Did you ever play hooky when you were a kid? C’mon… be honest. I do not remember ever actually faking illness, but there was that one time I held the thermometer up to the light bulb on my nightstand hoping it might inch up a degree or two. It didn’t. I also remember beseeching the Lord one day during first grade to strike me with a good old-fashioned case of stomach flu so that I could go home for the afternoon. I’m pretty sure it was spelling test day.
I stepped in to the workroom one day this week and the cook, who was seated at the table, informed me that one of my students was ill and would not be attending that day (in a small town, everyone knows everything). I made a mental note of that information and headed down to my classroom. I walked through the door, and lo and behold, there stood the “ill” student, her mother standing beside her. “I thought you were sick today,” I said to the miraculously cured child. She just grinned in a self-conscious manner, and mom filled me in on the Paul-Harvey-Rest-of the–Story. Turns out that after mom had told her to go back to bed, the mother had heard her singing in a fairly chipper manner for one hovering so close to death. It didn’t take much to make The Faker confess – when pressed for the truth, she admitted she was, in fact, not sick at all.
Too late to catch the bus, mom loaded her in car and hauled her to school. They both now stood before me. One disgusted and the other a trifle embarrassed. I couldn’t help but laugh at the botched attempt. Still smiling, I turned to my little charge gone AWOL.
“You do know,” I addressed her directly. “If you try to play hooky, I give you extra work.” The cherub face with the irresistible grin faltered for just a moment. I could see her processing this information. Her grin returned full force as she decided I was pulling her proverbial leg. “Nuh-uh!" I grinned back and told her to empty her backpack. Within moments, mom was out the door and we began our day.
We are currently in book #4, Pirates Past Noon, of the Magic Tree House series. First grade LOVES pirates (apparently). They liked mummies, and Knights, and dinosaurs, but they have completely embraced this pirate thing. Two of the characters in the book, pirate shipmates, are named Pinky and Stinky. Cult heroes to us! I suppressed smiles as I overheard the boys arguing about who would get to be Stinky (any title with the word pink in it is obviously too girly. Everybody knows THAT).
My daughter has a pirate hat she wore for Halloween one year. It has a saber stuck through the top and two glowing ruby eyes on the skeletal face. I brought it to school and wore it during read aloud time sometime between chapters five and seven. The children were rapturous! I wore it all afternoon that first day, but kept bumping into doorframes and walls with it (it is a big hat). My fellow teachers have learned to take me in stride, I think, but this day a couple of them couldn’t resist the urge to ask, “And WHY are you wearing a pirate hat?” When you read a pirate book you have to wear a pirate hat. Am I right??
The kids are desperate for me to be a pirate for Halloween. Cap’n Bones, to be precise. They don’t know yet that I am going to be Glinda, the good witch from Wizard of Oz. I feel like wearing pink. And a crown. Someone else will have to be a pirate, I guess.
For those who have a burning desire to know, our new class pet frog, Chicken On Sale (first graders found his name in the newspaper grocery store flyer), has become something of a school celebrity. Frogs have to eat, right? I asked our principal to ask for insect donations during morning announcements. He was fabulous. In a completely serious tone, he implored the entire student body to please donate any found insects to the first grade frog. In typical fashion, they responded. I walked into my room after recess to find close to twenty kids clustered around Chicken On Sale’s canning jar home clutching still hopping, chirping or buzzing insects. Anxious to donate to a worthy cause, they had used recess time to “feed the hungry.” Chicken On Sale is the fattest, happiest, most content-in-captivity frog you ever saw. In a weird way, he’s even kind of cute.
This is how low I have sunk, however. A couple of mornings ago, I was eating breakfast at home and spotted a fly lumbering around my kitchen. You know the kind. The late fall variety that is near the end of its life cycle, is huge and can barely move fast enough to get out of a fly swatter’s way. It really wasn’t a fair fight, I readily admit that. But I ended his short fly life anyway, and then I did the unthinkable. I put him in a baggie and took him to school for my green, croaking, grocery store flyer friend, Mr. C.O.S. As I was depositing the fresh kill into his Ziplock final resting place, the thought crossed my mind, “Am I really doing this?” I can add insect hoarding to my list of life achievements.
So back to my first grade illness-faker. At the end of the day, just before the final bell, my students empty their cubbies of homework, notes for parents, etc. Miss Tried-To-Pull-One-Over-On-Everyone was busy shoving papers into her backpack when I stood before her holding a packet in my hand. “Remember what I promised you this morning?” I asked her. She knew immediately what I was referring to. “I wasn’t kidding,” I went on. “You really do get extra work if you try to play hooky.” She stared for a moment trying to discern if I was joking. I wasn’t. “For REAL??” she asked unbelievingly. “Yes, for real. Next time just come to school. It will be less work in the long run.” Her countenance was crestfallen. “I am never doing that again!!” she wailed. We’ll see. She’s young. It may be too tantalizing to not try again. But I do not think it will be tried anytime in the very near future.
Fall is heavy upon us now. The nights hover just at the freezing mark. The days are still light jacket weather, but Jack Frost is definitely blowing gentle puffs of cool air over us that will soon refuse to warm at all. Leaves are red, or yellow, or dry and crackly-brown, and scuttle across the street to gather in clumps beside the curb.
I had the blind up on our lone classroom window on Tuesday of this week. As I wandered around my children in the midst of their daily newspaper sight word search, stepping over small bodies and milk cartons (we always combine snack and sight word time), I had one of those moments where you are so totally in the moment that you suddenly feel as though you are observing a point in time from a third party perspective. You are just a little detached somehow as you memorize that flash in time. I used to have those moments with my children, when they were young. Some part of your brain is whispering to you to absorb everything you are experiencing because it is precious and something to tuck away into your store of mental treasures. Golden Memories, I call them. They are priceless gems that will nourish and feed the soul at some future point in your life.
As I listened to the gently hum of children on this day, talking and laughing together, paper strewn everywhere, a shaft of autumn sunshine found our window and burst through with shimmering beauty. It sought and found the golden head of a child stretched out on the floor, unaware that he had been kissed by that giant orb around which all life revolves. I stood mesmerized for a moment watching the way the light filled the space and concentrated itself on the child and floor around him. I felt the warmth of the sun at that moment as my mind took a mental photograph. Children content and learning… This was why I had become a teacher.
And so we ended the week with six boys fighting each other to be called Stinky, a stray frog who thinks he hit the jackpot, and a first grader who MAYBE (hopefully), learned a life lesson.
It think it was a good week.
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