This is so last summer, but a good one regardless

The following is a true event that happened to me last summer. Although some of you readers have heard it before, it's a good one to read when you need a good laugh. Enjoy!

So.... what do you do if you're a latchkey kid and you lose your key?

Maya (our 60lb yellow lab mix) and I walk every morning and Maya carries the house key. The key is on one of those bottle opener keychains and I attach it to the clip part of her leash where it attaches to her collar. Today we got to the front door after our half hour walk and Maya no longer had the key. Crap! I had my cell phone with me and called Dave and he wanted to come right home and let me in. While it was very nice of him to offer to leave work and rescue me, I just wanted advice on how to break into our house. As there were several windows open, he said to find a way to pop the screen up and climb through. Ok. No problem. I survey the scene. There is a window on the side of the house, but I can't get to it without a ladder. I look real quick for a ladder and don't see one. At this point Tony the kitten is looking at me through the screen saying, "hey! what are you doing out there?", and Maya is in her side yard and keeps running to the locked back door and then running back to me and barking. No pressure. There's a window at the back of the house, but again I need a ladder. Wait a minute... there are two Scouts parked in the driveway. I could just pull one up, stand on top and get in. Of course I would need the keys to start either of the Scouts, and those are inside where I can't get them! Lastly, there is a window on the front porch. It's the really big window with the heavy wooden frame that can't stay open by itself and is precariously propped open with a piece of wood. I'm not feeling really confident of my abilities to slide through the 12 inch high space without the window falling on me and chopping me in half like a guillotine. So, I decide to retrace some of my tracks. It's 8:00 am and already about 80 degrees and I just came back from a 30 minute walk. I leave the dog in her yard and walk back to the place where I think the key loss could have occurred.

We had a little poop problem in the park this morning. Maya pooped and then started running around like crazy staring at her ass the whole time. I try to see what the problem is and it looks like there's a bee buzzing around her ass. She just can't get away from it. She is on a six foot leash attached to me who is so befuddled by this that I'm just staring at her. What the hell is the bee doing? Why is it just flying around within six inches of her butt? She stops for a second and I realize it's not a bee... it's a dingleberry attached to her ass by a six inch long piece of hair. Sweet! Well, I had the poop bag in hand and had not picked up the pile of poop yet because I was so entranced by Maya's performance. I grab at the dingleberry with the poop bag as she's sitting down and successfully smear the dingle berry in the bag and on the path. Dingleberry is taken care of and now it's time to pick up the poop. I go to snatch the poop with the poop bag and didn't get it all. I go back in to grab the rest and I've smeared it a good six inches. I tie up the bag and start walking to the garbage can. I turn back to make sure Maya's following me and realize that a small piece of poop dropped and oh my! there's my sneakerprint in the poop. At this point I'm like, "it's just going to have to stay there! if i try again, i'm going to be wearing it!"

So, back to the missing key problem. I return to the site of the poop smear to look for the key. I mean if the key was going to fall off anywhere, I'm sure it happened during the dingleberry shenanigans. I look all around the smear and there's no key. I start walking away and a little kid on his scooter passes the smear and yells out, "EWWWWW!!!!" I just wanted to respond, "you're not kidding!", but I didn't. I keep walking ever on the patrol for Maya's lost key. By now, I'm hot and sweaty and just want to be in my house. I give up on my crusade and walk back home. I try to pop in the screen in the front window and can't do it. There's no way to do it with my bare hands without knocking in the piece of wood that's holding the window up. I finally realize that there must be one of the many knives that my dad has given Dave and I in one of the Scouts. If I can find a knife, I can cut the screen a little to get to the latch thing that's holding the screen in place. I look in the glove box of the red Scout. A broken pair of sunglasses, a flashlight, a screwdriver and a combo bottle opener/corkscrew. I don't think this is going to help me. There must be something in the tan Scout - Dave the Tool Man's Scout. I look in the windows and see that Dave has some sort of ex-military box that must have tools in it. Of course the doors are locked. I seemed to have forgotten that this past weekend Dave was very proud of himself that he fixed the locks in the Scouts and they now lock. The only reason that the red Scout was unlocked is that I've been driving it and seriously, what is somebody going to steal? my broken sunglasses? the 30 lb. bag of cat litter that I neglected to carry in earlier this week?

Now that I'm armed with a screwdriver and a bottle opener/corkscrew. I return to the front window to see how MacGyver I can be. Tony the kitten has come to watch me through the screen. So once the screen is open and I can get in the house, I'm probably going to have to chase him all over the yard to get him back in. That of course is if I'm not cut in half by the 2 ton window pane. I'm able to wedge the screwdriver into the edge of the screen and bend the screen frame so that this side slightly pops in. Not believing my luck, I pop in the other side and slide the screen up. With all this action, Tony has decided it would be best to run the other way. Maya, still in the side yard, is pissed that she's not in the house and is barking to let me know about her dissatisfaction. I reach in the window and push the rocking chair out of the way. I stop to take off my sneakers that probably still have dog crap in the treads. I stick one leg in and pull the rest of my body through! I'm in! I'm in! I do a little happy dance, close the screen and let the ever-barking, dingleberry wearing, key-losing Maya in. Who would have thought that I would be able to be so handy and amuse my neighbors (who I am sure were watching and saying, "what is that crazy neighbor girl doing?") at the same time?! I should probably learn a lesson from this and do like I read in a book recently - hide a key outside of the house in some fake dog poop!

Immature teachers

There is a supply closet between our classroom and the one next to us. The doors have windows so we can see through to the next class. My coop teacher and I were looking through to see what the other class was doing and we started busting out laughing. One of the art teachers who is always serious and often mean to students was posing for the kids to practice gesture drawing. He was on top of a table and had a pole that he was using as a guitar. He was really jamming out on it.

When the kids in our room saw us laughing so hard, of course they wanted to know what was going on. I tried to blow it off with, "Oh, we were just watching someone pose next door for gesture drawing". So a few of them went to see what we were laughing at. They saw the teacher next door and told us we were "immature" which of course made us laugh even harder!

Word of the Day

creeper (n.) creepy person, especially a man

ex: I didn't want to talk to that creeper in the computer lab.

A wise second grader

Second graders can be wild sometimes. You have plans to talk to them about art. Maybe a little something about Paul Klee and his paintings. Before you can even explain that you are going to read them a story about Paul Klee, there are about 10 hands up in the air. You know you didn't ask them a question, but decide to start calling on students anyway. There are several, "Can I go to the bathroom?" Throw in a few, "My arm hurts" and "He was mean to me" and you're about to lose your mind. The next sweet little second grade girl I call on says, "I think that everyone knows you're a student teacher and they want to see what they can get away with." Words of wisdom from a 7 year old.

Gross or funny?

One day I was teaching a second grade class that was working on a watercolor project. All of the students were very focused on what they were doing. I was walking around the room making sure all the students understood what they were supposed to do and helping those that needed help. A small, quiet boy raised his hand. I walked over to him, leaned down so that we were eye to eye and said, "Yes?" He said calmly, "A booger fell out of my nose and onto my painting". I looked at his painting and sure enough, there was a quarter-sized puddle of snot. I told him to wipe it up with a paper towel, and then I walked away quickly not sure if that was really disgusting or if it was the funniest thing I had seen all day!

Why am I writing this blog?

I decided to create a blog about my experiences teaching art. My first student teaching placement ended last week. For seven or so weeks I taught 1st through 5th graders in a school out in the country in Pennsylvania. My eyes were really opened as I do not have children and do not have a lot of experience working with this age group. It surprised me that I absolutely loved teaching in an elementary school, and my last day there it took all that I had to hold back the tears! It seems that all of the 'bad kids' got to know my name and were the ones to who it was especially hard to say goodbye.

I have several good stories about my elementary school placement, and next week I will start student teaching at an urban high school which I am sure will give me plenty of stories also!