Two for twenty...twenty years later.

Becky and I each got shoes last night. I've managed to buy, sell, give, get, ruin, and out-grow plenty of shoes in the past two decades but these particular shoes happen to be part of a childhood wish-list that both of us remembered. It took Seth to grab them from our tight clutches while we stood there reminiscing in the middle of Urban Outfitters, bring them to the counter and buy them.

He declined a bag. He knew we'd walk out of the store with them on.

I'll spare you the details, especially since my memory isn't photographic, but I will tell you what I do remember. It was 1988. My family had recently moved to a campus/health retreat/missionary training center/commune/whatever else the adults did that I was too busy playing to notice. A friend of my parent's had come to visit. She was wearing the black Chinese ankle strap shoes that Becky and I had always wanted. Becky wanted the black ones with the rose embroidered on the toe and I had wanted them without. The lady noticed us spying her shoes and asked if we liked them. We both gave an awed yes that only six and eight-year-old girls can muster. Then, she did something that I hope she regrets to this day. She promised to buy us each a pair and send them back to us. We traced our feet on paper so she'd know our size. Becky and I waited and waited and waited and waited for them to arrive. As the years passed I would see them in stores and would occasionally try them on, but would eventually put them back on the shelf and tell myself that she had promised and I just needed to wait (I would occasional worry that she might get the size wrong since we'd grown a bit since we last traced our feet). We waited until last night when Seth finally shattered our hopes and dreams and told us she failed us and she wasn't going to buy them for us. He bought them for us instead.

Thanks Seth.

I don't play that game...

My students share a playground with students that are a couple years older...in preschool years that's developmentally the difference of wiping one's own @$$ and, well, not. Yesterday morning one such older kid decided to run over to the tire swing and perform a fly-by-shoving, sending one of my kiddos two feet over and down to the gravel sand below. My co picked up our sobbing student and tracked down the perpetrator to resolve this issue. The perpetrator ran. I picked up the chase and caught up with him for the hopeful following conversation using words such as, "You really hurt my friend when you pushed her like that..." etc... The older student didn't appreciate the foreboding questioning, so before we really got any words out he looked up at me, fire sparking out of his eyes, reached out, grabbed my thumb and proceeded to break it. That action alone sent me into a whole new realm of frustrated. I knew I needed to walk away, so I did. I wasn't sure if my co finished her conversation with "our little friend" or not but we briefly mentioned his episode to his teachers and they didn't seem to care and within the next five minutes all our kids were inside and onto the next activity so I just dropped it. I didn't want to deal with demon child.

Two hours later a teacher, we'll call Britney, pops her head in our door, demon child in tow, and asks to talk to me. I step outside the door. She tells me that "her little friend" feels really bad about what happened and that he wants HER to apologize for him and that he was playing a game and he didn't realize I wasn't playing the same game and would I accept his apology, through her? I told both of them that I didn't play that game where I try to break my friend's fingers, but yes, thanks for apologizing. I didn't want to get into the fact that he'd sent one of my friends into orbit off the tire swing. For one thing, my students were settling down for feeding time at the zoo and I just wanted to drop it. Clearly, I didn't understand where this Marilyn Manson kid was coming from, but honestly, at that point, I didn't have the time. I had 11 kids screaming for me and my co to open their yogurt sticks (which by the way I absolutely despise...whoever invented them was a complete idiot!!!!!) and Ziploc baggies fill with god-knows-what-home-made edible creations.

I thought the issue was over. I was wrong.

Today Britney comes up to me to ask if she could schedule a time to talk. Really?? Yeah, that's fine. Time to talk is set for 1:15pm when I'm putting my kids down for a quiet time. It ends up bumping up to 11:30am when she corners me in the playground...literally. I feel like I just digressed 22 years and am stepping up to the plate to face a bully. I take a deep breath. I know whats coming. (Before yesterday I hadn't really ever talked to Britney but I already get the feeling she's needy and not a little whiny about it.) K, let's get this over with. She starts with, "I guess we could talk now, since we're both out here and all...So, I just couldn't sleep last night." Me (Ever the protagonist): "Really? Cause I slept like a rock? What was up with you??" Britney: "I was just up all night thinking about how you didn't accept my friend's apology right away and how it took a lot for him to apologize. (What?! He didn't even apologize...you did all the talking for him! You have GOT to be kidding me?!!! And you use the bull$^!# line that he was "playing a game"? Maybe I've just lost all patience for this sort of reasoning or teaching philosophy or American political correctness ca-ca but at this point I was about to laugh in her face.) I held my composure and listened to her drone on about how's he's come a long way and last year he bit other kids like a vampire and how he's moved past that and he just wants to know that he's accepted and he's my friend. (Oh! so that's cool, that helps me understand, wow, I feel so much better now.) I continued to listen. Hey, if it help her sleep better... When she seemed like she'd finished, I said thanks for filling me in, that I wasn't aware of the history and that she'd had pulled me out of my classroom yesterday at a very inopportune time and I was distracted by my students who needed my help. She said she understood and thanks. I bent down at that moment to help dissolve yet another 2 year old meltdown and she awkwardly touched my shoulder and said thanks again. OK... that's cool. Weird but cool...and I say cool only because I'm begging that we are over and done with this subject of Johnny the Bloodthirsty Thumb-breaking Kindergartner.

Catastrophe...

It feels as though the joys of being a pre-school teacher are few and far between these days. The following account is what I thought was an anomaly of a day but in the following two weeks that I failed to “blog it” it has since become the norm.

It started out like every other day. Parents bringing their kids to school, a few lingering, a few dropping and running. The occasional kid shedding a few tears once they realized mom or dad had vanished yet again. My co, Lara and I juggling between comforting the emotionally fragile and engaging the rambunctious in the days activities. By lunch time, I, the rookie, suggested a picnic for a change of scenery. Lara paused for a second and then agreed. Had she voiced her opinion the day may have changed course. Eleven Lunch-boxes, 11 children, 2 books, and a package of wipes wiggled their way out the door to the garden. Everyone started to dig in. A bee arrived and most of the kids merely noted it. Stanson on the other hand started to scream and bury his boogery nose in my back. I tried to calm him down but as far as he was concerned lunch was over and the only place he wanted to be was inside. That reminded the other kids that they were needing to play instead of eat so a game of hop down the concrete steps started. I had no sooner asked the kids to slow down and walk down the steps when one focused little girl decided to shove another out of the way to get to the bottom first. The second kid still made it first, but with her face. Then the chaos started.

I run inside with bleeding nose and noggin shiner kid to get an ice pack and see our next door classroom teacher balancing one of her students who is shooting vomit out his mouth and blood out his nose while consoling her own daughter who seems to be in the throws of hysteria. I grab the ice and run back outside, still holding our first victim of the afternoon and tell Lara about the dilemma in our shared classroom. She runs inside to get throw-up boy, Ted, so the other teacher can console her daughter. We decide the picnic is a bust so we gather the carnage and literally toss it back into our classroom and try to get our kids to join our shared classroom's pupils in the playground so we can divide and conquer. Have you ever tried to herd cats? That is what its like. We do a quick head count and discover we are missing one. Of course we are. Still balancing kids in our arms we split to search, finding him in another playground on the other end of the garden. We encourage him to join the group, just short of using expletives. Right then, Calliou gets stung, Ted projectiles again and Stanson is still having a meltdown. We miraculously get all the kids in one place and I run for the hazmat materials. Calliou seems calm enough so he's not the first to triage. Our little Brit, Ollie, waddles over to me as I'm trying to contain Ted's former lunch before some kid decides to make a sand castle out of it and informs me he's soiled his trousers (it just happens to be his first day in undies). That tips the scales and I race up to the front office, Ollie in tow, and plead for help. One teacher stops me to say, “Umm, I don't know if you realize but his pants are wet.” YA THINK!! AHHHHHHH!

Back in the classroom and back-up arrives, I head back outside to make sure the other teachers are ok and that we still have all our kids. Nope and no. A different one is missing. Alan has pushed the gate open to get back into the garden. And my Co has vomit on her leg. I hold the door open with my foot while helping her wrap a towel around her waist as she gingerly balances Ted in her arms. I lose my balance and release the heavy metal door just as another one of our escape artists tries to make a run for it, the door catches her in between it and the frame. She lets out a wail. I drop the towel and trip as I turn to prevent Chloe from getting squished. I grab her just in time. Then I yell for another teacher to grab Alan from the garden.

Somehow we get the kids cleaned up and settled in the nap room less than 30 minutes later, then we draw straws for who gets to go home and shower first.

Names have been changed but the events are actual and did indeed happen all in one flipping day!