The Importance of Pants

Did I ever tell all y'all about the time I was subbing and a kid took his pants off?

No?

Well, one day, I was filling in for Garrett's teacher. There I was, sitting up at the front of the class, reading a book to the students. As I paused to turn the page, I glanced in a particular child's direction. It took me approximately six seconds to assess the situation and begin processing what I should do about it. There, in the middle of a kindergarten classroom, sat a child wearing no pants. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, his shirt stretched out and pulled over his legs and down to his ankles where his pants were resting comfortably. For the briefest of moments I thought he still had his underwear on but, no such luck. I quickly realized I was staring at the naked tukas of a six-year-old.

Come to find out, I was one of the last people to realize this kid's wardrobe malfunction. And I use the word malfunction here very loosely. I use it exactly the way Janet Jackson did to describe her Superbowl exposure. As in, yes, clearly I chose to expose myself willingly but we'll go ahead and call it a malfunction. My own son explained, later in the day, that several of them had been pointing to the pantsless wonder and whispering, "Naked!" Apparently I was very enthralled with the book I was reading and missed all of that. It's moderately concerning to me that the district allows me to monitor classrooms.

I remember feeling hot and angry very suddenly. I had no idea how I was going to get this kid to put his pants back on before the rest of the students or, more importantly, I saw him in all his natural wonder. I set the book down, instructed (in a measured and eerie voice) the class to continue facing forward (this kid was in the back row), walked over to the little hooligan and quietly hissed, "Pull up your pants right now."

He looked at me with big eyes and whispered, "I can't." I understood his dilemma. How was he supposed to pull up his pants without the entire class seeing his, er, self. Of course, I was wondering how this hadn't crossed his mind before he'd wiggled his clothing down to his ankles. I spun around and faced the wall.

"Everyone face forward," I said loudly. "Pull. Up. Your. Pants." I whispered. Once they were up I turned back around and gave the kid a lecture on the importance of keeping ones clothes on and never, ever do that again and oh boy are you ever losing your stamp today, Buster.

I explained the episode in a note to Garrett's teacher. I emailed her and gave her more information. Honestly, I didn't know if I was supposed to send him to the office with a note, "I'm in trouble for taking off my pants." Or if it was something that had happened before and there was a specific punishment for it. Or...what. I asked her to please let me know how I should handle something like that in the future. Although, I sincerely hope never, ever to have to deal with that in the future. Needless to say, we shared a pretty good laugh about it.

Fast forward to today. Garrett had a field trip to the children's museum. Since we parents are all about holding our babies hands for just a minute longer, there were massive amounts of us on this trip. Garrett's class had 20 students who went and there were eleven parents. We're pathetic awesome like that. His teacher assigned us our own child and one other. Of course I got Sir Pantsless.

As we sat eating our lunch, I talked to several other moms, Garrett's teacher, and another teacher. Suddenly, I realized that it had been a few minutes since I'd seen my other student. "Hold on," I interrupted. "I need to find Billy*"

"Yeah, you've gotta keep an eye on that one," Garrett's teacher said.

"I know," I paused. "You never know when he might take his pants off."

Garrett's teacher laughed out loud and then regaled the other teacher with the story. Once I'd located Captian No Pants I turned back to the conversation. "There's a reason I put him with you," she smiled.

"I figured," I said. "Thanks." I guess when you become a district employee you get charged with making sure everyone keeps his clothes on. To be fair, he was perfectly fine and I never had to remind him of the importance of wearing pants.


*Not his name. You have to do something to protect the innocent--naked as they may be.

Employed

One day a week.

On average, since the beginning of this month, I've been working one day a week.

One fourth grade class. One second grade class. Two days of kindergarten.

So far.

I work on Troy's day off. I call home during lunch because I find it hard to go eight hours without hearing how my son's school day was.

Today I took a kindergarten class to an assembly with tarantulas, monitor lizards, an alligator, tortoises, and pythons more than double my size. I spent most of my time trying to get a particularly challenging little girl to sit on her pockets, face forward, stop talking, stop taking off her shoes, sit still, STOP THAT NOW! But when I wasn't doing all of that, I absorbed information that I came home and spewed to my boys over tortellini, salad and breadsticks. During the entire assembly, I wanted my own kindergartner there to see it. "Garrett would love this!" I kept thinking. I have to admit, getting paid to learn about snakes is pretty cool.

What's not cool is seven pages of lesson plans for two three hour sessions of kindergarten. I have a college degree. I ran my own high school drama class. (I ASKED ANOTHER TEACHER, even!). And, still, I could not decipher an alarmingly large percentage of what this teacher wanted me to do.

"They get these if they complete their assignments, ask a show and tell question that matches the apron get the quiz right." That is a direct quote. Verbatim. I still have no idea what it meant.

It was a little bit frustrating. Mostly because I'm all about CONTROL and PERFECTION and GETTING IT ALL JUST RIGHT. It drives me crazy when I don't know how to match the apron to the right quiz. Or whatever. Still, I got paid to go to an assembly, read a book in my best yak voice, and stamp papers. So, I've had worse jobs, is what I'm saying.