There are those days, friends, when not even my school-district-injunctions-concerning-online-activity-induced squeamishness can stop me from posting. Today was one of Those Days. I place it between that time last summer when I spent three hours in the rain waiting at a bus stop in Vermont with my pants on backwards, and the time I rode the T unwittingly dressed as a lion tamer.
Item: Yesterday, there were multitudinous fraudulent charges made using my credit card number. (Not the card, which was on my person). What charges alerted the imposter-detecting algorithm elves at Citibank to the crime? X-box. Lots of X-box things. I take a certain amount of vaguely defined satisfaction from this.
Item/Background information: Today is Day 1 of the state standardized test (TAKS) at school. The level of security and dire punishments surrounding the test are akin to those regarding nuclear secrets, and tensions run accordingly high. In fact, there is actual legislature on the Texas law books against teachers thought to be tampering with the test – a felony! The thought that you can go to TAKS jail reminds me strongly of the old recurring anxiety dream I used to have at MGH about going to a special hospital jail for filling Medicare forms out incorrectly.
subtopic: That space in my brain parts where most people store salient information such as: Where My Car Keys Are and You Will Need Your Wallet Today and Every Day is mostly taken up by crucial information about the wives and offspring of Henry VIII.
/resume item: Since I was super anxious about doing something wrong during testing that would cause me to get fired, I a) forgot my keys and had to borrow from other teachers, then b) discovered that I had left them ON TOP OF MY CAR in the parking lot. c) I forgot my wallet, and thus had no lunch money.
Item: After the test, I met with my first period class. We are currently reading in Alice in Wonderland. Some of them love it, some of them hate it, and some positively revel in the delirious cheesiness of the puns.
The little angels greeted with me with a special water bottle. They’d decorated it with a handwritten label saying “DRINK ME”.
“What’s this?” I ask.
(the kids look at me with innocent blinky eyes)
“Maybe if you drink this, you’ll get taller, like Alice”. they say.
(steam out of the ears, shaking of tiny fist, squeal of disbelief, etc. etc.)
“You don’t have a leg to stand on! I’m at least three inches taller than you!”
“Yeah, but I’m only in the seventh grade so I might still grow.”
item: Despite this, and because I’m a nice, kind, sweet, sweet, lady, I take them outside to play croquet. (Every year, when we get to the chapter about Alice playing croquet with the Queen of Hearts with flamingos and hedgehogs the kids get completely confused because they’ve never seen the game).
I’m standing around, giving instructions and whatnot, occasionally slapping my legs. (“It’s so early for mosquitoes” I thought to myself.). Then I progress from slapping to hopping a little bit, and just as I was opening my mouth to ask if anyone else was getting bitten, one of my students turns to me, wide-eyed, and says “Ms. Plainy, you’re standing in an antpile”. Friends, it wasn’t an anthill, it was a fire-ant hill, easily three feet across.
I yelped and hopped and became suddenly aware of the swarm going up my ankles. I gave a live-action illustration of the phrase ants in your pants. I don’t think any of those kids will ever forget the sight (at least, that’s what they told me At least it wasn’t like the incident with the mechanical bull, when they took video and immediately posted them to youtube). After shedding my shoes and socks and getting someone to watch my class, I high-tailed it to the nurse’s office. I hadn’t been there since I stapled my hand several weeks ago, but she greeted me thusly:
“Hello, Ms. Plainy, what have you done now?”.
Epilogue: I took a croquet mallet to that fire-anthill. It was a satisfying, but ultimately fruitless endeavour, and also not the best example I’ve ever set.
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Doesn’t the drink make Alice smaller? This is what happens when you plan literary pranks without doing the reading.