I Said Yes

We're off school for the whole week for Thanksgiving. Since I'm sure you don't want to hear about how my cleaning is going (I've been rearranging furniture), and since the editing of my novel is about as interesting as cleaning, I thought I'd repost something from the old blog. This first appeared on October 12, 2006.  

Middle school band. Those three words, used together, should be all the explanation I need.

Need more? Well, I can talk about the time that one of them chased another around the room wielding a music stand as if it was a baseball bat and the other kid was the baseball.

I've written other posts about them here, here, and here.  

But I'm not here to talk about the horrors of that assignment. I guess I'm just setting the scene. I was not in the best of moods, and so I was not as kind as I would like. And that's when I did something that was not very nice.

I had a kid ask if he could go and get a drink of water. Now, allowing kids out of class is not something that we are supposed to do. But I know the school pretty well, and I know that the drinking fountain is just outside the band room door, nearly next to it. So, for most of the day when a kid would ask to get a drink, I'd say fine. He/she would return in a minute or less, and I have no problem with that.

So, to the kid who asked, I said sure. I don't know if it was the noise in the room (it was a bit loud) or if he was just expecting to get a no, for he went directly into the explanation phase of the question. This is where they explain that the water fountain is close or that they're really thirsty or they come up with some other reason why I should say yes.

I don't know if it was just because it was late in the day, if it was because I was tired, if it was because I was having one of my miserable headaches, or if it was because I was tired of not being listened to, but what I did was walk away. "What did I say?" I had said yes. I guess the kid couldn't take yes for an answer.