I walked into the building this morning, dropped my bag off in my office, ate whatever sausage thing I had brought for breakfast, picked up my coffee, and headed down to the gym/cafeteria area to monitor the kids before the first bell rang.  In the gym, I saw our security guard, a guy I know from one of my previous buildings.  We chatted for a moment.

“I’m about to say something I’ve never said in a school before,” I said to him.  “As of right now, I don’t really have anything to do today.”

He knows me, so he laughed.

“Someone will come in and drop something in my lap in the next five minutes,” I predicted.  “This isn’t gonna last long.”

It took, in fact, less than one minute before the principal summoned me to the office, and then we were off to the races for the rest of the day.  Yesterday was calm and sedate.  Today was not.  It was productive, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit I did not stop moving once all day long.

(Checks, discovers he walked four miles at work today)

(Is surprised it’s that low)

---

So it’s the end of the day and we’re shoving the very last of the stragglers out the door and to their buses.  I am closing the doors behind them so that they can’t decide they have something Very Important That They Need Right Now and dash back into the building.  Someone tugs on my sleeve.  I turn and see someone who is much too young to be at my building looking up at me.  She is, maybe, in third grade, and I’m guessing probably second.

“Do you have a student named Aaron at your school?” she says.

oh god what did I do to deserve this

“We probably have a lot of Aarons at this school, sweetie,” I say.  “What is his last name?”

“She’s a girl,” she says.  I wait.  She does not elaborate.

“Do you know Erin’s last name?”

She thinks carefully and says a last name.  I repeat it.  She thinks about it some more and says that that’s not the right name.

“What’s your name?”

She answers me.  I ask if Erin has the same last name as her and she says no, but she can’t remember Erin’s last name.

“Who brought you here, sweetie?”

“My te-te.”

“Okay.  Can she come into the building and then we can go to the office and look for Erin?”

“She can’t come in.”   Note that this response comes immediately.  She doesn’t have to think about it at all.  It’s at this point where I realize I don’t have a radio and can’t buzz the office about this conversation.

“Why can’t she come in?”

“She’s not wearing any pants.”

I blink, slowly, a couple of times.  I notice that there’s a teacher standing behind me, just inside the building, and that that teacher is listening to the entire conversation I’m having and is laughing her ass off at me.

“Did you just say that she wasn’t wearing any pants?”

“Yeah, she just drove me here but she can’t come in ‘cuz she’s not wearing pants.”

I am not going to ask you can’t make me ask nope no way I am not asking

“Okay.  Let’s try one more time, real hard, to remember Erin’s last name.  I can have the office call for her to come out this door.  She’s supposed to be out by now anyway, so she’ll probably come out soon anyway.”

She thinks and gives me a name.

“Are you sure?”

She nods vigorously.

“Okay.  I’m gonna go to the office and tell them to call for Erin to come out, okay?  Where’s your te-te’s car?”

She points.  I don’t see a car. Auntie apparently didn’t figure out not to pull up by where the buses were.  At that moment I hear an all-call behind me for the name that this little girl has given me, so apparently Auntie got tired of waiting and just called the school.  I point out that they just called for Erin and the little girl runs away.

All right then.

Glad I could help.