The Good, The Bad, and the Kindergarteners

THE GOOD

             My 4^th grade friend, Jasmine, has been spending her many after-school hours still at school, while her older sister studies.  We’ve been starting a tradition where she meets me around 2:30 or 3:00, and we go to the third grade classroom where Sophie helps me with some PT exercises. (Jasmine thought that stood for Parent Teacher Conferences, since we just had those, and we call it PTC.)  Anyway, sometimes we’ll walk around before or after, and wander out to the deck and sit awhile.  This afternoon we were sitting up on the railing of the deck, so we could get away from the dogs, and Jasmine asked me a question.  “If you were God, what would you do?”  My tired mind couldn’t really spit out an answer very well.  All of my theology classes told me to be careful with that question, so I stumbled around and said something about how I would do things the same way God does them, cause He’s got it figured out.  “What would you do?” I asked Jasmine.  “Hmm…I would probably clean up the environment.”  Dang it.  So simple.  Couldn’t I have thought of something like, end violence or crime or world peace?  After all, God is going to achieve all those things at the right time, so I’d still have a safe answer. 

            Then I asked her, if she could ask God any question, what would she ask Him?  She said, “I would ask him if my Grandma was still alive.”  Oh man.  What do I do with that one?  “And if He said they weren’t [she’d also inserted her great-grandparents and ancestors by this point], then I’d be really sad.”

            “What if He said they were sleeping, but He was going to wake them up and you could all get to Heaven at the same time?”  I am an Adventist, so I just couldn’t resist.  The conversation drifted to what Heaven would be like as the island breezes cooled our sweaty faces.  She said she wanted to slide down a rainbow, and I explained to her what a mansion was like.  She said she wanted a room that couldn’t get dirty.  That made me laugh.

THE BAD

            One morning, just after the five-minute bell rang before school started, I was walking (or one-crutch-limping) back to the office from talking with a parent.  I ended up in the middle of a small group of middle schoolers, and two of them were passing around a cell phone.  “Take it,” one of them said to the other.  “Take it where?” I said in an authoritative tone (or at least I like to imagine it was).  “Uh, to the office…of course…”  Electronics, including cell phones, are not allowed on campus during school hours.  Since they had just passed the office, and were on their way out to the middle school boonies, I knew the office was not on their way.  But obviously I couldn’t exactly chase them down.  So I did what modern teachers and administrators do.  I got on facebook and messaged their teacher, and told him what happened, and said he might have a little fun with a bag search today.  He messaged me back a few minutes later and said thanks for the tip, and that he would.  Maybe an hour later, not one, not two, but three students from his class showed up in the office.  One with the cell phone, one with betelnut, and one with a cigarette.  Oh man.  Three for one!  I admit, I was maybe a bit too satisfied with the result of our facebook conspiracy.

THE KINDERGARTNERS

           I was really running out of things to do in the afternoon.  I guess I had things I could do, technically, but it was the stuff at the bottom of the list that I never really want to get to, especially in the afternoon.  I was sleepy, and I’d turned the air conditioner off for awhile, so it was hot enough to make me give up on using my brain.  The three Kindergartners had finished their morning classes and lunch already, and since it was raining off and on, couldn’t really go outside.  And they definitely were NOT ready for a nap yet.  So they wandered into my office.  At first I tried to ignore them or give them short, adult answers, and thought I would try to keep working.  Then I gave up, because I realized it would be more fun to hang out with them anyway.  So they found my computer, and we started watching some of the short videos I’ve made that are in my iTunes.  They had fun watching random birthday, farewell, and music videos.  (That’s about all in my repertoire).  I had a great idea while we were watching them.  “Do YOU want to be in a video?”  Of course they did.  So I opened iMovie and recorded about three minutes or so of them acting silly.  Then we played it back over and over—on regular speed, on high speed, on low speed, with sound variations.  It was thoroughly entertaining for all of us. Then, when I figured I should probably do some adult work, I finally closed the computer and took them to the bunk bed in the office for a nap.  Well, it wasn’t quite that easy, but it wasn’t too long before the remaining two were fast asleep (one went home).  And now I have some pretty awesome footage to remember my afternoon of slacker babysitting in the office.