Just now I was in the office, in between meetings and curriculum correlations and student paperwork and test coordination. I was, I am not embarrassed to say, actually sitting down and having my lunch like a proper grown-up...something that was truly much easier to do when I was a classroom teacher. I had barely pulled my magnificent leftovers from last night out of the microwave when I heard the secretary's summons. "Sarah!" she called, "Come here, I need you!"
Rushing out with my tupperware and fork in hand, first bite halfway to my mouth, I found two small and somewhat damp kindergarteners sitting sheepishly on "the chairs", a line of brown-upholstered high-backed seats lined up against the wall facing the massive main desk nerve center where the magic of our school site really happens. "Yes?" I asked the secretary. "What's wrong?"
She waved her hand dismissively, on the phone in that way I think she fake-talks when she doesn't want to deal with the world on the other side of her desk. Turning to the two students, I took a deep breath. "Yes?" I repeated. "Why are you here?"
They looked at each other, then at the floor, at me, at each other...time for a different question, obviously, since I was not getting anywhere just yet. "Are you hurt or in trouble?"
"Hurt," the taller one murmured, pointing at his behind. "I fell on my butt and I hurt it."
"You fell on your butt?" I asked, bite number one of my lunch passing my lips as I realized this was not an urgent enough situation to prevent me from eating. "How did that happen?"
"I was running in the bathroom and I slipped on the floor and fell on my butt," he replied, eyes still on the ground.
"You were running in the bathroom?" I asked, for clarification. "Why?"
"We were playing tag!" the shorter student answered, enthusiastically.
I turned to him. "In the bathroom?" He nodded. "Why?" He shrugged. "Is the bathroom the place we usually play tag?" He shook his head vehemently. "Where do we usually play tag?"
"On the playground!" they chorused with practiced certainty. I could tell they'd had to answer questions like this before. Sigh...another bite. "Did you fall on your butt too?" I asked the shorter student.
"Oh, no, I just brought my friend to the office so he could get an icepack for his butt," was the earnest reply.
"Do you need an icepack?" I asked the taller student as I continued to eat my lunch. "Would that help you feel better?"
"I actually feel fine now," he said, twisting his hands in a mix of embarrassment and desire to return to recess.
"I feel fine too but you know what?" his friend asked me, standing up from his brown chair and tying his shoe in preparation for heading back out to recess.
"What?" I asked him.
"Your lunch smells funny. What are you eating? It smells like weird meat." The secretary, finished with the imaginary phone call she'd been on to avoid having to talk with these kids about their sore butts, was now trying to hide her laughter by covering her face with an attendance folder.
"It is weird meat," I replied, nonplussed, fork to lips.
"Can I see?" he asked, shoe tied, on his tiptoes craning his neck to look into my bowl.
"No," I said definitively. "Go back to recess."
"Aren't you vegetarian?" the secretary asked as the boys ran back outside, sure to slip and land on their butts again as they raced across the rain-slick pavement towards the playground.
"I am," I answered around another mouthful of the magnificent Mac-And-Cheese-Chicken-Apple-Sausage combination Sage whipped up for me as comfort food when I went to her house last night.
"Vegetarians don't eat weird meat," the secretary pointed out.
"Spending this much time in an elementary school causes people to make all kinds of weird choices," I answered as I walked back to the principal's office.
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