April Flakes Out

Today seemed like April Fools Day Observed.  The calendar said April 2, but the pranks showed up anyway.  First, we wake to a blanket of white stuff on the lawns, trees and roads.  The snow is falling steadily.   Nice one, God. I get it. Maybe it’s April first somewhere. Well played.

Maybe there’s a delay. That would mitigate the prank. I check my email.  Nothing.  I check Twitter.  Nothing.  The Superintendent is pulling a good one, too.  She appears to be going  with a regular opening.

Usually a serial tweeter on mornings like this, today she was MIA.  It was a good prank on the people who came from the hinter lands.  They got the Adrenalin rush of car-sledding on the Connecticut hills.  For me, it wasn’t so bad. A slushy Post Road, but no skidding or fish tailing.  Nice try, though.

Then I arrived in my room.   Some sort of gremlin had gotten into the heating system and cranked it up to Inferno.  Opening the door to my room was similar to opening the door of the oven after it’s preheated.  I hadn’t dressed appropriately, meaning I wore more than a bathing suit.  I opened my two windows, but this had minimal effect on the temperature in the room.  Later, as each student arrived, he or she needed to point out that, in fact, the temperature in the room was astonishingly high.  I didn’t blame them. It’s hard not to comment when you’re slammed in the face with a blast of dragon breath.  I suggested that they sit on the floor, since heat rises, but then I noticed the reddish glow of the carpet.

We spent the rest of the day looking for opportunities to vacate the premises. “Hey, let’s get to Music early.  That’ll surprise Mrs. L,” said one student.

“Maybe we can stay a little longer at the library,” another suggested.

During our reading period we headed for the hallway outside the auditorium, only to find another refugee class had beaten us to the lobby.   We stayed anyway.  “Mind if we sit on your laps?  Good.”

I had to applaud the resourcefulness of my students.  We had indoor recess today, in spite of the fact that we would have given almost anything to go play out in the slush and freezing rain.  As recess began, so did the special requests.  “I had said I was going to do regular recess, but can I go to extra instrumentals?”

“I was wondering if S. and I can go help the art teacher by cleaning brushes.”

“Did she say she needed help?”

“No, but I’m just thinking she might.”

One student had set up a special tooth extraction station so that kids could go to the nurse for the “I lost a tooth today” stickers. I heard she ran out, today.

“Hey, Mr. v., what would I need to do to get sent to the office?”

“Hey, can M. and I go clean the downstairs bathrooms?  I think there was a toilet that was clogged.”

“Umm, could  J. and I  go look for poison ivy in the courtyard?”

Yeah,  I thought I had dodged the prank by driving to school without incident this morning.

I’m bringing  a hose and the wading pool tomorrow.

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