Breaker

I should have known from the get go. I should have realized when I looked down and saw my feet nestled in my beach-saavy Brazil flip-flops. I was in for a rough day!

Minus the footwear, the day started like many others at work. I was in the school gym shooting some baskets with the students who arrive at school early. It's not part of my duties, but, sometimes, I put in that extra time and care to do things like play basketball with the lovely children. 

The kids were standing under the basket rebounding my ball as I shot from all corners of the miniature sized gym. The boy standing directly under the basket, Grant we will call him, was taking bets on the long shot I was about to take. As I let it fly, somebody called out his name. Grant immediately turned to see who was calling him. The ball snapped through the net and straight into Grant's nose. 

                                                                                                                          Now, I won't lie and say that blood game rushing out of Grant's nose, but it definitely slowly trickled out. He claimed it didn't hurt through the endless stream of tears falling from his eyes. I brought him to the nurse and brought myself to the assistant principal's office to let him know what I had done. He thought it was hilarious and said it would certainly be a funny story for Grant to tell in years to come. He will always remember the day he got a bloody nose from his pregnant teacher. 

Later in the day, I continued my awful day. Since it is a movie week at lunch time, one of the kids brought in Alice in Wonderland to watch. Not the corny Alice in Wonderland you are thinking of, the one with Johnny Depp as the freakish Mad Hatter. One girl non-chalantly wondered what you should do if you don't like the movie. I told her I wasn't a big fan of it either so I just don't pay attention to it. 

She acted like that was a good answer, but apparently it was not. For as soon as Johnny Depp's demon-like face showed up on the screen, she ran up to me hysterically crying, begging if she could go eat lunch in the office. 

Awesome, for the second time today, I was sending a sobbing child to the office. She did not make it clear that she did not like the movie because she was deathly afraid of it. 

Today, I did far more than break the dress code with my little flip-flops. I broke the hopes, noses, and good dreams of my students. I feel lucky to still be employed as I head to bed tonight!