I forgot to mention that on yesterday's bus ride there
was a guy who had a large, black plastic rat which he placed in the aisle
in the hopes of scaring oncoming passengers. It takes all kinds.
I worked hard at not saying yesterday was a bad day at
work. Yesterday was a great day but at the very end one of my co-workers
was rude and it colored my perception of the day.
The main drama of my day was when a little girl asked
me to go to the bathroom with her. I couldn't figure out why, but I did
and once there learned that she had wet her pants. She kept asking me to
go to the office and finally I convinced her to go with me. There I
learned that this office is actually equipped for such occurrences, but
the little girl didn't want any of the available extra underwear because
they were all boy's underwear. She said it was already starting to dry.
Today I played Magical Mystery Forest, freeze tag,
Jewel Sword, Sandman, and Tickle Monster. I had one boy tell me I should
cut my nails, and about four girls tell me they are long. I dig kids.
They say the best stuff. I know I am forgetting some funny things they
said, but such is life. I played freeze tag on the first day of work and
now they ask every day if we can play again. Do you see what I just did?
I said every day like this was my third month of work instead of my
third day.
So here's the run-down on my job. I work in an
afterschool program at a private school in Oakland. It is about as
ethnically diverse as you can get and I think the school covers junior
kindergarten through middle school. I play with the JKers - 5th graders.
We feed them snack and try to get them to run around a bunch. I love when
they put their tiny soft hands in mine to drag me somewhere.
The rest of the run-down is that my job exactly covers
my rent, before taxes. So I need to find something else. But there are
some days when there is no school (such as teacher conferences) when our
program runs all day, and then I'll make a bit extra. I'm also thinking
of being a substitute teacher. I always loved the days when we had subs.
Lastly, I've been taking the bus, but my beau's new car has arrived so I will
probably start driving his old car on Monday.
When I arrive at my bus-stop, I cross the freeway, and
when I leave, I cross back over...
Oh goody, I remembered the two funny things I wanted to
tell you. First of all, the intern who runs study hall failed to show up
yesterday, so I ran study hall. The 4th grade boys were being very giggly
so I went over to check on them and found them all huddled over a book.
As I approached they tried to pass it off to each other and shove it under
the table, but I made them give it to me. I looked down and saw What's
Happening to My Body? and I gave a little internal nod thinking
"Now I know what all the buzz is about!" Then I gave it a second
glance: What's Happening to My Body? Book for Girls. Then I really
understood. So I sat down and took a gander. Ouch, this thing was
published in 1983 and updated in 1988. The illustrations were graphic and
clinical and unappealing. I personally would recommend Changing
Bodies, Changing Lives but back to the issue. Eventually the boys
started giggling again and one of them muttered, "You sure are interested
in that book." I replied that I though it was sort of outdated. Who
recommends douching to teens? Yeech! I asked them if they had any
questions about the book and one replied very quickly with a definitive,
"No!" There was no room to wonder about how they felt about discussing
sex with me. So I took the book to the librarian and explained that I
didn't know where to reshelve it and she said, "I'll leave it out because
tomorrow we have the 5th grades in and this is quite a popular title."
These poor kids are getting some sort of Victorian sex ed!
The second thing is that I was drawing with a girl at
the end of the day today and I decided to draw Matthew.
"Who's that?" she asked.
"My boyfriend."
"Where's his hair?"
"He has a shaved head. But I can put in a little
stubble." I set about adding stubble to my sparse drawing.
"Do you kiss when you come home at night?"
"Yes."
And then she sat there thinking about that for a long
time, and I wondered if I had just made some sort of lasting impression on
her view of the universe.
