NOT YOUR "G" RATED BLOG!

Friday! Heaven!  Same word if you ask me.  Never knew that before two weeks ago though!  School still was in session though, so it was the same typical routine, only with much rowdier children, anxiously awaiting the weekend.  Although, something was different.  While my official title at the school is "the tutor" I have really become the special education teacher, which is not a bad deal at all.  Really, I am enjoying it much more than I thought I ever would.  However, I still have the responsibility of tutoring if it is needed, and this was the day this finally happened.

I was tracked down by the kindergarten, first and second grade teacher.  Sounds like people were chasing me all over, but this is only one person.  She just teaches all three grades at once, in one classroom.  This is the job I would have been doing had I not asked for the tutoring job instead.  I go to school everyday thankful I asked for the tutoring job, as I hear the teacher yelling from across the school; well, I guess across the room, but same difference.  Anyways, she tracked me down and asked if I was tutoring children one-on-one.  I told her not at the moment, just my three boys, but I would more than happy to take one if she needed it.  She told me that Vanessa needed help writing her numbers out.  Not the actually numbers, but how to spell them.  She had no problem with the lower numbers, but she could not comprehend that the numbers just repeated when she got to twenty by adding them on the end.  She just got lost.  Of course, I was just thinking, "How in the world am I going to teach this.  All my education classes weren't for teaching things like, math and spelling, but for art.  Spelling was, and still is, one of my worst subjects."  But I went in there like I was the king anyways.  Not knowing which girl was Vanessa, I just walked in the class, stood there for thirty seconds as every child in the class turned with huge smiles and shouted, "HELLO MR. SHUES!"  I tell them to settle down, which never works, and then I just said, "Vanessa!"  Of course she was pointed out as every head turned towards her.  Never mind the clue of the little girl that jumped right up with a little smile, followed by a roll of the eyes as she noticed I wasn't here to play, but to help her.  I walk up to her, and with the little kids I try to get them to like me, which is pretty hard to do!  Not really!  They like anyone that pays the slightest bit of attention to them.  Well, Vanessa is the girl in the desk by the teacher's desk.  I walk up to her as I feel all the eyes peering on my back.  She stands up to address me, but talks so lightly that I can't hear her.  Of course she is embarrassed!  To solve this problem, I bend slightly grasping her around her biceps and curl her up to my level and put her down as she is standing on her desk, where I can look at her eye level and whisper to her without everyone hearing us.  Of course the class goes nuts yelling, "Me next Mr. Shues!"  I put my mouth by her ear and whisper, "Vanessa, I am going to help you with your spelling is that ok?"  With her cute little smile she says she guesses I can.  Then, she leans back forward and says, "Can you please put me back down on the floor?"  I tell her we are going to get to work and get her back on track, I pick her up and set her on the ground as she turned and sat in her seat.

I sit and work with her, making her write the numbers out, then spell each one of them beside it.  She makes it to ten, but isn't sure how to spell the rest of the words.  So, I write them to twenty and ask her to do the same thing, looking at mine for help.  I then explain to her that she has all the spellings she needs on her paper, and I am not going to write any more of the numbers out.  I show her how to do twenty-one with the dash in the middle, then tell her it goes two, three, four, etc..., all the way to thirty.  She is allowed to look at her previous numbers to see how its done.  I leave to go check on my three, come back, and she has written to twenty-six perfectly!  It was amazing.  I couldn't help but give her a high five as a reward.  Good reward, huh?  As she finished up, I sat across from her, leaning on my elbows and placed my chin in my hands.  She does the same and we talk about life for a bit.  Life for a first grader is much different than for a twenty-two year old.  Never really thought about that before.  Then, after a bit of silence, I looked her right in her big eyes and say, "Do you like me Vanessa?"  She sits and looks for a bit at me, rolls her eyes, sticks out her bottom lip and then opens her mouth.  "I just think you are kinda cute!"  Needless to say I laughed.  Quite a bit.  Kids sure do say the darndest things.  

The day continued on, and football practice finally came.  We had it in the classroom, as we could draw out plays, talk about rules and just get the guys ready for when we could actually use a real field on Monday to practice on.  We then went out, walked through some plays and sent the boys on there way.  Some stay and talk for a bit, as they'd rather hang out with us at practice than go home.  We sit around for a bit and chat before we send them home so we can get home.  As I am driving home, I start feeling a sharp pain my knee, then another, and then the same thing all over a little more north in a place that you don't want all that many painful memories during your life.  However, it seemed like these bites were really being produced quite frantically in the place where the sun isn't shining all that often.  Driving in Miami traffic, I can just start swatting and hitting all over, so I put up with it a bit until I finally got to a red-light.  I look down under the steering-wheel where I am feeling one of the stings to see a red fire-ant just going to town on my skin.  With this, I know that is exactly what I had going on under my pants.  Being in the car, there is nothing I can do except kind push in places around that region.  No chance I'm carelessly going to start punching, hitting or slapping.  The pain could be much worse if I start doing that.  I man up, and drive home.  As I walk straight to the bathroom to check things out, it feels as if I had been chafing and rubbing myself raw.  However, with no surprise, when I check things out that is not what I found.  When my eyes focus to the dim lights of our bathroom, I notice a nice chuck out of my "body" where the ants had been focusing on.  Don't know why they chose this, but whatever.  Nothing I can do now except accept the fact that I really am what would be known as a "fire-crotch!"