Little Barber Shop of Horrors

Since the arrival of Spring, the kids in my class have gone bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I'm not entirely sure if it's the weather, or the fact that we have T minus 24 days of school and counting, or what, but they have been nuts. They've all got the crazy eye. Spring fever. Whatever you want to call it. And apparently, lucky for me, everyone tells me this is how it is until the end. of. the. YEAR. Eva and I were discussing it and we decided we don't think we'll be able to make it that long. I mean, I may very well end up in a home, or an institution, but whatever.

So, the other day at school, we had Career Day. For 2 hours, my kids, along with all the other kids in school, went to visit various stations to check out different careers. First, we went to see a Karate instructor demonstration, which they loved. Then, we went to listen to, and I mean this when I say it, SERIOUSLY, the most depressing clown ever. First of all, I hate clowns. Second of all, she was so sad and boring. She told the kids that, "Being a clown is only 5% fun and 95% hard work." Does she not know 1st graders do not understand percentages? I'm an adult and I barely get them. And what a depressing thing to tell 6 and 7 yeard olds anyway! All they cared about was the little dog she had doing tricks, and they barely saw that lovely performance. Then we went to see the firemen and fire truck and lastly we went to see a police officer. During his speech, SEVERAL students wanted to share about how their mother/father/uncle/aunt/neighbor/step-cousin/god sister/whoever was currently or has previously been in jail. Delightful.

The rest of the afternoon was spent making The Gallon Man. We've been learning measurement so I decided we'd make a Gallon Man. I'd explain it to you, but you don't care, and plus I don't want to do it, but just know that it involves colors, glue, and scissors. So we are working, quite nicely I might say, and I'm walking them step-by-step through every little thing because that's just what you have to do, when one of the girls in my room comes up and says she "found big pieces of hair in the trash." She then escorts me to the trash can where I do, in fact, see with my own eyes said pieces of hair. I ask the room who cut their hair and immediately an array of choruses of "Not me!" "I don't know, but I didn't do it!" and "I ain't even got hair, Miss Shrop!" broke out throughout the room. I kind of write it off, figuring I'll just get to the bottom of this hairy situation later, when not 5 minutes passes and the same student actually brings me another chunk of hair. I detest hair that is not attached to the head/body/wherever it is supposed to be; it grosses me out. Two more times this very same thing happened when finally, I'd had it. I examined the hair color closely, and at one point was pretty convinced that one of them had actually cut the under part of my hair because it was somewhat the same color, but I soon lay that theory to rest. I then proceeded to walk around the room with a small piece of the hair and held it up to any child's head that even remotely had the same color hair. I finally looked at the child who kept bringing me the hair to tell her I don't who this could belong to, when I stop. I look. I stare. I gasp. On either side of this poor child's long light brown locks are two, rather large, chunks of missing hair. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Oh my goodness, honey, what is this?" (as I rake my hands through either side of her hair, pulling out even more pieces of hair)
Child: "What?" (genuinely very VERY confused)
Me: "Sweetie, this is YOUR hair. Did you cut your hair?"
Child: "My hair? No! I promise!"
Me: "Well, baby, it's yours. I don't know how it happened, but it's your hair."
Child: "Aww, man! Now I'm gonna have two big chunks of hair missing on my head!"

The mystery of how or why this happened is still unsolved. There are several theories, but no concrete evidence for them. One includes the girl next to said girl apparently pushed her hair out of her face for her while she had scissors in her hand and this possibly caused the locks to seperate, or the child did the same thing herself and accidently cut it. Regardless, I did have to apologize profusely to the child's mother and assured her all students will be closley watched while using scissors. At least hers, anyway.



P.S. I had a FANTASTIC cherry on top of my mediocre week this Friday. Seems as if yours truly has won tickets to the Schaeffer Eye Center Crawfish Boil the first weekend in May. At this grand event I will get to see the lovely Jason Mraz and perhaps Snoop Dogg. I've even been entered into a drawing now to possibly MEET Jason Mraz. That would make my 2009, I tell ya. The great thing is, I never win anything! I found out the creeperton DJ on the radio station, who kept referring to me as a hottie even though he's never seen me and it was 7 in the morning, lives in my apartment complex and he told me to "look for him around." Sure thing, boss. I'll be watching close for your voice since I know what you look like and all. Creeeeep-yyyyyy.