a dirty thing, and no, the thought police do not need to be called. A dangling modifier is bad grammar, not a moral failure. Everyone unclench.

A girl in the back raises her hand.

“But Miss, if we’re not supposed to dangle them, why do people do it all the time?”

Smart kid. Wrong moment.

“Because,” I say, “some people know what they’re doing.”

Some years back, I pointed out to one of the finest writers I know that he had a fondness for dangling his modifiers. He took it as an insult and let me know—firmly—that this was a free damn country and he could dangle his modifier any damn where he pleased, thank you very much.

And he did.

Dangle, dangle, dangle.

The thing was, he knew exactly what he was doing.

That’s the part I try to teach. You can break grammar rules if you know the rules first. I break them all the time. Intentionally. That’s what gives a piece voice. Done right, chef’s kiss. Done by accident, it’s just a damn shame and a hot mess.

Which brings me to the over-under in my own life.

As a public school teacher in Texas, I am perpetually over- or under. The over-under on me ever retiring comfortably is laughable. Take the under. Always the under. My retirement check will be underfunded, my age undervalued, after a career of being overworked, overtaxed, and underpaid.

But the clearest over-under in my life involves underwear.

Undergarments are the bane of my existence. I spend entire days yanking my bra down in the back and hauling the straps up my shoulders. I’ve been told this is an overreaction and that I should wear a sports bra instead. But when your boobs are actively headed south, trying to meet your knees for a rendezvous like Pancho and Lefty, it’s hard not to think about them every second of the day.

I am required—by law, gravity, and basic decency—to wear a bra. The problem is the underwire. Underwire was not designed for bodies that have been lived in. My underboobs slip out and get pinched. The wire digs in like it's personally offended by aging flesh. I spend entire days so painfully aware of my chest that I can't hear a damn thing anyone says to me. It's all "whaa, whaa, whaa" like a Charlie Brown special, only I'm the teacher who can't focus. This is not vanity. This is infrastructure.

I once taught with a woman who had gastric bypass surgery. She lost a lot of weight. What she did not do was buy new undergarments. One afternoon, standing at the front of her classroom, her underwear simply gave up. Slid straight down to her ankles while a room full of teenagers watched.

She did not scream. She did not overreact. She did not freeze. She turned, shuffled her feet, and retreated right out the door with her underwear pooled around her shoes. Nobody laughed. Not one kid said a word. They were stunned into decency by the sheer magnitude of what they’d witnessed. She came back the next day like nothing had happened.

Just this week, I saw a Facebook reel of a girl marching in a band when her underwear dropped straight to her ankles mid-routine. She hesitated for half a second—just long enough for the universe to register the humiliation—then kept right on twirling as she shuffled to the beat, as if nothing ever happened.

Apparently, this is a skill some women are born with: the ability to continue performing while everything underneath falls apart.

Me? I’m still working on it.

I’m overqualified for that kind of grace and underprepared for the restraint it requires. But I show up. I teach the prefixes. I explain that rules exist so they can be broken with intention instead of by accident.

And I wear a bra with underwire that’s one bad sneeze away from puncturing a lung.

The over-under on me making it to Friday without something giving way is anybody’s guess. But I’m not betting against myself. Not yet.

I’m not overwhelmed.

I’m not underwhelmed either.

I’m exactly where Carlin said we’re allowed to be.

Whelmed.