A day in the life of a middle school

5:45 am...Mrs. Eagle arrives at school and discovers that her snake, a 3 foot plus ball python has escaped over night. The search begins.

7:15 am...We get an email from a parent indicating that she's upset that someone called her husband regarding her son who was getting suspended for 5 days. Apparently there's a nasty divorce pending and we should have known not to call him. News to everyone, especially as the kid was the one who suggested we call dad since no one could find mom, and dad's name is on the emergency card. Dad, by the way, was stunned that kid was being suspended as his soon to be ex-wife and son had informed him that everyone was just peachy this year. He was also apparently in the dark about the five classes son is failing.

7:25 am...Mrs. Eagle puts out a "lost snake email" to the entire staff. As she hits the send button she happens to look up at the clock and spies a little snakey head peeking out from behind the number three. She promptly sends out a "snake found" email. Many sighs of relief from those who don't like slithery things.

9:30 am...I notice that a student, one of the kids from our Emotionally Disturbed unit who's usually not a problem, has a laser pointer with him. This is absolutely forbidden so I take it from him and tell him that his mom can come pick it up at the front office later today. He goes into melt down, tells me to "eff you", and then demands that I pay him $2 for it. At this point I nearly start laughing because it's so ridiculous (not the response he expected, I'm sure). I end up having to have him removed (which took two people) and Mrs. Squirrel said he went into a complete tailspin and total meltown in her office. Apparently the root of the problem was that he knew his mother wouldn't come pick it up as she had told him he wasn't supposed to have one in the first place. He's suspended now.

10:50 am...Lunch. Our kids nearly drove the cafeteria monitor, Miss Lovely, into a psychotic rage yesterday with accusations of food fights. They were informed that unless they wanted to eat in the classrooms, they better be writing us anonymous notes telling on the kids that were doing the tossing, because "you're just as guilty if you see someone do something wrong and don't tell." Eight names keep popping up and they got to spend lunch with Mr. Enforcer. The others had assigned seating. They whined and whimpered all through lunch. Some of those with Mr. Enforcer cried. It wasn't pleasant, I'm sure.

1:05 pm...The Guidance Goddess does her computer check of the local bookings put out by the sherrif's office and discovered that one of our mothers was arrested last night for violating an order of protection. She was also arrested for same thing and DUI last week. Her son, FluBoy (he loves to borrow all of my books about disease and loved the one on the 1918 flu epidemic) was out today as he was supposed to be at the court date for mom and dad's divorce. Something tells me that it was probably pretty ugly. I hope FluBoy is okay.

1:15 pm....We spot Fabio Boy and Stoopid Boy sitting in guidance. Apparently someone set off a stink bomb in the 8th grade hallway and all fingers pointed to these two critters. Knowing these two from last year...we're guessing Fabio Boy (sneaky little twerp) talked Stoopid Boy into doing it and now he's taking the fall. Regardless, Stoopid Boy stormed out of guidance and had to be fetched by Guidance Goober before he didn't something, well, stupid.

Oh, and we did some teaching here and there as well. I think.