Who WAS that midget???

What a weird, wild day!!!

This morning, a couple of my team members were running late, so I was asked to look after one of their classes until they could get to the school. So I got all of my kids into my classroom, tasked a couple of them with passing out breakfasts, and then went and picked up one of the other classes. I was down in their room with them for about five minutes until a teacher's assistant came, then I went back to my own classroom.

When I entered my classroom, the first thing I noticed was that one of my boys looked like he had been in a bar fight. He had a black eye, and several bruises on his face. I asked, "What happened to you??!?" and he replied in a very matter of fact tone, "Oh, I got my butt kicked by a midget."

Now THAT'S something you don't hear every day, Chauncey!

I wasn't going to be phased, though. He said it so nonchalantly that I figured I should respond in kind. I just said, "Oh, ok," and then turned to talk to one of the other children. The whole exchange had taken about four seconds, and of course, in my mind I was wondering What The Hell????

I waited until recess to follow up. When I asked him what had happened, he told me that he was at the pool at his apartment, and he had just gotten out and was drying himself off. Some kid, much littler than him, had come up and said, "You wanna fight?" and my kid had shrugged and said, "OK, why not?"

I suggested that the next time someone propositioned him with the question, "You wanna fight?" that his answer should be, "No thank you, I would prefer to do something else."

Ironically, I was having this conversation with the boy about a half an hour after I had been scratched and cut by one of his classmates in the cafeteria.

This kid is relatively new to our school, and he has little man syndrome, big-time (no pun intended). So you could say the two incidents today were tied together by the theme of midgetry.

Anyway, he has a really bad habit of ignoring adults, not responding to questions, and not following directions when he gets in a mood. These are all serious pet peeves of mine, and I have a very hard time standing by while he is doing this. So when he first won't answer my question at all, then I told him to go stand in the corner of the cafeteria, and he turns around and starts to walk away to go back to his seat. Well, I wasn't about to let him sit back down, so I told him that we were going to go talk to the assistant principal, and he wouldn't move. I told him his choices were to start walking or to have me taken by the hand and lead him over there. Guess which option he chose?

I took him by the hand, and of course he was digging in his heels. Then he started trying to pry open my grip, clawing at my fingers and my wrists. He wound up ripping my wristwatch off and drawing blood with a cut on my arm.

When the AP told him we were going to her office across the hall, he started to pull his little act of refusing to do anything, but then he finally went. I wrote him up, and he's supposed to be suspended for the next two days.

Speaking of suspension, Lump returns tomorrow. Another super fun day to look forward to!!!