Once Upon a Time......

Once upon a time…..

There was a little boy in second grade who didn’t like his teacher. The teacher was a young man who really didn’t want to be teaching second graders. What he really wanted to do was coach high school football. But in order to do that he had to agree to teach the second grade.

This teacher didn’t really have the temperament for second graders…..especially the exasperating ones, which is what this particular second grader was.  

It was a recipe for disaster.

One day, at story time, as the teacher was reading a book to the class he turned the page and the exasperating boy asked him to show the illustration again because he didn’t see it. The teacher said the little boy didn’t see it because he wasn’t paying attention. So the little boy did the only thing a second grader could under the circumstances…..he called him STINKYHEAD! (out loud in front of the whole class!)

The parents were called to the principal’s office, words were exchanged, the little boy was indignant, the parents apologized.

At home the parents tried to explain to the boy that he must learn to show respect to the teacher even if he didn’t mean it. (They MIGHT have had a harder time trying to explain why the teacher didn’t have to show respect for the boy, but I digress…..)

The boy apologized to the teacher in front of the class the very next day but it was too late….the teacher now treated the boy with even less respect and heaped more work on him than the others in the class.

It was a long year…….

But finally it was over and the last day of school came, along with the field day the school held each year to celebrate.

There were rides and games and food and fun and at THIS particular field day they added something new…..a dunking tank. And who do you think was chosen to be the dunkee????? That’s right boys and girls…..STINKYHEAD! (to this day I’m not sure if it was providence or the principles directive.......)

Now, field day was always a popular event at the school but the turnout for THIS particular one was phenomenal! And the MOST popular booth was the dunking tank. The line was so long it wrapped around the building.

It might have had something to do with the fact that I was at the end of that line (grinning from ear to ear) handing out free tickets!!