I was moved around fairly often, but I spent most of a day in kindergarten class, so it was kind of grueling. (In my day, kindergartners napped. None of these kids napped.)
The day started with handwashing, which struck me as strange, but it was probably related to the unexpected rainfall that morning. Some of the girls had boots with mercury switches that lit colorful lights in their heels, when they weren't shorted out by jumping around in puddles.
Several of the kindergartners recognized me from supervising recess over the last several months, particularly that day when they threw wood chips at me in a kind of near-riot on the playground. One of the kids said that he didn't recognize me. His friend turned to him, and said, "Oh, you don't recognize Mr. Marc? He's very popular! As popular as Minnie Mouse!" Best testimonial ever!
Sometime in the morning, class was disrupted by the discovery of a black widow spider in the classroom. I wasn't directly involved, but was surprised when one of the boys expressed skepticism that the insecticide deployed against the spider would work. My mind went back to an old Phoenix, Arizona memory, and how a household cleaner (Formula 409) deployed against black widow spiders didn't work at all as an insecticide. The spiders just shook off the household cleaner. I told the boy, "Of course the insecticide will work."
Not surprisingly, spiders were on everybody's minds. Walking around, I overheard three little girls talking about the Daddy Long-Legs spiders in their own houses. The girls were keeping track of how many spiders there were and where they lived.
One kindergarten girl told me that her mother was going to have a birthday the next day. "Oh, that's nice," I replied. "Are you going to get her a card?" The girl said no. I asked, "Are you going to get her a present?" The girl replied, "No. She already has a present. Me!"
I thought it curious some of the kindergarten girls were adopting vocal fry as a speaking style. I thought maybe that might be a teenage thing, but no. It starts earlier.
Since the playground was all wet, the kindergarten recess was held inside the classroom. The teacher put on a curious exercise video, which imagined everyone had shrunk to a tiny size and were wandering around the front lawn avoiding ants, beetles, and, of course, spiders.
At one point, I tried sitting on a tiny kindergarten chair and fell over on my back. I was embarrassed, but hardly anyone noticed. Kids fall down in kindergarten class all the time. Just another kid falling down.
Lunch presents challenges of its own. The students are fairly quiet at first, but they get noisier as they finish their lunch. The kindergarten students are the best-behaved, needing help only with opening difficult plastic packages. In contrast, several of the lower elementary students realized that the little cups of salsa they include with chips make perfect hockey pucks when kicked around the linoleum floor of the cafeteria.
Elementary school recess has its own challenges. Just as recess was ending, and the students were assembling in lines, a girl kicked a soccer ball right in my crotch. She winced; I tried hard to maintain my composure. I figured I should turn this incident into a teachable moment. I said, "This is what happens when you are S-L-O-W!" I hope that lesson stuck.
I took a little girl to a hip-hop after-school activity and discovered I already knew the dance teacher. One of my ballet classmates. The collision of worlds really threw me off.
I asked a lower elementary student why she wasn't doing her work. She smiled and said it was because she couldn't get this song out of her head (called "Catchy Song," or "This Song’s Gonna Get Stuck Inside Your Head," from "The LEGO Movie 2").
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