Day 6 - Monday

What could go wrong on a Monday morning? The kids all had a nice relaxing weekend away from the pressures of school and they are feeling refreshed and enthusiastic about their education. Right? Oh, yeah. There was that little incident involving fire in the bathroom from last week that didn't get resolved. Then there's the two kids who got into a fight before school even started. Oh, and who would have guessed that we'd send a student to the hospital in an ambulance this morning? Maybe I shouldn't have called those other teachers first thing this morning and offered to help offload some of their more mundane tasks in anticipation of a slow day.

There is fun in it all, however. The fun comes from catching the bad guy. You remember the little fellow who got caught with matches after school last Friday? Well it didn't take long to connect him to the infamous Cheeto Fire of 2010. The Cheeto Fire was named after the source of the flames that filled the boys' bathroom with an odd odor last week. No damage actually occurred, but after only a few minutes of interviewing guilty consciences, I learned that Match Boy had invited a friend to join him in the bathroom to experiment with a new technique for making Hot Cheetos even hotter. According to their theory, a small flame held beneath the puffed chip-like creation would make it do something new and exciting. Apparently the word "burn" never entered their realm of hypotheses.

I always feel a little better when the truly guilty let the tears flow just a bit. It's nice to see that they are scared and that they fear the consequences of their transgressions. These little guys held back the tears until the just after the sentence was pronounced, then they let them flow. As the tears started to flow, so did the names of anyone else who was within a block of the flames. One name happened to belong to the little guy who first ratted them out last week. Isn't that convenient.

The best part, though, came when I called home and the parents of one of the little pyrotechnicians had just one question. "Where did he get the Cheetos?" And this my friends, is what we call "A parent that makes me go hmmm." I can't wait until tomorrow!