Saturday, November 18, 2006

THis is me, not blogging...

Okay, so I'm at work, and my daughter is rolling around on the floor eating whatever our demon-fart janitor didn't clean up (which is considerable) and I'm supposed to be entering grades (which I've done, to my credit, for an hour) and I thought I'd tell you all about my drive home yesterday.

You see, I've got this thing... I'm a naturally melancholy person as it is, and I usually keep that under control, but when I'm stressed, or, like yesterday, coming down off a stressful week, sometimes my brain does this whacko-psycho-mutant-mental thing where I take something minor, like, say, the cave-troll's chronic constipation, and go borrowing trouble from a big fat toad frog and transform it (all in my head, mind you) into, say, colon cancer in the pediatric ward... and then I sob all the way home. (Because it's usually when I'm commuting. This is my writing time, and for some reason, accessing my writing creativity occassionally unlocks the cave of this big-assed mental monster!)

So I'm doing this yesterday, and I recognize the need for catharsis (with the itty bitty sane part of my brain) and I'm letting it go because mostly I'm just sobbing, and I sort of need to do that--it's been a rough semester at ol' NHS and a good cry helps sometimes. I get it all under control by the time I get home, and am gearing up for my evening knit/feed/bathe marathon and I'm greeted my my hyper-excited middle schoolers. They come bounding out of the house, jabbering away like they got a free carnival day at school or something, and I think (for a second) "Oh good--something to totally free myself from the cathartic darkness I drove home in" and then I hear what they're actually saying:

"Mom--you'll never believe what happened to us! Some kid brought a bomb to school and we spent the whole day in lock down watching movies! We're on the news and everything."

And my brain took on a one-word vocabulary for the rest of the night. You wanna guess the word? (Hint--four letters, rhymes with truck...)

Oh yeah... it's funny--when you borrow trouble, you often end up with generous neighbors, don't you?

5 comments:

Liz said...

Holy crap.

Okay, well, an interesting day, to be sure. The upside is that the idea that they could have been in danger is so remote to them, their sense of security adn safety so profound, that they found the experience fun rather than terrifying. You get to do the terror for them.

Again, holy crap.

roxie said...

Quell bummer! Thanks to all the powers that be that they are unhurt! And if the cave troll wasn't constantly full of shit, he wouldn't be the cave troll, now would he?

Rae said...

They weren't in the school where this was a staged attack, was it? I heard about it on NPR this morning where the police showed up with guns and dogs and such to simulate a real event, but the whole thing was staged. Teachers knew, but parents and kids didn't.

Scary if it was staged. Even scarier if it wasn't. You'd think the schools would have some automatic notification system set up or something. OK, I know schools don't have the resources for that, but cripes. That's a pretty serious thing to learn from you child!

NeedleTart said...

It must be something in the air. About a week ago the High School 20 miles from my house (*not* the one I work in) had a bomb threat written on a bathroom stall, in blood, yet!! The bomb was supposedly supposed to go off the next school day. Some parents opted to keep their kids home (duh!) and the, to use your term, prick-weenie administration decided that if your child didn't attend school, it would be an un-excused absence.
As for the Cave Troll good luck. Elsest Child went through that for a couple of months. He survived and is now 6'5", so his growth was not stunted.

Anonymous said...

Wow. For once I have no idea what to say, other than I'm so glad they weren't hurt and are oblivious to the severity of what they experienced. Again, wow.