My Day Was Worse Than Yours

One day, my room mate came home from a day at his job at the hospital, and walked straight to the refrigerator. After opening the fridge and seeing that there was no longer a beer left, he stormed into the living room where I was sitting on the couch drinking said beer. "You're drinking the last beer? I had a tough day at work, and was really looking forward to that beer."

My retort? "I had a kid piss in a trash can today. Get off my case."

*Disclaimer* I don't normally wear a hat.

With that said, here's how my day went.

7:00 am - Alarm goes off. Promptly hit "snooze".
7:08 am - Alarm goes off again. Actually get up this time.
7:10 am - Eat breakfast.
7:20 am - Get changed into work clothes. Tan socks. Brown shoes. Khaki pants. Brown belt. Yellow shirt. Brown tie.
7:27 am - Admire self in mirror.

"You handsome devil, you..."

7:30 am - Drive to work.
7:40 am - Arrive at work.
8:30 am - 1st Period begins.
9:26 am - 2nd Period Planning begins.
10:14 am - 3rd Period begins.

Let it be known that up until this point, everything has been proceeding nearly exactly the same as it does every day. My kids are a bunch of whiny brats who couldn't learn their way out of a paper bag.

Imagine "Eye of the Tiger" playing in the background.

Then things go south. Waayyyyyy south.

Further south.

For those of you who have no idea what a "Code Red" or "Lockdown" means in public schools, these words mean there is a serious threat to the school in question. Serious threats like armed intruders on school grounds. Essentially you hide all the kids in the room, lock the door and wait for the police to clear the building.

Just minutes before the end of 3rd Period, the intercom comes on. My principal calmly says "Teachers, at this time we are going into lockdown. Lock the classroom door. All students should remain in their classroom until otherwise directed. Please remain calm."

My response?

"Alright students, please make your way to the corner of the classroom furthest away from the door and windows. Please remain calm, keep quiet and we'll get through this. In all likelihood, this is just a drill, in which case we should just be calm. If it isn't, we should remain calm and let the authorities sort it out."

So naturally the kids freaked the fuck out.

Aahhhh! Panic! Loud noises!

After about ten or fifteen minutes of me scolding children about not talking, texting, throwing balls of paper at each other, giggling, farting, etc. the principal comes back on the intercom to let us know that "The current situation is this: a gunman was seen near the local college campus (about one block away). We are taking this very seriously, and suggest you do the same."

Now, for the past thirty minutes, one of my students had been asking to use the bathroom. I wanted to finish the particular part of the lesson before I let him go. Now, with the school in lockdown, there was no way to get to the bathroom until it was over. This would quickly become a problem.

Quite soon the kid was like, "Dr. Woofers, I really have to go the bathroom." And I was like, "Well, unfortunately that isn't feasible at the moment, what with the lockdown and all. I'm not supposed to let anyone out of the room. And I won't. For both your safety and the rest of the class'. If you absolutely have to go, you can either pee in your pants or use the trashcan over there in the corner." That shut him up right quick.

Guess he didn't want to be really cool.

Some girl piped up and said she had to go to the bathroom like fifteen minutes later, and I told her the same thing. She got really pale when I mentioned peeing in a trashcan. Like most normal people with proper societal norms would.

But here's the things about societal norms. When shit hits the fan, sometimes they get tossed by the way side. And once you pissed in a trashcan, what's to stop you from deciding that perhaps other things that were deemed weird or morally wrong by society can also be cast aside. Like when and where it's acceptable to be nude. How much cursing is too much cursing. If murder is okay so long as it's in a justifiable rage.

How far down the rabbit hole is too far?

But suffice it to say, we eventually reached that tipping point. The event horizon. The point of no return. The breaking point. The crossroads. The pivotal moment in time. If you'll allow me one last synonym slash pun: the watershed. That moment when my student felt the fluids in his excretory system would soon escape, with or without his consent.

"Dr. Woofers, I can't hold it any longer" he blurted out. "I need to pee in the trash can." After this admission of biological inevitability, he hung his head in shame while his classmates that overheard began snickering.

So we put the trashcan in the corner, had a few other boys form a protective detail around him, and proceeded to let that poor little kid piss away any dignity he might have ever had. If you've never heard the sound of urine falling in a trashcan, it is quite difficult to describe. I would say it was distinctive, but I can't really pinpoint what it sounded like.

But it haunts my dreams.

Then after that was done, we had to sit in the same room as that piss trashcan for another hour and half until the lockdown was ended. My room normally isn't the habit of smelling like a cupcake factory, or any such delicious sensory bouquet. But it's never been succinctly summed up as a squalid cesspool of scents. The smell of urine really does take the classiness level of any establishment down by about a factor of "homelessness".

I call it "Eau de Mad-Dog 20/20".

Now that you've heard how bad that part of the day was, imagine that I still had to try and teach a bunch of seventh graders who had just been cooped up in a room for the better part of three hours. It was like herding cats.

And simultaneously trying to teach the cats about the Congo.

But wait! The good news isn't over just yet!

The gunman who was spotted near the local university campus was merely a student with an oddly shaped umbrella handle sticking out of his book bag. So all of the past several hours had been all for nothing. Less than nothing really. The only thing that the university should have done upon seeing him walking around on that security camera was boot up the Bat Signal.

That or just check the weather forecast.