TheMommyBlog

Friday, May 15, 2009 Other people who write, Family

I’ve just finished reading an advance review copy of Phillip Done’s (rhymes with “phone,” wish I’d known that four years ago) new book, Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind: Thoughts on Teacherhood. I loved it even more than Thirty-two Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching, which I’ve read at least four times and recommend to everyone I know.

If you know a third grader, or third grader teacher, or have even been a third grader, read this book, and then buy a copy for everyone you know.

You know how when you get a teacher you love and then whenever he/she asks a question you jump out of your seat, hurl your arm out of its socket, and beg to be called on so you can answer real-quick and then tell a story of your own? No? Am I the only one who did that? Well, reading this book makes you feel all jumpy and eager to share just like that poor little attention-starved child with the unibrow and big feet. I can think of about a dozen fab blurbs for the cover. Just let me know if you need one, sweetheart. Oh, that reminds me: as I waved goodbye to the kids tonight I said, “Bye-bye sweetie! I’ll miss you!” and my ex turned and said, “You too!” Uh, I meant my daughter, but right on.

He has so many fantastic stories to tell, and I kept firing off emails thanking him for doing what he does because I have a feeling that my middle child’s third-grade teacher views this year as a form of penance. She’s spent a lot of time out on the ramp of the portable classroom asking why he won’t do work that even approaches his ability. In fact, I forwarded the email she sent me letting me know that he did not complete a writing assessment yesterday because he spent all the allotted time sticking erasers up his nose and eating lead from a pencil to amuse his classmates. (When I questioned him later, he feigned ignorance. So I explained it a little more slowly, and he found The Loophole. “I didn’t have an eraser up my nose; I had one of those rectangle erasers and it was split halfway, and I opened it and clamped it on the OUTSIDE of my nose.” Ohhh, well, then.)

Teachers seem to be magnets for this stuff. Just tonight we were all at the school fair, and while I went off to guide Daphne through the Mexican buffet, a random kid walked up to my boyfriend, Phil, and asked, “Is barf recycling, trash, or landfill?”

“What?” said Phil.

“Is barf considered landfill, or trash, or recycling?”

“You mean throwup?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in some cultures—wait, are you saying you’re going to throw up?”

“No, my brother is.”

At this point I had arrived at the table and was doing the dancey-squealy thing with the kid’s mom because we’ve met only once before but are soulmates and bffs. I stopped hugging her just in time to hear, “I’m going to throw up.” Her younger son walked right over to the trash bin and fire-hosed it for forty seconds straight. WOW.

I went over and rubbed his back, asking if he was ok, and when his mom joined me I went off to get paper towels. I have to give this kid credit: he stayed bowed over the trash just as I asked and stayed that way until I could come back with napkins and break that string of vomit going from his lower lip to the hefty bag. His mom said they’d be going home, his older brother said, “Uh, I’m just going to get my dinner,” and the younger brother said, “I’ll wait outside.” I went with him.

Standing in the courtyard, I scoped out the nearest trash bin and turned him by the shoulders to face it. Just in case. He said he actually felt much better then, so I said, “Well, just in case, let’s go wash up with soap and water before you get into your mom’s car.” That was the last I saw of him until twenty minutes later when he and his brother ran up to us from the face-painting booth, apparently fit as fiddles. His mom is so cool. She just kept on talking with us.

Know how we met? Her son and mine arranged a playdate at pick-up, so we shook hands and agreed to get her kids back to her somehow later. I loved that she was so casual about it. When she called a few hours later I gave her directions, and she walked into the house with a bottle of wine, which we proceeded to empty while the kids tore up the yard. I couldn’t believe it. I heart her. She completes me.

Off to bed now—have been reading too many Lost message boards and my head is hurting from the theories. Plus my throat hurts from talking so much today. It’s been ages since I left the house and conversed with the general public for longer than it takes to do the school run. I’ll probably have to have speech therapy AND physical therapy once this Fifth Disease runs its course. Stupid Parvo.