The Pony Bares His...TEETH! What Did You THINK I Was Going To Say?

I was shocked, SHOCKED Thursday after school, when The Pony bared his teeth at me!

Well, not actual teeth. More like figurative teeth. He's usually pretty even-keeled, our Pony. He will show displeasure by grumping a bit, and sighing. But he is not confrontational. And here we were, IN PUBLIC!

It was after two matches played by his SmartyPants Team. Two other mothers and I were moving from the previous venue, Newmentia's school library, to a room down the hall for the third and final match.

"I hope they have comfortable chairs in there," said Mother 1, who had twins playing on our team. "I don't like squeezing myself into those student desks."

Knowing full well the kind of chairs in this classroom, I said, "Oh, I'm taking my rolly chair with me. It's easy enough to bring back. And so much more comfortable."

"Oh, that's a good idea!" said Mother 2, whose tall lanky vegetarian son is captain (an honor offered to, but declined by, The Pony, who has enunciation issues).

"Yeah," said Mother 1. "Nobody's going to tell Mrs. Hillbilly Mom she can't do that. So we'll just say she told us we could."

And there we went, a short procession, out of the carpeted library, onto the industrial tile floor, pushing our recalcitrant rolly chairs. What use is a comfy cushy rolly chair kept in the library all the time? It needs to be used to the fullest extent. That's what Mrs. HM says.

So there we were, waiting in the hall, for the other match to be over in the room where we were heading.

"That's another good thing. You have a seat to sit on while you wait." Mrs. HM is good at pointing out the obvious.

And then it happened. I suppose the rattle of those plastic wheels on the tile caught his attention. Because The Pony whirled like a champion Quarter Horse cattle-cutting pony, and said, "Mom! No. Just no." He seemed downright angry!

"What? We'll be quiet. Shh...their match is still going on."

"No. The chairs. Really?"

"It's okay, Pony. I do it every year. We'll take them back."

"Mom. Library chairs are NOT TO LEAVE THE LIBRARY!"

Sweet Gummi Mary. I've never heard such a thing. It's not like there are signs posted. The library chairs are castoffs from the small computer lab. They are broken-backed and bad rollers. But they're comfortable. It's not like they were made especially for the library. I guess the students are threatened not to move the chairs. But Mr. Beardsly and I always take one into the hall for our morning duty. There have been no repercussions all these years.

"Pony. It'll be okay."

At first I thought maybe I had embarrassed him by bringing my own chair. But there were two other mothers pushing them too, you know. We wheeled them to the back of the room, behind the hard blue plastic chairs like I have in my own classroom, inherited OH SO MANY years ago from my best old ex-teaching buddy, Mabel.

When the match was over, I stood up. "Okay. Now we can take our chairs back, as long as that other match is over in the library." Mother 1 stood up and grabbed her rolly chair by the back.

The Pony shot back from the shaking-hands line with the losing team. "I'll take those chairs. I can only take two at once, though. I can't leave until the library is put back like it was."

Aha! THAT was the problem. Each of the SmartyPants team members was assigned an area to restore. The JV team was in charge of putting up equipment, a less desirable job. So The Pony was only worried about us making HIS duty more difficult.

He really should have let us return our own chairs. You should have seen him, trying to push two rolly chairs up the tile hall, each of them wanting to go its own way.