Injury Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

The Pony has been kicking up his heels and acting a bit mulish lately.

As you may or may NOT know (if you've been living under a rock like those non-GEICO-insurance folks...Mrs. Hillbilly Mom will be retiring this year, having a scant seven-and-a-half school days left, plus one work day. Uh huh. A whole lotta work will be done by our Mrs. Mom on that day, for sure.

Mrs. HM has set a pace for cleanout of her classroom. Every day, she has a batch of materials to be transported to the Mansion, and another set to be disposed of. Before the Newmentia dumpster overflows, you see. Because Newmentia's disposal bin is half the size it used to be, what with a new company having been contracted this year after the old company took its dumpster and went home.

It is amazing how much a teacher can accumulate over a career. Sure, some of it will stay. Can't go throwing away textbooks or TEs. Those are Teacher Editions. It says TE on the spine. So, too, the various workbooks for prepping for state tests. I daresay one whole cabinet will be filled with nondisposables. To complicate matters, my room is being taken over by one of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tankers, with Mrs. HM's replacement being installed in Mrs. Not-A-Cook's room, she leaving for greener pastures at the boys' ranch. That makes Mrs. HM no nevermind. She will pack up her troubles in her old kit bag classroom accouterments in the two cabinets, and let the powers that be sort them out. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is neither a janitor nor a moving man.

Anyhoo...there was the matter of approximately 117 science project boards stacked upon the top of the cabinets. I asked The Pony to cart them to the dumpster after school. He said, "I'm sure you could get some students to do that for you. They would be glad to get out of your class." Huh. My staunchest supporter. Let the record show that the clientele who would volunteer selflessly to do that job for Mrs. HM is the same clientele who might never return from the parking lot area after dumping. The ones who would return would not like to sully their hands with soon-to-be trash, nor leave the comfort of the classroom. Such a Catch-22.

The Pony has helped me on many an occasion, without complaint, without demanding pay. So I did not force the issue. Instead, I asked my class of three pupils if they would be interested in helping me. Let the record show that I have MORE than three pupils, but it's near school's end, and the field trips fly fast and furious. This trio was more than accommodating. They unstacked and stacked and picked up and tramped out the door, across the hall, down the parking lot, and dumped. Cheerfully, even! So I felt a reward was in order.

It just so happened that one of the three lassies incurred a paper cut during the transport of the projects.

"Oh. I have a paper cut."

"Let me see!"

"Wow! That's the BIGGEST paper cut I have ever seen!"

"Do you need a band-aid?"

"No. It will be okay. I just need to get a tissue to soak up some of the blood."

"Here. Really. I'll give you a band-aid."

"That's okay. I'm fine."

"They're cartoon characters..."

"OH! Let me see!"

"I have all these band-aids left. I doubt that many kids are going to be hurt by a week from next Wednesday. Would you guys like to split them?"

"YEAH!"

They counted them out. SpongeBob and Patrick. Assorted superheroes.

"Hey, you guys! Does somebody want to trade me? I have three alike."

"No. All mine are different."

"I'll trade you. What you got?"

I'm going to miss some of them. They're really good kids. And work for cheap.