staycation

staycation

all the kids

all the kids

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Comfluter Lab


I had to work today after laying all day yesterday in my bed drooling the flu all over various pillows and thinking it might be my last night on earth. Of course the sub call came in at 5:45 a.m. and I stood up to walk around with the phone in the dark deciding whether I was feeling like barfing in which case no, I would punch in no, I can’t take the job, and when no barf feeling happened I sighed and said yes, third grade, Bridgely Elementary, some slacker teacher who didn’t want to come in after 5 days of rain, sure I’ll take your dumb class, sick as a dog.  I need the money.

So I go out in the dark to the barn to feed the horses even though the mud is so thick it sucks my boots off, and then get breakfasts and lunches even though I ate nothing yesterday and I set off.

The classroom I get is steel grey with the blinds sealed shut like the Rapture is happening outside and nobody better look at it, and the weather is just prison weather. A sad, thin French rain with a side of cement.  I look at what the teacher left and on it I see the magic sentence :  we have computer lab.  It gets better: we have computer lab for an hour. And even better: Usually the teacher after us doesn’t come in so stay an extra hour. I feel like crying. Computer lab is like getting paid to play arcade games, without the noise.  A lady then comes in the empty classroom and says “Oh I have you in the wrong room.” NO. She’s bustling me out. “You’re next door.” NO. I look back at the paper. But…Computer lab… The lady is hustling me next door. What are the chances the next room will have that magic computer lab formula on the teacher plans.  After deposited inside, I scan the page on his desk. Nope. No chance at all. It’s now my goal to somehow, renegade, get to computer lab.

This room also has the sealed flat grey slatted windows and that is just enough of that airtight stifling situation. I twist the blinds to let some of real life in and I see the stumpy building across the walkway instead of the misty green Scottish highlands I had conjured in my desperation. Well sun light is better than no light.

Then the class rattles in and for the next six hours we are on a bad date where I’m getting to know each of the 25 kids individually and trying to make a relationship work that won’t last past 2 pm. There are wiggly boys. I just had the flu and may still be sporting some of it in fact. Jayden shreds little pieces of orange construction paper and spends most of his time with his back to me dropping shit on the floor. Another kid can’t stop talking in fact he should get an award for the amount of talking he can do while simultaneously getting out of his chair after being told every 3 minutes to stop talking and sit down.

I get that school is boring. But wiggly boys should be put in a room next door filled with snakes. I could be in this room, teaching the sweet ones, while the boys are in the next door room climbing the walls, trying to escape. This is something they would all volunteer to do, by the way, rather than grammar and math. In fact, if I asked right now, every boy would say YES GIVE ME THE SNAKES. I might do it too, instead of math.

So after a few hours I know the sub next door is in heavenly computer lab and I’m in juvie and I know her class has that extra hour that we could steal so you know what, the flu says just GO MAN, so I take the class over and kick her out of computer lab and then some mean office type prison guard lady who looks like she takes her vacations on the side of freeways, getting take out food and overseeing grisly traffic accidents – she busts her way in like no kidding, she materializes STRAIGHT FROM HELL and says is this your computer lab time? And she’s checking a chart on the wall and I KNOW we’re not on there and she says was this on the lesson plan and I think man, why did I listen to the flu but I say  wellll he said if no one was in  here…  (because, come on, that WAS on ONE of the lesson plans.) And she kicks us out and we walk back to the class deflatedly and I think well at least I ruined that other sub’s day.

Then it just keeps raining and about 20 minutes from the end of the day I know which kids are kind and which kids are criminals and there’s a few kids who are hoping I’ll be there tomorrow they say and we like each other and it’s sad because now I know them I could try less hard and get the same results but now it’s sort of over. And I was sick so they got the worst version of me, the kind of flat, raspy tired me. But there were two nice kids and I got to eat Del Taco with a lot of ice in my cup. And I got money for basically just inwardly rolling my eyes a lot and at one point drawling and filling in the blank with a pronoun answer I knew.

So I left the class without stealing anything and turned in my key and walked in puddles and felt free and went back home and cleaned up horse poop and put out hay and got in pajamas and went back to bed.