My mother says a lot of things, but one she often repeats is "The Lord looks out for babies and fools." I definitely felt that this weekend, or at least the last part. After taking an unplanned nap Sunday afternoon, I woke up between 5 and 6 pm. I thought everything was gonna be okay tho cuz my flight didn't leave til 6:50...or so i thought. Once I arrived at the ticket counter at St Louis International, I learned that the flight I thought left at 6:50 really left at 6:25 and it was too late for me to catch it. So, I missed my flight.
No biggie, I thought. Put me on the next flight.
No can do, Mr Garr. That's the last flight to Philadelphia this evening. The first flight out the next day would put me back in the City of Brotherless Thugs after 10am.
School starts at 8:15.
So, needless to say, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was going to have to take my first sick day, and have my first substitute. Ya boy was SHOOK. I've heard plenty of stories and seen how classes behave when they have a substitute. And whatever u think is bad, these kids do 10 times worse. Fights, thrown books, broken desks, broken anything, taking teacher's belongings, roaming the halls instead of going to class, things thrown out of windows. I was worried sick that my kids were gonna go bananas when they walked in and saw some random person sitting at my desk this morning.
But I did what I could, made some phone calls, made some arrangements, and tried to load enough work on them to keep them busy all day. Then I enjoyed my last night in StL with the class of 07.
I caught the first flight back to Philly, came back to the crib and decided, "Hey, I'm going to Tilden. Who cares if I took the day off, I'm going to see what my kids are up to." It was more because I wanted to clean up the apocalyptic rubble I was sure to encounter and not wait till tomorrow. I also wanted to be able to make the necessary phone calls today for all the kids who were going crazy and get they mama's on the horn ASAP.
So I dropped my stuff at the crib on 43rd and walked to my trolley stop. Caught the 36 and got off at the normal corner. Only this time, it was around 2pm instead of 7am. I walked into the school, made my way up the 4 flights of steps and walked onto the 4th floor. I could hear my class from down the hall and had thoughts to just turn around and go home. Save myself the trouble of having to confront whatever misbehavior I was sure I would see.
I got to my door and peaked through the glass window and saw a mess of papers all over the floor. Everyone was talking, kinda loudly at that. But to my surprise, they were all in their seats and most of them were working. Nothing was broken from what I could tell. No books had been thrown. No one was hanging out the window. I was pleasantly surprised. But the real surprise happened when I opened the door and walked in.
"MR. GARR!!!" the class erupted into cheers when they saw me walk through the door. Two of my kids even ran up and hugged me as though I had freed them slavery. It was weird and surreal. The same group of kids who have no problem cussing me out and telling me how much they hate me and my class were actually happy to see me. To be honest, I thought they would've been pissed to see me come in on the day they had a sub, but not so.
And really, I think it was more that they hated the sub than they like me. It was more of a choice between two evils for them. The sub was super strict and so they prolly didn't like the fact that they couldn't bulldoze him (like they sometimes do to me). Either way, I came in, got a report of what had happened that day (turned out that 4 of my boys were suspended for something they did in Art class), and got to work on Social Studies. Save 2 knuckleheads, everybody did their work quietly at their tables. They cleaned up the room, straightened the desks, and got to go home AT 3:19. (It's been a long time since the whole class left on time. It actually may have been the first time ever).
I said earlier how one of my mom's favorite sayings is that "The Lord looks out for babies and fools". I really felt what she meant today. All that worrying was for naught. I was the fool who missed his flight yesterday and was scared silly that the worse was bound to happen. My boss was gonna think I was irresponsible, my kids were gonna kill each other, etc, etc, etc. Turns out none of the above happened. The Good Lord looked after me and my babies today. I even got them to work silently at their desks.
All the other teachers asked me "What are you doing here?" when they saw me at the end of the day.
In her characteristically intimidating manner, my principal said "I thought you took the day off, Mr Garr. Why are you here?" as I stood in the office.
"I came to see my kids," I replied with a smirk. "My flight came in and school was still in session so I tried to see if I could teach em a lil sumthin today."
She smiled back, as did the other veteran teachers in the office. Maybe I impressed them. I kinda impressed myself. But even more than that, I realized how invested I've become in these children. Even when they get on my last nerve, and I'm ready to manually remove their brains through their nostrils, I can't see myself letting them down. They've got enough of that already.
So no more playing the fool.
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