Hey! Did you know teachers are filthy? Okay. Maybe I don't really want an answer. Especially after our Elementia sisters put out their annual begging list for tissues and wipes and Germ-X by the freight-container-full.
Yesterday, I was sitting there in the corner, manning my control center while my pupils intermittently approached to clarify on their worksheet that included Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's original artwork WHICH was the moon in their eclipse diagrams, and WHICH was the sun. Yeah. I find it hard to believe I'm that bad at representing two such divergent celestial bodies.
So there I am, explaining the difference in an umbra and a penumbra, and promoting the fact that you can start at ANY moon phase and list them in proper order, when in walks an office assistant of the pupil kind. Actually, she knocked first, having grasped the idiosyncrasies of Mrs. Hillbilly Mom in the two years we were partners in learning. Knocked, and waited to be motioned inside.
Gift-Bearer walked purposefully around the back aisle of my classroom, and approached the front of my desk. "Um. Somebody stopped by the office, and wanted every teacher to have one of these." She handed me a gold coin. "It's a token for the car wash. For free. It's automatic!" And with that, she was gone.
I felt like Louis Gossett Jr. as Sergeant Emil Foley when Ensign Della Serra and Ensign SEE-GAR handed him a silver dollar after they became officers and gentlemen (and a gentlewoman). Except my coin was gold. And not legal tender. And I am a teacher, not a Marine Gunnery Sergeant. And by no means am I a gentleman or a gentlewoman. But otherwise...just like that.
My token is still laying at school in the depths of my control center, between the new telephone that I don't know how to use comfortably, and that new goose-neck overhead-camera thingy that was installed last week.
It's the thought that counts. Even if it means somebody thought I was dirty.
Hey, teachers latch onto anything free. A lone doughnut left in the lounge. A pen from the insurance people. A Sharpie left unattended.
ReplyDeleteBe grateful. Next year, you'll be palming mayonnaise packets from QT...because you'll retired and trying to cut every corner you can.
Meanwhile, I will be able to snag dry erase markers from the vault at a willy-nilly pace.
YOU will the jealous one next year.
Sioux,
ReplyDeleteWAIT! QT has mayonnaise packets? First, I need to get a QT to open a store out here in Hillmomba.
You will be floating in the secret swimming pool of your teachers' workroom, sipping a beverage from your margarita machine, your itsy bitsy teeny weenie purple polka dot bikini festooned with dry erase markers...UNTIL THE BELL RINGS!
Jealous? Me? Not so much!