If you are a high school girl standing in the middle of the teacher workroom after school, bemoaning the fact that your packet of M & Ms has become lodged between the plastic curlicue dispenser and the front glass of the snack machine...Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is not the person to expect to remedy the situation.
Pardon my total lack of concern. Even when your large-boned boyfriend starts shaking that machine like an ape testing American Tourister luggage. I will not be advising you on how to exact a refund. I will not be reaching my arm up inside the snack-food bandit. I will not be tilting my head sideways and suggesting other acts of brutality that might dislodge your illicit after-school treat.
Likewise, my teaching buddy, Mabel, who wanders in to use the faculty women's bathroom after me, will be of no assistance, either. Let this be a karmatic lesson for you all. The teacher workroom is off limits to students. Mabel and I are not of the contingent who shrug their shoulders and joke with you as they run copies and retrieve highly confidential information from their mailboxes. That contingent numbers in the fingers-on-one-hand neighborhood. The rest of us have routinely complained to the powers that be. Too bad, so sad if one of you should happen to be injured by a toppled snack dispenser, become pregnant due to lack of supervision, incur legal fees for perusing classified information, or go into a diabetic coma from the ingestion of clandestine carbohydrates.
Just because we are in the building, working after hours, does not mean we are here to supervise this room 24/7. You are not supposed to be here. Failed attempts to control your plunder have resulted in our ridicule. We can no more stop your invasion than we can stop a stampede of lemmings over a cliff. Than we can obliterate a roach infestation by stomping individuals one at a time. Than we can rid the walls and crawlspaces of an abandoned farmstead of mice by trapping them one by one.
The village needs to put you children on a shorter leash. Or barricade the most enticing venue in the village. We have tried to do our part, and failed.
At our school, if you walk into the teachers' lounge and into the little sideroom where the laminating machine is, there is a secret door--if you know exactly where to push on the wall--which will open up to the stairwell to the teachers' swimming pool. It's Olympic-sized and so soothing after a stressful day of teaching.
ReplyDeleteAt least that's what I tell students who somehow cross the barbed wire, the razor wire, the moat and the guards to get into the teachers' lounge...
When I was a student ...... more than a few years ago, the teachers lounge was a sacred place. If you knocked on the door, one of the teachers would open it just enough for her face to poke out, along with a cloud of cigarette smoke. I told you it was long ago. They used a paddle for punishment. Long, long ago
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteYou guys have the pool? We have the go-kart/bumper car track. Nothing like relaxing after a hard day, feeding your need for speed AND releasing pent-up aggression.
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Kathy,
Oh, don't think I don't remember those days--from the TEACHER side of the door.