You Suck Dick

I watched my first grade boyfriend drag an orange crayon over the picture of my face on my work ID. 
"Here, this will make you look better." he said, while systematically covering the photo. 
"I'm gonna give you a little lipstick, too." he continued, while covering my mouth with pink crayon.  

"So I was trying to line my kids up for the assembly and text a parent at the same time...."  Mr. Warren said, eyes wide open.

"Spell check switched her name to 'baby', I don't even use words like that....I had to text her back and tell her I wasn't calling her that....."

The fire alarm would not stop going.  

"DON'T EVACUATE!" the principal yelled over the intercom, trying to be heard over the noise.

It had a three beat rhythm.  I walked past four boys, covering my ears.

"YOU SUCK DICK.  YOU SUCK DICK."  they chanted, in rhythm with the alarm.

"It smells bad in here."  one of my second graders commented. 

"My trailer?  My beautiful trailer?!  What do you mean????"

I was honestly horrified.

"It smells like wish finger."

"What, what is wish finger??"  I screamed.

"Do you mean like wish bone, like the thing in the turkey?"

"NO!  Witch finger!"

Oh my god, witch finger, the green plastic witch fingers I bought at Kroger during Halloween that we all put on every time we read to keep track of which sentence we are on??

I ripped the finger off of my finger.

It smelled horrible.  Then, I sprayed stuff in the air and ran through it like it was perfume.  

I pulled a little row of chairs in front of the giant monitor the county put in my trailer.  The kindergartners sat down.  It was Awards Day.  I don't really believe in that sort of thing but, well, whatever.  They sat for a minute, and then started to squirm.  Suddenly, Naked Thursday occurred.   Legs kicking in the air with the pants pulled up to the knee. Shirts pulled up to their shoulders, talking belly buttons.  

"Dah na nah nah, bu nah, nah nah, nah nah, buh nah nah naha nah...." I chanted, and put my eyes on the screen.  

 

James Madison Never Got Called an Asshole

"I really think these people are totally punking me.  The picture on my new ID is even worse than the last."  I lamented.
"Yeah.....your head is like....square......"  my first grade boyfriend responded, staring incredulously at my new work badge.  

"MISS EVANS!"  a parent called out loudly in the middle of the virtual class.

"Javonte has got to go.  He got a Q-tip stuck in his ear.  I'm taking him to the emergency room!"

We stared back into the screen.

"Oh Javonte....."  Ms. Evans responded lowly, shaking her head.  

"So, when I'm older, I'm going to have a beard."  one of my housing authority students mentioned casually.  

"Like a really long one?"  I responded.

"Yeah, really long.  My religion says you're not supposed to cut it."  he answered.

"So you're going with it?  Will you have a mustache, too?  You could like, grab the corners and curl it up with your fingers....."

His eyes widened.

"What if it is like really sparse, like only three really long hairs grow....."  I continued.

His eyes got even bigger and he screamed.  

"Did you know that James Madison showed up like, two weeks early to the Constitutional Convention basically so that he could write the whole thing before anyone else got there?"  I asked my co-worker as we leaned against the wall overseeing a massive fourth grade bathroom break.

"Hmmmm."  she responded.

"I mean, who does that?  It's kind of rude."  I continued.

"JAMES MADISON does THAT."  she answered with a firm nod.  

"Mauricio, you have really curly hair."  I commented.  I have really never seen a Mexican kid with hair like that before.

"Yeah, I have A LOT of hair."  he answered.

"I have a bunch on my arms, too.  And my back."  he continued.

Well.  You learn something new every day.

Ya visto

"Hey, be careful not to step on the lizards....they don't bite or anything, but...."  I said, watching the lizard I'd been speaking to for half of the day warm himself on a piece of linoleum that was getting sun through the trailer window.
"You want them out of here?"  the I.T. guy asked as he hauled off my work desktop computer.
"No, I like them. "  I answered.

And I do.  My school district decided to return to virtual classes on our first week back after the holiday break because of the Omicron numbers.   I was surprised by how little time it took me to start speaking to lizards while I sat in the trailer alone, watching my students over computer screens.  

Virtual learning brought back total deja vu.  The district announced that we would only be virtual for a week, three days actually, because we had teacher work days that we used to distribute Chromebooks to the students.  As I planned for three virtual days, I kept remembering March of 2020 when they said we'd be virtual for two weeks.  I returned to the school building in February of 2021.  I remembered January of 2020 when people first started talking about the virus at school.  I never thought we'd still be speculating on it two years later.  The massive car lines for COVID testing were back.  My Google Classroom started blowing up with messages from my fifth graders, requesting to "go live" after classes finished.   I got a look at whose room got new paint and even talked to some parents I haven't see since the last time we were virtual.  The kids joked about playing Among Us.  We tried out the new Google backgrounds, making it look like it was snowing behind us instead of just ordinary walls.  I saw my students without masks on for the first time in well, about a year.  I was surprised how much older they look and how big some of their teeth are.  

I usually make New Year's resolutions.  I'm not sure why, but I didn't this year.  I really have no idea what 2022 has in store for us.