2024 April 19 I Can’t Do Words After School

 My brain is soupy. I answered a million questions. I called attention in all the ways they taught us in teacher school. Kids talked over me anyway. I called attention in new, creative, exciting ways. Kids talked over me. I shouted with the depth of a college football coach and they got quiet. Then I forgot the thing I meant to say. I taught 7 different groups of kids from fourth to eighth grade.

Finally, last period, halfway through. We’re doing a movie and the kids were finally, FINALLY into it and enjoying it. Then from the back, the real sound you fear. The hurl and splatter. A purple puddle forming at a child’s feet with multicolored cereal chunks.

Then I have to communicate MORE. First, to the rest of the class “GET OUT!” Where? Back to your homeroom? I don’t care. Then to administrators. I sent text. “BARF ALERT! 408”. Then to the poor purple wet soul in the back. “Is it over?” Then I get a phone call going to mom. No answer but the message picks up just as half the class tries to come back in and I’m shouting “GET OUT OF HERE IM ON THE PHONE. I DONT CARE WHERE YOU GO. Hi this is school. Your kid is sick. Please call back” which is maybe the craziest messages I’ve ever voiced.

Then I find a bag for the child’s clothes. There’s even barf through his socks. I take this poor soul down the elevator and out the back door. 

It’s Friday hours later at home and I can’t communicate anything. I stood motionless and quiet in the back yard for 2.5 hours. I am going to be face down in the couch the rest of the evening. No sounds. Ew no appetite. No thoughts. 

Plants don’t blow chunks all over the floor on a Friday afternoon when it’s time to go home. I cannot wait for horticulture.