In Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem called The Bells, he writes of four types of bells: the merry jingle of sleigh bells, the mellow wedding bells, the screaming alarum bells, and the solemn and somber death tolling of the church bells. He did not write of the bells that I heard every day for the 30 years I was a teacher and the 13 years I was an elementary, junior high, and high school student.
For 43 years of my life, my days were controlled and regulated by bells -- school bells. In actuality, they weren't really bells, but rather shrill peals that echoed down the hallways or loud tones that came from loudspeakers or intercoms. Just as we continue to use terminology that was better suited for rotary phones, we still tend to refer to those annoying sounds that dictate the lives of students and teachers nowadays as if they were the clanging of a bell being rung outside a one-room schoolhouse.
The bell pictured above has been used for years as a "victory bell" at the school where I taught for 29 of my 30 years. Its peals were cause for celebration. The other bells I'd hear at school, however, were not -- unless it was the final bell at the end of a very challenging day. That bell, I admit, was a welcome sound.
Now that I am my own boss working the hours I set each day, doing what I want with my life, my body has settled into a calm rhythm. I left teaching in May. It is now the beginning of January, and it suddenly hit me today how freeing it is to not be dictated by tones. Only a few times have I needed to set an alarm since I retired from teaching, but on each of those occasions I woke a few minutes before my alarm and simply dismissed it before it rang. This was not the case when I taught -- most likely it was due to sheer exhaustion from teaching and coaching, so I needed that alarm to wake me in the mornings.
However, even then, I chose to not hear an actual alarm tone; I woke to the radio turning on because it was a much less jarring way to wake from a dead sleep. When I found myself no longer needing to wake early every day, I retired my alarm clock/radio, too. The few times I do need to set an alarm now, I use my phone, but as I mentioned above, I tend to wake without it even if I've set it.
I'm certain this is because I get enough sleep nowadays, and my body has attuned itself to a healthy circadian rhythm. In fact, I normally and naturally wake at about 6:30 each morning to care for the pets. Then, I typically go back to bed for an hour or so because I'm still tired. I enjoy reading late at night in bed, so I don't usually go to sleep until midnight or even later; thus, by 6:30 I haven't had those lovely eight hours of sleep yet. I know some people who don't get enough sleep at night will then take a nap in the afternoon to refuel them for the evening, but I've never been much of a napper. When I'm up for the day, I prefer to stay up until bedtime. Afternoon naps typically make me feel worse instead of better, too, so I prefer to get a bit more sleep in the morning.
Not having bells dictate my days is such a wonderful way to live and work. While the bell ringing at the end of a class could be a welcome reprieve, it also often was a nuisance because the students and I were in the middle of doing something enjoyable or we were having one of those good days which make teaching so rewarding. Then, when the bell would ring, I would simply be annoyed because it instantly put an end to whatever great progress we were making or to the fun we were having. Occasionally, though, the students would stay a bit, so we could finish, and I'd write them a pass or call their next teachers, but that generally caused more of a hassle than if they'd just leave in the middle of what we were doing.
Now, if I'm enjoying what I'm doing -- writing a long passage in a new book, reading, painting, watching a video about something that interests me, walking the dog, visiting with a friend, covering a news story, etc. -- I, and only I, decide when I will stop doing that activity. I may spend twenty minutes on it, or I may spend three hours on it. There's no bell to make me move on to something else, and there's no watching the clock to make sure I have enough time to finish something before the next bell rings.
No longer am I a Pavlovian dog reacting a certain way each time a bell rings. While I am grateful that we have "alarum bells" in the case of a fire or a tornado, I am so very grateful that I don't have to hear those school bells anymore (and the earsplitting fire drill bell that was right outside my classroom and which I blame for my partial deafness). I estimate that I heard 20 bells every single day as a student and then as a teacher. Multiply that by the standard 185 school days (for a teacher) and you get 3,700 bell noises every school year. Take that number and multiply it by those 43 years of my life and you see that I was conditioned over 159,000 times to do whatever that bell told me to do. Add in all those mornings of being awakened by an alarm, which also included the four years of college in which bells didn't really shape my school hours, and you can probably see how happy I am to no longer have to hear those noises.
Noises, in fact, are not allowed in my house while I work. I prefer silence, so I can think and create. Some people need constant noise and can't stand silence, but I adore silence while I work. Poe can have his bells; I'll keep my peace and quiet.
Happy New Year 2022.
