Dad on Duty #104

I’m dropping our girls off at the middle school this morning, and as usual, Shelly (the nurse) is out front to greet kids.  I love that she does that.

We know her pretty well; she goes to our church, and has for many years.  We’ve worked on a few projects there together.

Today, she apparently has a little extra to give; she’s dancing to music I assume only she can hear, as the kids walk in.

Tori comments “what the hey…..??”

“She’s just really glad it’s Friday” I tell them.  Then I yell out the window to her “no more caffeine for you Spencer!  You’re cut off!”  She looks at me shocked, then defiantly….then keeps on dancing….

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As I pull around from middle school to Cooper to park and go to work, I see the Boss, the A/P, the counselor and the nurse all out in the parking lot gathered around a car.

I’m pretty sure that’s not good.

I walk over and ask the nurse “y’all OK?”  She says, yeah, I think so.  This gal just had a back spasm in the parking lot but seems to be doing better, we’re waiting for her daughter to come get her.

I figure I better go on in and cover the nurse’s station while she’s stuck out here with this situation.

Just as I get in to the office and put my coffee cup down, they call me on the radio; “can you come back out?”  Um, Ok.

Then the nurse tells the office to call 9-1-1.

I head back out, grab my paramedic gear from the truck and help nurse Rocio care for the patient while we await EMS to arrive.  She’s stable, and will be fine.  EMS carts her off to the ED, and we head back in to deal with the real stuff.

But I’m really not ready to do paramedic stuff at 0810 hours anymore.  I hadn’t even had maybe half my coffee.  You people need to schedule your emergencies more thoughtfully.

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The nature of this job, especially at the elementary school level, involves a LOT of time in two places; the bathroom and the cafeteria.

As I reflect on my day today, I realize that’s mostly where I am.

These are not really the funnest places at the school.  I’d much rather be in the gym or on the playground.

But that’s not where I’m needed.

Bathrooms are a black hole, of sorts. Kids go in there, and sometimes get really comfortable, and never come out.  For female teachers, which is 95% of the staff, the boy’s bathroom is especially challenging.  Yelling from outside the door is only modestly effective.

That’s where I come in.

So I get the need for my help, totally.  It’s just not exactly my favorite thing.

In contrast, I kinda like the cafeteria.  It’s hard work.  And a little messy.  But I love the immediately tangible evidence of helping a kid; opening packages, getting the straw into the juice box, wiping pizza sauce off a face.

The cafeteria is also very social.  You get to talk to the kids a lot.  I also get a lot of reverse-over-the-shoulder hugs in there; you know, the ones where you can’t get up but you want to hug the person standing behind you, so you twist in a near 180 to get the hug done.  They are pretty awesome.

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So here’s some life advice I’d like to offer you; don’t just hang out at an elementary school with no apparent connection or purpose.  I bet it ends with someone having a bad day.

I’m leaving campus to go get the middle school kids’ lunch, and one of the office ladies asks “before you go can you please go check on this guy sitting in his car out front?”

Um…..what?

She tells me that Shelly (the nurse) from across the street saw this guy sitting in his car in front of our school, then get out to have a smoke.

Now, most likely it’s perfectly innocent.  And he is just a parent or a spouse of a staff member, who happens to smoke.  No biggie.

But, you’ve got to be sensitive to how jumpy we are at school.

Our cop is off campus right now, at an assignment.  So Shelly took it upon herself to come across the street and confront him (“you can’t smoke here”).  He immediately complies, and gets back in his car.

But he hasn’t come in to the school at all, and nobody recognizes him as a parent or the spouse of a staff member.  He’s just sitting there.

That’s when Valerie came and got me.

I walk the lot and, sure enough, there he is, sitting in his car.  I go talk with him; “can we help you?” I ask (I think helpfully).  No, he says, I’m good, about to leave.  He seems appropriate, and there’s nothing suspicious about his affect.

As I walk toward my truck, he pulls out and leaves.

I follow him, to make sure he clears the campus completely.  Then I go grab lunch for the kids.  When I get to the middle school with lunch, our cop has returned.  I tell her the story, and she’s very interested.  We will all be watching the parking lot closely.

So about two hours later, our cop sees a guy in a similar vehicle, sitting in the parking lot.  She marches across the street and confronts him, while simultaneously notifying us.  The Boss comes and grabs me, and we head out to back her up.

By the time we get there, the confrontation is over, and our officer is laughing.  This guy was a new YMCA worker who was about an hour early for work, so he was just sitting in his car, biding his time.  Nobody knew him, because he was new.  Our cop damn near had him face down in the parking lot, spread eagle, before the YMCA coordinator came out to tell her “he’s OK!  He works here!”.

So back to my life advice; don’t hang out at an elementary school.  Somebody will end up having a bad day.

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Tying shoes.  Seems simple, right?

Well it is not as easy as you think.  First of all, the shoes are really far away, down there on the floor.  And when you’re old like me, that is no small challenge.

Second, the shoes are rarely just untied.  They are knotted up in a consortium of overlapping tying attempts, each worse than the previous.

As I’m helping herd 2nd graders down the hallway to specials, I see a hot mess of a shoe lace issue approaching.  The line pauses for a moment, so I crouch down and start to untangle the strings.  I figured it’d take a second, no problem.

TWO MINUTES LATER, I have made no progress.  I am now officially holding most of the second graders from getting to PE and music.  20% of the entire school is stuck in the hallway because I CAN’T UNTIE THIS KNOT.

Finally his teacher (who really needs me to get the heck out of the way and let her get her kids to class) throws me an excuse; “I think his parents purposefully put that knot in to keep him from tying his shoelaces too tight”.

I seriously doubt that.  But I am grateful for the excuse to bail out.

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A sub comes in to help, and gets assigned to lunch duty during 1st grade lunch.

It’s ice cream day, and many of the kids have already gotten their ice cream even though they haven’t even started their lunch.

The sub sees me going, kid by kid, telling them to eat protein first.  He comes up and says “I’m so glad you’re doing that.  I was thinking ‘should we tell them to eat real food?’ but wasn’t sure if it was ok to do that”.  I tell him, honestly, I don’t know if it’s ok for us to make them eat protein before they eat their ice cream, but I’m damn sure doing it anyway.  He high-fives me, and gets to work being the real food police.

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My new favorite thing is helping the kindergarteners get ready to leave for the day.  They get dispatched out into the hall, usually in ones and twos, to get their backpacks loaded.  It’s a great time to help them (it’s really hard to get a folder in a pretty full backpack when your hands are only that big).  But it’s an even better time to talk with them.  It is personal and intimate, and they almost all have a lot to tell me in that 2 1/2 minutes.

I hear about their days, their projects, sometimes a conflict they had (and we try to glean a lesson from it), and even their home life.

I now realize that this time…..2 1/2 minutes per kid…..is incredibly precious.  I can’t believe I didn’t know that, these last six years.

But I know it now, and I am gonna make every second count.

*******

It’s time for dismissal.  Here come the little kids, first.

It’s raining, pretty hard.  So that complicates things markedly.

I jump in line with the little kids, following them out to help their teachers get them organized and loaded, in the rain.

The Boss and the A/P pop out of their offices to intercept us, and ask the teachers if they need assistance.

One teacher points back at me and says “nope, we got help”.

The Boss nods and replies “yes, yes you do”.  And leaves it to us.  And maybe more importantly, to me.

It is starting to change.  They are beginning to trust and to rely on me.

I am grateful.