I work at a public school. It can be amazing, exhausting, frustrating, humorous, infuriating and for the most part rewarding. There are days you leave work feeling satisfied about a job well done. There are days you leave work feeling drained and unable to put two sentences together. There are days when you feel like quitting and finding other employment. Then there are those days where something so strange or funny happens that you know you couldn’t make it up if you tried. This week I had one of those days.
I have worked in the same school for the last nine years and I have seen a lot of things. Some good, some bad, definitely a lot of weird and unique things but I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a kid walking across the snow and ice covered blacktop in stocking feet, holding their shoes in their hand before.
Sure, I’ve seen kids run right out of their shoes but they always go back and put them on. I’ve also seen kids kick their shoes clean off their feet during a game of kickball but, again, they always go back and put them on. So imagine my surprise when, as I’m rounding up kids to go back in the building, here comes this little first grader tromping across the wet, cold, snowy blacktop, shoes in hand and nothing on her feet but socks! In my shock I gasped out her name and asked her what in the world she was doing? Then I told her to put her shoes back on, foolishly thinking that she would bend over, pull the little black boots back on and go on her merry way but NO! She proceeded to plop right down on her behind on the blacktop that was still just as wet, cold and snowy as it was the two seconds before when she was walking on it! As she pulled her boots back on she stated very forcefully that her boots fell off!
My first thought was, how? My second thought was, then why didn’t you put them back on immediately and my last thought was, I don’t really want to know the answer to either of these questions because knowing this particular child as I do, I knew her explanation would make about as much sense as her walking across the blacktop shoeless in the middle of winter!