One of my students has been training the kindergarteners in guerilla warfare. She has devised an elaborate plot in which to get me knocked over on the playground so she (and others) can have a good laugh. I used to goalie so I am used to things hitting me in the head or people knocking me over.
It all started two years ago, when she was a third grader. She realized that, unlike other teachers, I would not get upset when I was accidentally hit by a ball or ran into during recess. This escalated into her organizing the other third grade girls into the Penguin Death Squad (PDS). They would waddle like penguins around the playground picking up speed and then come at me in a mob. In fourth grade – the year they officially become my students – they lost three girls in their cabal and had to enlist the boys. However, by fifth grade, I have finally become wise to this and can spot the PDS forming, and approaching in time to get out of their way. They needed something new.
They noticed that a kindergartener jumped on my back in September when I got on the ground to tie another child’s shoe. She has apparently organized them to do this, en masse, whenever I get down to tie someone’s shoe – but kindergarten boys do not lurk around waiting for someone to squat down on the ground to tie a shoe. They have been putting up kindergarten girls up to asking me to tie their shoes.
So, little Suzy comes up with a shoe needing to be tied and soon as I am done tying the shoe and Suzy is clear, I am dog piled by all six boys in Kindergarten. In thirteen short years Damier will be able to find them all work, but for now they are breaking my back. I realized today that it was a plot – not by those boys – but by my girls because I had not connected someone saying, “now” to me being dog piled before.
My revenge is coming. Justice never sleeps.
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