Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver

22 February, 2011

On a Monday.

Open with me going out to my car 20 minutes early to scrape the post-blizzard ice and snow.



20 minutes later I call my boss and say "Ummm, so I've been scraping at my car for about 20 minutes and I still have a ways to go..."



Arrive at work in a bit of a tizzy because I'm half an hour late (those of you who know me know how I am about being punctual) and am scheduled to be in School Age instead of Infants. I am disappointed, because I have very little authority with the over 4 crowd.

Here's the climax of Monday. I may have almost gotten into a physical altercation with a coworker.

And by may have, I mean I'm still a little scared she's going to try to stab me in the parking lot.

It goes like this.

RB: (walks in a loop-de-loop instead of a straight line)
MISS K: Hey! You stop that! You come stand right here! What did you do that for? You ain't supposed to do that!
RB: (stands, looking bewildered)
MISS K: You gonna stand there until you tell me why you did that. You don't get no lunch until you tell me what you were doing over there. You was just supposed to wash your hands and sit down! Why did you go over there?
RB: (starts to cry)
MISS K: Don't you cry! You ain't no baby! You better wipe those tears off your face! Now you got a choice. You tell me why you did that or you stand there and you don't get no lunch.
ME: (kneeling beside RB) Can you tell Miss K why you went over that way?
RB: (cries more)
ME: It's OK, honey. Can you tell me?
RB: (cries more, and harder)
MISS K: You need to leave her alone. Get out of there, Lizabeth. For real, you need to get away from her.
ME: OK, RB. Come sit down.
MISS K: You don't do that! She needs to stand there and tell me what she went over there for!
ME: Miss K, you're not her teacher. We can't not give her lunch.
MISS K: (while getting "all up in my space") You don't tell me the rules! I know the rules here! You don't tell me the rules! I don't kiss no one's butt here! I don't kiss no one's butt! Now you got a choice. You leave her alone!
OTHER TEACHERS: (stare at me with wide, frightened eyes)
ME: Eat your lunch, RB.
MISS K: (storms off to tell boss)

Resolution: Called into bosses' office, asked for my version of the story. Boss says "That's what I figured. You didn't do anything wrong, I just wanted to hear your side. Thank you."

So, that was that. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing freeze tag and dancing to "Toxic". Cut to 6:30, where I am rushing like mad to get all my rooms vacuumed and mopped and cleaned and de-garbaged so I can zoom home and check my email to find out if we're a go for play rehearsal at 7:30. We are. I have just enough time to change out of my nasty work clothes and "zoom" to the rehearsal on the nasty, slippery roads. I park and run/slip'n'slide the block and half to the theatre to make it up there on time, which, as it turns out, I didn't need to do, because then my scene partner was half an hour late. Half an hour. Just like me, in the morning. Karma's a bitch.



I spent my time in the empty classroom setting up our scene, reviewing my lines, and taking photos out the yellow-tinted windows.





And then: A rehearsal that ended with me feeling like such a suck bag. I was super unfocused and super crap.

Oof.

Went home. Couldn't sleep. Finally slept at 2:00. Woke up at 4:45. Thought sarcastically to myself Oh, good. Tuesday will be much better.

1 comment:

Alison Maraillet said...

Oh - so this is why the third week of February was a loser in some ways... The poor woman sounds disturbed (the other woman being the disturbed one, not you) - be careful.