Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Has The Nose Of A Bloodhound

My students are so considerate.

Just after lunch, one asked me if I had manure in my room. Well, no. As if I could stash such a treat in there without people knowing. The canary started singing that I DID TOO have manure in my room. Because Boot Boy walks through it every morning, and then scrapes it off at one of my desks first hour. Such conspiracists they are! Turning mud into manure.

Canary commanded me to command Boot Boy to get a broom and clean it up. Like it was her business. Like I wanted to hunt him down and invite such a spectacle into my classroom to distract my students from their lesson on groundwater. She has not, perhaps, heard of this newfangled concept called a custodian. Does not realize that we don't make students do the manual labor for free? Okay. They DO stack the chairs after lunch out of the way for a good floor-mopping. But I believe those boys are paid in diet soda.

No fewer than two other canaries sang that sad song later in the afternoon. I smelled a rat. Not manure. Either three canaries were out to get an alleged poop-tracker, or a rat was running his mouth about soiling my classroom for hall cred.

Yes, these kids are SO concerned about the cleanliness of my classroom. The same kids who leave granola bar wrappers, pieces of styrofoam cup, gum packages, used tissues, handed-back work with their name on it, unstarted-work with their name on it, broken mechanical pencils, bobby pins, used band-aids, and errant shiny colored candies upon my floor are worried about three flakes of mud.

I also smell a teenage romance gone bad.