by Phillip Done
Then I spotted Mrs. Lee. She was there to see Nicole. Mrs. Lee sat with her two youngest boys: Gavin, a first grader, and Mason, who is in kindergarten. The boys were seated quietly on either side of her. Neither was standing on his seat or screaming or talking or crying or running down the aisle or throwing paper airplanes. Joy to the world! I started humming the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The lady next to me tapped me on the shoulder and gave me the Raised Eyebrow.
Sore Lips
Some days my back is sore from leaning over desks to fix pencil grips and make cursive Gs. Some days my arms are sore from pitching in kickball and turning the jump rope seven million times at lunch. Some days my feet are sore from running bases in dress shoes. And some days my lips are sore too.
Once Emily came running into the classroom at recess.
“What’s wrong, Emily?” I asked.
“Carlos said the S-H word!” she screamed.
“He did?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” she said, still out of breath.
“Well, what did he say?”
“I can’t say it. My mom told me not to.”
“OK, spell it for me. It’s OK to spell it,” I told her.
She spelled it out slowly. “S-H-U-T.”
I leaned forward.
“Are you sure that’s how you spell it?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” she answered.
“Are you sure it doesn’t have an I in it?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
“Tell me the word, Emily. I give you permission to say it.”
She swallowed hard, then whispered, “Shut up.”
I stared at her.
“He said ‘shut up’?” I asked.
“Yes!” she nodded solemnly.
“Thank you for telling me, Emily. I’ll take care of it. You may go outside now.”
She did not see me bite my lip.
One Monday morning I asked James what he had done on the weekend.
“I went to the zoo,” he replied.
“That’s nice,” I said. “What was your favorite animal?”
“The chicken with the Christmas tree that comes out of it,” answered James.
“Huh?”
“The chicken with the Christmas tree,” he said again.
I could not for the life of me figure out what he meant.
“You know,” said James. And he plopped down on his knees and put his arms out like a fan.
“Oh.” I smiled. “That’s a peacock.”
I covered my mouth. He did not see me bite my lip either.
I’m not the only one who gets sore lips. My colleagues do too. One day Kim, Dawn, and I were sitting in my classroom after school.
“You guys know my little Adam, right?” Kim asked.
“Yeah,” we both answered.
“Well,” said Kim. “Yesterday I asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas, and Adam said he wanted to buy his mom and dad a new bed.”
“A bed?” Dawn asked.
“Yes, a bed. So I asked him, ‘Adam, why do you want to buy your mom and dad a new bed?’ And you know what he said?”
She paused.
“He said, ‘Because every night it makes a lot of noise. It must be broken.’”
Kim’s lips were still hurting.
Nicknames
This week we had our staff holiday party. Amy came too. As usual, the teachers started talking about work and our students. Amy was surprised.
“You guys talk about your students away from school?” she asked.
“All the time,” I said.
It’s true. Teachers talk about their students a lot. At parties. At home. In the car. Even on vacation, God forbid. And sometimes we give them nicknames.
Take Kung Fu, for example. I’ve forgotten what his real name was. Kung Fu sat at his desk and practiced karate chops all day long. This he did, of course, when he wasn’t somewhere else in the room practicing his kicks.
If I ever needed anything, I went to see Simon. Simon never returned anything he borrowed. Ever. One day I made him clean out his desk. He found seven rulers, four bottles of WiteOut, three protractors, nine pencil sharpeners, six dollars in change, two dictionaries, and seventeen pencils. I named him Wal-Mart.
Maker Upper rode on the killer whale at SeaWorld, went skydiving without a parachute, had an elevator in her bedroom, traveled to Zimbabwe, read Harry Potter V in one hour, owned a pet rhinoceros, and had been adopted three times.
Seung Jo thought “Line up!” meant “Let’s play chase.” And he thought that “Come here now!” meant “Run faster!” Sometimes I called him Hide-and-Seek. But most of the time I called him Catch Me If You Can.
Remember Nelly on Little House on the Prairie? I had her too. Her real name was Patty, but Nelly stuck. Nelly didn’t like math, so she didn’t do it. Nelly didn’t like homework, so she didn’t do that either. Nelly liked to complain and whine and pout. I purposefully did not put Nelly by the window. I was afraid I’d throw her out of it.
Some of this year’s kids have already earned nicknames.
I call Anthony “Fiddles” because he cannot hold a paper clip without straightening it, has never touched a ruler without snapping it, and has never held an eraser without poking holes in it with his pencil.
Stephen’s nickname is Demolition Derby. He has already taken apart three calculators, broken two yardsticks, carved his name into his chair, and eaten half a dozen pencils. You know those plastic bird stickers they put on windows to keep birds from flying into them? Well, we had to put Stephen’s school photo on the sliding glass door at school to keep him from crashing into it.
Katie has the largest collection of empty juice boxes ever amassed by a third grader, and she saves the little holes that come out of the hole punch. I call her Smith, short for Smithsonian. She spends half the day pulling stuff out of the trash can, and her favorite words are “Can I have this?” When I’m at school, I don’t dare throw away anything that the kids have made for me because inevitably Katie will find it and bring it to me with a horrified look, and I have to lie and say the cleaning ladies must have accidentally thrown it away.
Emily is Barbara Walters. She gives me the regular updates every fifteen minutes on the behavior of everyone else in the class. “Mr. Done, Joey is not working. Mr. Done, Kevin is not reading. Mr. Done, Sean is eating the Legos. Mr. Done, you’re sweating under your arms again.”
Ryan can put his earlobes inside his ears, balance a pen between his upper lip and his nose, spin a ruler on the tip of a pencil, lean way back on the back two legs of his chair without falling over, and twirl two rolls of masking tape on his ears like hula hoops. He can of course perform all five feats for you at the same time, if you’d like him to. I call him Houdini.
Ronny’s name is Trump. I swear he will be a millionaire by the time he is twelve. Before he leaves the classroom, I literally have to frisk him to make sure that he doesn’t take any of his work outside with him. Last month he made twenty-seven dollars selling his drawings to the first graders. He says that someday he will be famous, and look what happened to Van Gogh.
And once I misplaced my car keys and offered a reward of a quarter to whoever found them. Well, Ronny found them. But then I kept losing my car keys about once a week, and every time I offered a reward, guess who kept finding my keys. (I think he made about three dollars off me before I finally caught on.)
The week before Thanksgiving, Ronny went door-to-door selling Mrs. Hanson’s Homemade Pumpkin Pies for $12.99 a piece, then went home and gave his mom the order for seventeen pies. She made him return the money.
But of all the students I’ve ever had, I think the one I will remember most is from my first year of teaching. Her name was Sally Carpenter. Sally was eight. She was the Drama Queen.
Once, we all walked into my classroom after PE. We had been playing kickball out in the field.
“Where’s Sally?” I asked the rest of the class.
“She’s out on the field,�
�� one of them answered.
“What?” I asked.
I walked outside and there she was, lying on the grass motionless.
“Sally!” I yelled.
No answer.
I shouted again. “Sally!”
Again, no answer.
I walked over to her.
Her eyes were closed. She was holding her breath.
“Sally Carpenter,” I said firmly, “I know you are not dead. Get up this instant!”
No movement.
I began to count, “Oooone, Twwwwo …”
The corpse began to move. She stood up slowly. Her eyes were still closed.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I got sunstroke,” she said, laying her hand on her head.
“It’s cloudy. Now get inside.”
About once a week after recess, the teacher on yard duty would poke her head in my door and say, “She’s dead again.” I would just continue my lesson till the door would open very slowly and Sally Sunstroke (she had several nicknames) would stagger into the room and flop herself onto her desk.
One day I was teaching the children some vocabulary words before we read our new story.
“Does anyone know what the word desperate means?” I asked.
Sally raised her hand. I was surprised. Usually no one knows that word.
“Sally, you know what desperate means?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered proudly.
“Can you use it in a sentence?” I asked.
“Of course,” she replied.
Then Sally sat up on the edge of her seat, raised her chin, and announced, “Cleopatra was so desperate for Marc Anthony that she ripped all of her clothes off!”
I stared at her.
“Uh … thank you, Sally.”
We used to have a program at our school called Kids Can Write. All the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth graders in the whole district wrote stories, and a group of teachers met to score the papers. All the papers were mixed so we could not tell what grade the students were in. Nor could we see the names on the papers. We were to give each story a score of one through five. Five was the highest. So for the whole day a group of us sat reading stories and talking about the papers.
There was one story that moved everyone to tears. It was called “Bobo.” I will never forget it. It was about a leopard in the wild jungles of South America trying to survive the hunters. It was a gripping story—certainly one of the best of the day, and one of only a few papers to receive a score of five. Nobody knew who had written it.
But I did. There was no mistaking that handwriting. Large. Flourishing. Dramatic. Slightly sunstroked.
Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to the Drama Queen. I keep waiting to see if she shows up on the Oscars or the Emmys. And I saved the “Bobo” story of course, just in case Sally is famous one day and I can sell her story to People magazine.
Thank You!
During the last week before winter break some students bring in gifts for their teachers. It is very sweet. Sometimes you’ll find a gift mysteriously placed on your desk at recess. Sometimes they’ll hand it to you and say, “My mom told me to give you this. I don’t know what it is.” And sometimes the gifts come wrapped with lots of love and masking tape. Those are my favorites.
I try to wait till vacation to open my presents, but my students always beg me to unwrap them. And so I usually spend the last period of the year opening gifts in the corner of the room while thirty-two kids wait anxiously to see what I got.
“Thank you for the tie clip you made in your Easy-Bake Oven. I can’t wait to wear it.”
“Thank you for the orange Kleenex box cover. I like how you wrote your name so big with purple glitter glue.”
“Thank you for the mug with your school photo on it. I see you right there.”
“Thank you for the origami cranes. Are there really a hundred and fifty of them?”
“Thank you for the napkin holder you made at Cub Scouts. I didn’t know you could make napkin holders out of nails.”
“Thank you for the reindeer pin. Did you make it out of a clothespin? How clever. Oh, you want me to wear it now?”
“Thank you for the safety pin and paper clip ornament. Where did you buy it? Oh, you made it? Wow! I thought for sure you bought it!”
“Thank you for the T-shirt with your soccer team photo. And look, your whole team signed it.”
“Thank you for the red, white, and blue plastic key chain. You braided it at Y-Camp? How did you know I needed a key chain?”
“Thank you for the sugar cookies. They look so yummy. And look at all those sprinkles and M&M’s too. I can’t wait to eat them.”
“Thank you for the coaster. You got it in Las Vegas?”
“Thank you for the pot holder. What’s that? … Your mom got it at her office party this year?”
“Thank you for the beautiful card. I love how you covered it with stickers. Oh my, did you cut out all this confetti?”
“Thank you for the pink and green candle you dipped over one hundred times on your visit to Williamsburg. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you for the scarf. It’s so nice. Do you know where your mom bought it? Is the receipt in the box?”
“Ohh … thank you. It’s beautiful. I love it. You made it? … Can you tell me about it? … Of course it’s a paperweight! Oh, it’s a beautiful paperweight. Thank you so much for the paperweight. Look everyone, it’s a paperweight. See?”
“Thank you for the Santa boxer shorts. They’re from your mother? … Uh … how … colorful. Thank you. Tell your mom … uh … Merry Christmas.”
How to Know When
You Need a Vacation
When you can’t remember the name of the student who has been sitting in front of you for the last sixty-seven days.
When you drive away from the coin-op car wash and don’t realize that your car is still covered with soapsuds.
When you spend five minutes trying to turn off the TV with your cell phone.
When you leave the mall after Christmas shopping to find that your car has been stolen from the parking garage, and you go home and call your insurance company, and the next day Sears calls to tell you that they have finished rotating your tires, and when will you come in to pick up your car?
When you can’t remember how to spell “PE.”
When your Secret Santa gives you Extra Strength Tylenol and you are thrilled.
When you welcome all the parents in the cafeteria to the big Winter Concert, and sit down at the piano and begin playing the first song, and suddenly realize that you forgot to get the 120 children who are still waiting for you to pick them up in the library.
When you run around school for thirty minutes looking for the coffee mug that is in your hand.
When you finish giving the spelling test, then turn around and see the entire spelling list still written on the board.
When you say, “OK, boys and girls, time to start tidying up,” twenty minutes before the beginning of recess.
When you’re reading James and the Giant Peach to the class and you use the exact same voice for James and Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge and the Centipede and the Grasshopper and the Ladybug too.
When you open all the doors on your advent calendar on the first day.
When you are upset because the Charlie Brown Christmas video is only twenty-seven minutes.
When it is three in the morning and you are humming “Frosty the Snowman” for the 157th time with your eyes wide open in bed.
The First Day of Winter Break
Over the years I have become quite good at telling when a child will be sick. You see, germs are sequential. They tend to travel side to side. Seldom do they jump to the student behind or in front. And rarely do they skip rows.
This year Ronny sits next to Sarah, and Sarah sits next to Anthony. If Ronny is sick, I know that Sarah will be sick in a day or two. And when Sarah is out, I know that soon Anthony will be watching cartoons and eat
ing popsicles at home.
One day Carlos asked me, “What are you doing, Mr. Done?”
“Getting your work folder ready for tomorrow,” I answered.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because tomorrow you’re going to be home,” I replied.
He looked at me funny.
“Huh?” he asked.
“Here,” I said, and I handed him the folder.
Sure enough, the next day he was out.
Two weeks before vacation, there was a really bad little bug making its way across row three. The kids were out for days. I thought I was safe. I was two rows away and I took every conceivable precaution. But this little bugger was a row jumper. And it landed on me—just in time for winter break.
On Saturday morning, the first day of vacation, I couldn’t get out of bed. I could not breathe. I could not swallow. My head felt like someone had just sharpened it. I lay there thinking, This cannot be happening to me!
Today was the day I was going to take my slacks into the dry cleaners to see if they could get the Elmer’s glue out. Today I was going to clean the coffee mugs out of my car. Today I was going to finish writing all my thank-you cards for the mugs and ties and Old Spice. Today I was going to return all the mugs and ties and Old Spice.
Today I was going to telephone all my friends whom I have not spoken to for three weeks because of band rehearsals and toy drives and winter bazaars and wrapping paper sales and tell them that I am still alive.
Oh, I cannot be sick. Not again. Not again this year. Why does this happen to me every December?
I was so careful this year too. I handed out Kleenex every morning when the kids walked through the door. I checked their foreheads every hour. I handed out vitamin C and said it was the newest M&M. I sent them to the nurse the second I detected a sniffle.
The nurse got mad at me. She sent me a note.
“Mr. Done, I have seven of your students in my office. What’s going on?” she asked.