Teacher's Pets

As the weekend was draining out its last hours, I made sure everything was ready for school the next morning, then I separated my whites from my colors, put the clothes in laundry bags for washday, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and before I knew it, Monday came.

It didn’t take long to wish that I was anywhere but back at work.  I was in a foul mood.  It felt like I hadn’t slept in a month; my feet hurt, my scorpion sting stung, my ant bites itched and festered, and I was under-nourished. 

“I should have called in sick,” I said to myself as I finally drove up to the school.  Of course, my car had fought me for every mile of asphalt between home and the campus.  The warnings of trouble I had been given the night before had grown from simple sounds into physical symptoms alerting all five of my senses, particularly (thanks to burning rubber and boiling radiator coolant) my keen sense of smell, which put a bad taste in my mouth.  All of that activated the additional sense of dread that they don=t give credit for as sense number six. 

Pulling into the parking lot and grabbing the closest space to the building B which was the farthest one from the building B I saw (and heard) mobs of screaming, hyper-active, ready-to-terrorize-the-teacher elementary schoolers.  There were hundreds of them.  Walking through the throngs, I noticed that each child had a strange look in his eyes.  I believed they somehow knew about my trip to the ranch and all the unpleasantries I had experienced.  I was sure they knew I was vulnerable that day.  They were reading my mind, laughing at me, plotting ways to humiliate me.             

What was worse, I didn’t see Miss Elliot standing at the doorway to her classroom.  She was one of the school=s new-arrivals I was pondering when Mr. Ostrich Boots came to sucker me into the cooking job the other day.

I had made it a point to pass Miss Elliot’s doorway every morning and afternoon since the day after Labor Day at 7:20 a.m.  I imagined that I’d never forget that day.  I passed her doorway whenever I could.  But, alas, evidently something came up and she couldn’t be at the door that particular morning; I’m sure it was some kind of emergency or she would have been there.  Surely she enjoyed my passings, I mean she did smile at me and sometimes said “Good morning, sir” and “Hi” and other nice things.  Shoot, those door-passings were 90 per cent of my motivation for getting out of bed that year.  Needless to say, I didn’t get a smile or a whiff of her perfume before beginning my teaching day, so I couldn’t imagine any redeeming factors to that Monday at all.

Maybe I lingered a bit at her door; or perhaps the kid was clairvoyant or something, but before I moved on to my classroom, I felt a tug at my trouser, and looking down to upper shin- level, I saw a little guy looking up at me with a mischievous grin.