In a middle school teacher’s life, any day can turn from humdrum to abnormal in a matter of seconds. This was one of those days. Now, before I get to the good part of this story, I have to go back a couple of months to the first sighting of… The Milk Duds.
One glorious, sunny Florida afternoon, one of my colleagues, *Lydia, was teaching her fifth period geography class. It was a fairly normal day, and she was giving a fairly
normal test review. This happened
to be one of her classes where she had another teacher in the room with
her. As the other teacher was
going over the imports and exports of Nigeria, or something of that nature,
Lydia had a student come ask her to use the bathroom. We’ll call him *Todd.
She asked if he could hold it until the review was over, and Todd
replied, “yes.” This all seems
normal and routine, but the story gets interesting when he came back up to
Lydia five minutes later in a panic.
He needed to use the restroom, “RIGHT NOW.” After giving Todd permission, she watched as he sprinted out
the door with visibly clenched butt cheeks, and a seriously determined
face. Her gaze quickly drifted
downwards and locked in on little “milk duds” that were falling out of the
bottom of his shorts. (Now, I am
using the term “milk duds” to describe a bowel movement so that I don’t gross
anyone out any more than needed.) I would give
a month's pay to see the look on Lydia’s face at that moment. Luckily for her, none of the other kids
had noticed this series of events unfolding, and she wanted to keep it that
way. If even one student had seen
this happen, it would have been game over. Twelve year olds are nowhere near mature enough to deal with
poop situations. Lydia had five
seconds before she would have a “code blue” scenario on her hands. She grabbed about forty tissues, and
discreetly picked up the “milk duds” as calmly as if they were wads of
gum. The saddest or funniest part
of this story is that Todd had no clue that he had feces falling out of his
shorts. He used the restroom
(guess he wasn’t done), and then walked back in like nothing had happened. Problem solved… or so we thought…
Now, my team
and I spent at least two weeks laughing about this, and contemplating how this
child didn’t know that he was going to the bathroom, and even more that it was
falling onto the floor. We
contacted the parents, and took all necessary steps as we were concerned for his health. Eventually, we forgot about it...
Lets
fast-forward a few months to my own humdrum, about to turn abnormal, day. I was giving a lesson during last
period about using dialogue in stories, so it’s safe to say that half the class
was sleeping with their eyes open.
It was relatively silent in the room. I was in the middle of a sentence when I was interrupted by
the most memorable phrase ever uttered by a student in the history of my
teaching career:
“MS. BARRERA,
THERE’S A FREAKING TURD UNDER MY DESK!”
My first thought at that moment was that the student that uttered those
words just had a horrible case of diarrhea of the mouth, and I was
contemplating what to write on his referral. Then, my attention turned to the student’s immediate left. It was Todd. I would guess that maybe ten seconds passed until I made the
connection between what happened in Lydia’s class, and my current
situation. It took an additional
ten seconds for me to realize that Todd had asked to use the bathroom about five
minutes before. I was center stage
with twenty-two pairs of sixth grade eyes boring into my forehead waiting for
me to react, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I kept teaching. I acted like those words never came out
of that student’s mouth. This way,
if the kids saw me blowing it off, maybe they would too. There were fifteen minutes left in
class, and I spent those minutes trying to keep things as normal as
possible. I almost lost it in a
fit of laughter when Todd himself asked me to open the window because it
smelled in the classroom. I
managed to divert attention away from the “milk dud” for the remainder of the
period, even though it was all I, or the students, could think about. When the bell finally rang, and my
classroom had emptied of students, I walked over to Todd’s desk. Much to my surprise, there was no “milk
dud.” I looked all over the
floor. I knew that there was no
way that any middle school student in their right mind would pick up someone
else’s poop, but I looked in the trash cans anyways. It was in the recycling bin that I found it. There were about five little “milk duds”
squished together, forming a patty.
They were nestled in there, in a tissue, surrounded by various paper
products. Apparently, the student
that placed it there had realized that feces were biodegradable.
Of course I
ran straight to my team to tell them the story. I also told anyone else that would listen to it that
day. Each time, the reaction was
one of hysterical laughter, but ended with puzzled bewilderment. We contacted the parents again, and
they spoke to dear little Todd, they even took him to the doctor. To this day, none of us (including the
parents) can comprehend how this little boy could possibly be dropping “milk
duds” and not know it.
Nonetheless, sit on them for an extended period of time so that they
merge together. Does he wear
boxers three sizes too big, or worse, not wear underwear at all? This particular story has taught me two
very valuable lessons as an educator.
One of them was to let Todd immediately go to the restroom ANY time he
asked me from then on. The other one
is that there is no telling what each day will bring me, and that I have to try
my best to be the composed, professional, concerned teacher that I know how to
be.
Even if that means not
laughing out loud when someone says the word turd.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent :)
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