14: This Pie Tastes Funny

Earlier today I had a moment of peace. My kids were pre-occupied with coloring and being angels for once. I had cut out huge leaves for them and they were given red and brown crayons to color them with for the fall. I think recess had them all semi-tired and that is why they were cooperating, except for Steve, who was just sitting in his chair drooling on his leaf.

My TA came into the class with a small brown paper bag. In it was a small scented candle. Pumpkin Pie scented to be exact. When she handed me the bag, the kids could not sit still wondering what was in the bag. I told them it was a candle. A scented one. I told them it smells like pumpkin pie, but it isn’t made out of pumpkin pie.

This amazed them. They had to smell it. I unwrapped the candle to let the fragrance out and passed it around the room. The kids had fun smelling it and passing it along, until it got to Sara. She smelled it, looked at it, smelled it, and looked at it. I could see the glimmer of “could this be food?” look in her eyes. Before I could run over and grab it from her,

CHOMP!

She took a bite out of the candle. Just chewed the wax until I made her spit it out.

“I like my mom’s pie better,” was her only remark.

I wrapped the candle back in the brown bag and put it in my purse. Tard teeth marks in this candle would surely make for an interesting coffee table discussion.

12: Pee Water

Today Steve wet his pants. This by itself is not a strange thing to happen in my class, but with Steve it can present unique challenges. Steve is severely handicapped--both physically and mentally, and is confined to a motorized wheelchair.

We were playing with Lincoln logs and trying to work on counting and other coordination activities. Steve was banging his logs on the table in his puddles of drool, so I left him at that while I helped Sara with her counting. Sara informed me that Lincoln Logs reminded her of her grandma’s sausage.

Suddenly, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. Anni was standing there all giggling and smiling as she does often. She just kept giggling and didn’t say anything when I asked her what was going on, so I turned around to help Sara again.

Anni tapped me on the shoulder again. “Hehehehehe Miss Pell, hehehehe Stevie is leaking. Hehehe.”

Since Anni usually doesn’t make sense anyway, I ignored her for the second time to pick up Sara’s logs so she would not try to nibble/eat/swallow them. As I was putting them back in the bin, I felt another tap on my shoulder.

It was Jay this time. Now, Jay knows right from wrong. He has severe ADHD and he is a VERY slow learner, but other than that, he’s the most normal in the class.

He is holding Anni’s hand while she still giggles. He points at Steve, who from here I can see has a dark blue stain in the crotch of his baby blue sweat pants. There was so much urine that it managed to pour down the sides of his motorized chair. I was unclear when exactly the wetting had occurred, and was about to ask Jay about this when he says,

"Steve spilt water, but it tastes acky!,” he says while making a face like he just sucked a lemon.

Oh please no.

I called my TA and they took Steve to the office for cleaning. I then made Jay drink a lot of juice and wash his hands. I wouldn't tell him why, nor did I ask him how he knew what that "water" tasted like.

11: Pie

While walking past the cafeteria on the way to the library, Erik started crying. Jay yelled at him:

Jay "Shut your pie hole!”
Sara, while running up to Jay, "Who has pie !?!?”

10: Spaghetti a la Sara

All my kids are sick today. When one of them gets a cold, they all get it.

There has been a strain of bug going around the school, and of course my kids are always the first to pick it up and pass it on to each other since they are always sneezing and coughing all over the place.

Sara had it the worst this time. Her pudgy little hands felt cool and clammy all morning. She even said no to having milk at snack time. This is a first. I have never seen her refuse food before.

She looked so drained and splotchy that I called her mom to see if she could possibly take her home. But there was no one at home to watch her, and her mom could not take the time off of work. So, my class was Sara’s only option.

Around lunch time, she looked a smidgen better but maybe it was because knew she was going to eat soon. Sara’s mom had packed spaghetti and some brownie bites in her lunch. Sara ate only half of her lunch when I saw her trotting over to where I was sitting. Her face was totally drained of color and her bottom lip was quivering.

“Miss Pell,” she was almost in tears, “I don’t feel good.”

I called my aide over to watch my kids while I took Sara to the nurse’s office. We got about half way there when suddenly:

“Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!”

A mixture of regurgitated spaghetti and brownie bites lay in the middle of the hallway. Knowing the older kids were coming in from recess soon, I rushed Sara to the nurse and turned to go alert the janitor as quickly as possible. The janitor was nowhere to be found. This mess had to be cleaned, so I bucked up and grabbed a mop.

As I was mopping and holding back the gags, I noticed something in her mess. I bent down to look. It was tiny as hell, but noticeably it was car-shaped and not a piece of food. From what I could remember of my childhood, it was a Micro-Machine.

The first thing that came to mind was, “Do they still make these things?”

8: Brownie Bites

Since fall is right around the corner and the chill is evident in the morning air, I decided to let the kids play games outside today. Before we went outside, we had lunch. Today Sara’s mom packed her a turkey sandwich (no mayo Sara announced) and carrot sticks instead of these brownie bites she usually has.

After Sara cried and had a tantrum for about 20 minutes upon finding this sub-par lunch, she finally sat down at her desk and inhaled her lunch. I think she chewed twice. We decided what games to play outside and I released them.

It was so nice out that I decided to bring Tucker Max’s book out with me for some entertainment. As I read, I casually scanned the grounds after every other paragraph, making sure the kids were all behaving.

I saw Jay and Anni doing some animal impression, but as long as they weren’t hooking the vacuum up to her it was fine. Then I saw Sara sitting on the grass near the fence, by herself, picking at stuff. I figured she was still upset about having to eat carrot sticks today, so I let her be.

After 45 minutes I called the class together and we went inside. We were settled in and about to read a book when I heard Misty speak up from the back. “Miss Pell, Sara isn’t sharing her treats.” I went to the back to see what Sara was doing. When I got to her desk, I saw three hard cylindrical objects sitting on her desk. By the smell alone, I knew immediately what they were.

Sara had three hardened dog turds sitting on her desk. From the looks, I’d say they came from a shih-tzu or some medium sized dog in the toy group. [Now while I tell this last part, remember I just saw dog crap on the kids desk and in my mind I was running over the vision of her sitting and picking at stuff near the fence just minutes before, so my late reaction is justified]

Bright eyed Sara looks at me and says, “I found my brownie bites” and no shit, the kid popped one in her mouth like it was, well…a brownie bite.

OH MY GOD!

I didn’t know what to do. I stood frozen in horror as I watched her chew and ingest the canine fecal matter with the look of content and ecstasy on her plump face. She’d been outside eating turds for a half hour already, what could one more do?

I quickly snagged the other two and threw them away. I didn’t know what to do, so I called her to the front of the room, gave her a couple tic tacs, and tried to forget what.

5: Sara is hungry

Sara is 6 years old, her goal in life seems to be limited to seeking out food and rapidly devouring it as fast as possible.

Needless to say, Sara has a weight problem. She'll eat anything--a crumb off the floor, gum off a shoe, she even licks other kids fingers if there’s remnants of food present on them. For this reason, we cannot have a speck of food anywhere in the room or she will find it and eat it.

Sara is beginning to understand that she is not allowed near the cubbyholes where the other kids keep their lunches, but I find her sniffing around on occasion. One day, I had the kids lined up at the door to head to the music room. As I was doing a head count, I noticed Sara was not in line. I also noticed all the winter coats were not on their hooks, but were piled in a heap near the cubbyholes in the back of the classroom. There was obvious movement within this pile.

I find Sara in the center of this coat blob, face full of tard lunches, happier than I've ever seen her.

All she could say to me when I pulled the coats off her was, "Can I play the tambourine today?"