Oops!

 

(An 8th grader’s recollection of kindergarten)

The kindergarten children at B. W. Henderson School were playing on the dark blue carpet.  They were also off the carpet, in the play kitchen, under the tables, and a few other places harder to get to.  The teacher, Miss Kim Pham, said they could “play nicely” with the puzzles.  Naturally the kids went berserk.  Pieces of puzzles were scattered everywhere!

Kids were finger-painting, easel-painting and painting themselves as much as the paper.  Most of the colors on the palette were nice and bright except yellow which was dark because Jonathan forgot to dip his brush in the water after using a lot of purple to paint a picture of his purple house.

Some kids had to use crayons while waiting their turn to paint.  Each kid got 15 minutes at the easel but nobody really kept track of the minutes.  If you timed it just right you could speed up your turn.

You watched the kids painting.  When one of them, a boy or girl, needed to go to the bathroom, they put down the brush and left the Happy Paint Area.  Then you could walk right up to the kid’s abandoned easel and start painting.  Hey, who’s gonna know?

Many different kinds of toy alphabet blocks were scattered all about.  It was easy to trip on them or kick one for a goal.  They call them “toy blocks” but actually a kid could build a real something with them.  They were large blocks that weighed a ton.  Some were curved and shaped like  huge wood arches that made neat tunnels for tiny boats and cars and planes.

There were Log Cabin sets and plastic Lego pieces and lots of stuff with no name but fun to knock down after you built something high enough.  This could be done by smashing it with your hands or “accidentally” running into it.  After all, what was the point of building something really tall if not to knock it down?

Of course clean-up always took forever because every block had to be put away just right.  Why, I don’t know!

Anyway, it seemed like another normal quiet noisy day when Mrs. BigSpoon, the mother of Julia, came into the room a little too fast.  She’s one of those grown-ups who gets scared by being around too many kids all at once.

She was zipping her beeline over to Miss Pham with her mouth already open about halfway when she stepped on a toy or a kid or something and lost her balance.  She looked like a Circus Fat Lady trying to be a ballerina.

I mean the folds of flab on her arms were flailing about and the alarm was raised for any kid who might get crushed by that falling empire of flesh.  Kids being kids, they all cleared away from the Landing Zone in less than a zillionth of a second.

Mrs. BigSpoon did like to do things in dramatic fashion.  She didn’t go straight to the ground and PLOP!   No, she was going to make a spectacle of herself first.  She tottered about a bit, swinging her arms wildly as though clutching at flying birds and like she still had a chance of regaining her balance.

She looked around the room with a wild gleam in her eyes, silently begging someone to come to her rescue before the calamity arrived full force like a Texas hurricane.

Of course none of us kids moved an inch for we were fearfully mesmerized by the sight.  We stood stock still, unable to take our gaping eyes off the figure of this incredibly large woman about to fall.

We were worried lest she tear a hole in the floor and fall through to China.  We were fascinated beyond fascinated by the accident about to happen!  After what seemed like ages but was probably only about two-and-a-half seconds Mrs. BigSpoon’s arms flew up in the air like a referee signaling a touchdown.

She started spinning and made two or three rotations before her center of gravity gave way and her body went flying and then she fell down: KER-SPLAT!  She fell right on top of the lunch she was bringing for Julia.  A banana in the lunch sack became unzipped from its skin and the mush sent flying through the air at 100 miles an hour at least.

The next thing I remember was Mrs. BigSpoon’s big purse falling open.  All kinds of objects spilled out like lipstick and keys and coins and weird things with no name.

Naturally we started dancing all around her body and whooping it up, kind of like Apaches or those little people around Gulliver when he traveled to the land of the Brobdingnags.

We were making so much noise you couldn’t even hear the bell ringing!  This was not new for our class but since this time somebody got hurt (and a really big somebody) Miss Pham had no choice but to take action.  She took charge and when she got like that it was never a good idea to make fun of her.  She got scarier than a lion and lightning flashed from her eyes!

She had a look that was more powerful than a witch’s curse when she wanted to boss us: a look that said “I can see right through you.  I can also see your mother and father right this instant.  I can show them what you have been doing with my magic camera and I can tell you they are going to be very very VERY disappointed in how you have been acting!”

You could cry or laugh or act crazy or hide or apologize but it didn’t matter.  When we crossed that thin line one time too many we knew Miss Pham would turn mean as a Tom Turkey and even fight dirty if she had to.  It was best just to say “Yes Miss Pham!” and humor her until she calmed down so we did.

First thing she did was send us all outside to play because she had an Aide who could watch us.  I think she did this so as not to embarrass Mrs. BigSpoon who was sitting on the floor where she fell.  I notice teachers think it is easier to give First Aid without a lot of kids helping them.  The Yard Duty always shoos everybody away when a kid gets hurt except for one or two of the kid’s closest friends to comfort the sniveling crybaby.  Yard Duties are smart.

After we went outside, I sneaked back to look through the window to see what was going on.  Miss Pham helped Julia’s Mom stand up and then she helped Julia’s Mom pick up the things that fell out of her purse.  Then Miss Pham got the crushed lunch, fluffed up the paper bag and the scrunched sandwich inside and put it in Julia’s cubby-hole but the piece of banana that got squished she picked up and tossed in the little trash-can by her desk.

“Are you all right, Karen?” she asked Julia’s mom.

“Yes, I’m fine.  Just a bit shaken up.  How clumsy of me!” was Julia’s Mom reply.

So Miss Pham shook hands with Mrs. BigSpoon who had to leave after she dropped off a paper at the office saying Julia had received all her shots including even a tetanus booster from last summer because she had stepped on a nail.

Then Miss Pham came outside to watch us play.  It was cool the way she handled everything so smoothly.  Mrs. BigSpoon was on her way home and we were having extra recess time!

Miss Pham looking at each one of to see if we were playing nicely and the whole day was just zipping along as smoothly as it possibly could–or so I thought!

There were kids on the slide, the swings, the monkey bars, and everywhere else kids can climb.  We’re a real acrobatic class because we have several of the best climbers in the school and maybe in the whole world.

We go up poles and down poles like chimpanzees.  Every one of us can do hand-over-hand swings on the monkey bars and we have great Chicken Fights when no one is around to tell us to stop.

Everything must have looked okay to Miss Pham because she breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I think that’s because if one of us falls and cracks open our head when the teacher’s not around the teacher will get into extra big trouble with the Principal or something.

We like Miss Pham a lot so we never do anything really dumb when she’s inside and we’re outside,  like when the phone rings and she has to go answer it.  Whenever we get hurt we make sure she’s outside.

I mean, we don’t try to get hurt on purpose, it just seems to work out that way.  When I fell and got a bloody knee Miss Pham was there in a jiffy with a band-aid even before my tears were dry.  She’s fast and that good!

Nobody noticed the cigarette on the floor.  It had fallen out of Mrs. BigSpoon’s purse when she fell and everything came tumbling out of her purse.  The cigarette rolled under a small bookcase on wheels.  Nobody noticed, that is, UNTIL MUCH LATER.

That’s when my best friend at the time, five-year old blond-hair Paul, found it.  Paul likes to get down on his hands and knees and look for things.  He was always finding neat things that way even though sometimes they belonged to another kid and he didn’t tell the kid he found it and that led to a fight which was fun to watch.

Anyway, that’s why Paul found the white cigarette first.

Six-year-old Veronica, who was also my friend and has strawberry red hair, saw him find it.  Now Paul was a nice boy and he was pretty smart.  He could write his own name, he knew his A-B-C’s and he could count all the way to 100 by two’s.  I mean, wowsville smart!

He could read a book by himself and the pictures he drew afterwards were “very nice”, according to Miss Pham.  His drawings looked like cartoons because he loved to draw Bart Simpson, the Ninja Turtles, and the Power Rangers.  He wanted to be an artist when he grew up as he kept telling everybody.

But Paul did have one small problem; he was the biggest dare-devil in kindergarten.  He would do ANYTHING if you dared him!

All a kid had to say was “Paul, I dare you to climb that tree!” and Paul would run over to the tree and start climbing it as high as he could go or a kid could say “Paul, I dare you stand on that table when Miss Pham’s not looking!” and Bam! Paul was dancing on top of the table.

So when Veronica said to him, “I dare you to smoke that cigarette, Paul!” that’s all he had to hear.  He made up his mind to try it or his name wasn’t Paul Waterhouse!

Now Paul, being a smart kid like I said, already knew where Miss Pham kept some matches.  Miss Pham thought it was a safe place because in her mind she kept it a secret but Paul knew all about it.

He found the “secret place” on the first day of school.  He looked through all the shelves in the walk-in closet when Miss Pham was on the phone talking to somebody important so she couldn’t hang up when she wanted to.

By standing on tiptoe, Paul discovered the birthday shelf.  There were birthday candles and matches in a little box.  Paul remembered this so he went to get the box of matches.  First he had to get a large chair and position it perfectly.  He picked a sturdy wooden chair, not the cheap plastic kind where you can fall and break your head if you stand on it and it tips over.  Paul knew how to pick the best chair which he could climb swiftly up and down.

After he was done getting the matches he put the chair back under the table, just where he found it.  He was a very careful boy that way and uncommonly bright.  Paul never gave himself away or left a trail that would lead back to him.  If he got caught it was always because some other kid tattled on him.  That’s the only way Miss Pham ever catches on when Paul’s been prowling and pranking other kids.

Paul checked to see where Miss Pham was.  Good!  She was still outside with the rest of the class.  Paul waved the matches at Veronnie which was Veronica’s nickname.  He told her, “Come on Veronnie and follow me!”

He went over to the bathroom area where no one could see him.  He lit a match and then he lit the cigarette.  He puffed it a couple of times and blew smoke out of his mouth.

That’s what Veronnie was waiting to see!

Since Paul was not scared of her dare, Veronnie decided to take a turn herself.  She made a few puffs of smoke, blowing the smoke upwards.  Then Paul had a second turn.  Then Veronnie had a third turn.  Then Paul had a fourth turn.  Then Veronnie.   Then the whole cigarette was gone.

Miss Pham was still outside with the class, lucky for them.

It’s funny how when you’re up to no good you think you’ll get interrupted any second only sometimes when you’re extra special lucky nobody comes in and you have all the time in the world to finish what you were doing that you weren’t supposed to be doing.  Those are the best days!

The only problem was, Paul didn’t really know what tobacco was and neither did Veronnie.  No parent smoked cigarettes in their homes.  They didn’t know what tobacco smelled like or tasted like because they had never smelled or tasted it.

So they didn’t know that the cigarette in their hands was not made from tobacco.  It was made from Marijuana!  This kind of cigarette makes a person act crazy and want to do some very strange things!

The class was coming in now; Miss Pham was near the door.  Paul quickly went to the sink and ran a little water over the end of the cigarette to put it out.

Then he put the stump in his pocket.  He got the wet burned out-match out of the sink, wrapped it in a tissue and dumped it in the trash can.  He darted into the bathroom and flushed both toilets and came walking out like he was tucking his shirt into his pants.

He got back to his seat in a hurry after that so Miss Pham would not get mad and put his name on the board.  She wrote Paul’s name on the board about four or five times a day unless she was having a “I give up!” kind of day and didn’t feel like bothering.  That was just Paul’s way, to break a few rules each day so the teacher would notice him.

Veronnie did the same thing as Paul and started to make a beeline for her desk.  But on the way back to her seat she began acting a little . . . well, strange!

She went under a couple of desks instead of around them.  Next she stopped to look at the fish in the big aquarium and then she waved at the fish!

“Look!” she called out, “that one waved back at me!”

She got back to her desk just in time for the whole class was inside the room now.

She looked at Paul to see how he was doing and if her secret was safe with him.  What she saw surprised her.  Paul didn’t look so good!

Paul’s head was beginning to feel funny.  He felt dizzy at first, like he had been spinning around in circles for too long.  He felt light-headed as though air was flowing into his skull from somewhere.  Then he felt like his body didn’t weigh anything at all and he was a balloon floating free up in the sky!

He looked at Veronnie to see how she was doing.  By now Veronnie was very busy with a coloring book.  Her crayons were out, spilled all over her desk-top.  She was coloring in her Little Mermaid book, which was her favorite.

She picked up her brightest red crayon and colored Ariel’s hair with it.  When she was done using the red crayon, she threw it away over her shoulder!

She did the same thing with the next five colors she used: yellow, orange, green, blue, and purple!  She tossed them all away!

Paul shut his eyes for a few seconds.  Then he opened them.  One of the kids had let the pet rabbits, Snowshoe and Snowflake, out of their cages and they were hopping about the room.

Paul took all of his crayons out of the box and began throwing them away, one by one.  Over his shoulder, just like Veronnie had done!

Soon crayons were flying through the air in every direction as other kids began copying Paul  and Veronnie.  The parrot, Paulette, began to squawk loudly in her cage, adding to the commotion.

Paul got up and stood on the top of a table.  He knew he was acting crazy but he couldn’t stop!  He jumped from table to table, whooping it up.  Veronnie stayed at her seat.  She had started a new picture.

She was busy coloring her cool picture of Mr. and Mrs. MoonMan.  They were aliens colored green with extra big orange heads who came from Mars and Zupiter.

Miss Pham began to get really scared.  She was a first-year teacher and today was not going well.  She called out “Children, please sit down!” but nobody could hear her.  Rodolfo had turned on the radio and now loud music was blasting out and the children were dancing!

Paul pulled the phone off the wall and let it drop to the floor.  Then Veronnie stopped drawing and climbed up on the sink.  She took off her shoes and socks.  She put her feet in the sink.  She turned on the water and began to kick and splash.  She was a very happy kid!

Miss Pham did the only thing she could do.  Since the kids couldn’t hear her, she tried to catch them, one by one.  Big mistake!  Can you imagine trying to catch 20 kids all of them able to scoot under tables faster than a rabbit jumps in its hole?

But she did see one thing.  When Paul ran by her and tried to jump over a desk and missed, something white fell out of his pocket.  She picked up the cigarette butt and smelled it.  She began to understand . . . but what was she to do?

The best thing to do, Miss Pham decided, was to let the zoo-party go on.  “The kids will get tired and then I can get them to sit down”, she thought to herself.  It was a good plan–almost.  First year teachers often make big mistakes like that for some reason.  I think it’s maybe because they don’t know as much as they think they know.  They have big hearts but peas for a brain.

I looked around the zoo-room and said to myself: “Wait for these kids to get tired?  I don’t think so!”  For one thing, Paul the Dare-Devil was now going out the door to the play yard with Veronnie close behind.  He jumped on the biggest tricycle and Veronnie stood on the little bike-step behind her hero.  Paul was wearing a black cape and a Batman mask.  He was holding an orange Space Sword that could light up in his hand.  He was ready!

He began pedaling while holding up the sword and yelling orders to the other kids.  He pedaled through the little kids gate with the please-don’t-go-pass-this gate sign and the whole class followed.  He went down the sidewalk to the big green park that was next to the school.  I went, too, of course!

Here were swings and climbing toys.  Here were flowers and hills and green grass.  The sunshine was warm and bright.  There were big open spaces and the children ran everywhere.

Miss Pham had no choice but to go on a “nature walk” with the children.  As they walked she told Bonnie and Lisa about the flowers.  Other kids came closer to listen.  Pretty soon the whole class was walking behind her.

Then she sat them down in the middle of a big, grassy open field.  She played circle games with them like “Duck, Duck, Goose” and “Red Robin Red Robin, Where Is Your Nest?”  Many of the children took off their shoes and socks and dug their toes into the cool grass.

The day was warm and the air was silky with a light breeze blowing.  Miss Pham laid back in the grass for a moment to look at the clouds.  So did the children.  There were so many wonderful shapes to see among the clouds that day!

Soon Paul and Veronnie had fallen asleep and the other children were resting.  They had such sweet smiles on their faces Miss Pham decided not to tell on them.

When it was time to go back she got them up and had all the kids put on their shoes and socks.  They brushed the dirt and grass and leaves away as best they could, shaking it out of their hair as well.  Then she lined them up and walked them quietly back to school.

Later that day, our Principal, Mr. Lighthouse, gave her a big compliment.  He thought it was a GREAT IDEA to take the kids to the park for a Nature lesson!  AND he thought she was a great teacher also that she was very pretty also she was very smart and would she like to have dinner with him?

Miss Pham didn’t say “yes” and she didn’t say “no”.  She just smiled and said “What time?”

When she got home, she gave Julia’s mom, Mrs. BigSpoon, a surprise call on the telephone.  Miss Pham told her, “Come get your cigarette!” and that was all.

Paul went home and decided not to tell his parents about the cigarette and everything he did that day.  Veronnie, on the other hand, went home and told her parents about Paul smoking–but forgot to mention that she had smoked a few puffs herself.

Miss Pham became a very popular teacher.  Every kid loved her.  She was kind and nice and she made school a lot of fun.  We even learned a lot!  And she could keep a secret.

Miss Pham never told anyone about what really happened that day!

(Oops, maybe I shouldn’t either!)