Ewwww. . . He's Eating My Crayons.

Today the goddess speaks about herself:

OK, here it is. I am a teacher. I am a teacher of small children. These kids will walk across the room to wipe their nose on me, or worse. I have a six inch band of snot running a perfect circle around my waist. None of these little kidlets are aware that they are sliming me, it's just what they do.

It is cold and flu season in our neck of the woods, so you can just imagine the mucus that is flowing around me. Last week, the vomiting started. My teaching partner and I draw up vomit charts every year, the way football coaches draw up a schematic of the field. We keep a record of who has upchucked, where they were at the time, and who they sit by. With this in hand we can triangulate the area, and get a pretty good idea where the spew will come from next. Of course, you have to factor in the, 'get up to walk across the room to my teacher' component. (Small children will bypass two other adults, a bathroom, three sinks, several trash cans, and a field of grass to get to their teacher just in time to vomit on her new $150 Naturalizer boots).

Body fluids aren't the only freebie my little darlings share. They just do weird things, which any other child will find fascinating or disgusting, but will still join in on. The other day I found an entire table group licking the name tags on their desks. I don't know why I took the time to question this behavior (sometimes I only ask myself, "Why ask why?"), but this time I did pause to inquire. Each child looked up, startled, and immediately pointed a finger at someone else, "He/She did it first!", of course. What was I thinking to even wonder?

Small children will put anything in their mouth; I am here to tell you that, "Yes", I have seen it all. One poor little bow-headed girl, in my room sits by a particularly hedonistic little boy. This boy will, and does put anything in his mouth. My dear, bow-headed, little cupie doll spends much of her day, being horrified, with her hand in the air,
"Teacher, Teacher, he's eating my crayons!", "Teacher, Teacher, he's eating his hair, his scab, his eraser, my eraser, my scab . . ." She doesn't get that she is way more annoying to me than her seat mate. While he keeps himself quietly occupied, she is quite the lesson interrupter. And, as she has not spent time cultivating the appropriate public school immunities, she was the first to throw up. Not a surprise to me, of course; I have been keeping a close record of germ accumulation since day one. The little scab eater will be the last to spew, if he even spews at all. Frankly, I doubt that he will miss one day of school -- EVER.


May peace and a good constitution be yours from: The Goddess of Everything.