These are a couple of beauts, all right.
In a beauty pageant they always tell you the runner up before the winner, so here we go with the second most embarrassing moment from my teaching life:
I was teaching fifth grade at Lovell Elementary in Apopka and, like all teachers, my body adapted to a schedule of very short breaks and very long teaching periods. As the longer periods are occupied with the business of teaching, those short breaks become vital to any teacher with a bladder.
As I finished my lunch one day, my body informed me that it was time. I headed for the men's room and as I came up to the door I noticed that the handle was resting at an angle that it typically didn't. I grabbed the handle and lifted it and heard a snap from within the locking mechanism. This probably should have stood out as a red flag, but when you're desperate you don't notice such things. I pulled the door shut behind me and pressed the lock button on the other side of the handle and heard something slide down the inside of the hollow metal door. After taking care of business I washed my hands and walked toward the door to leave. When I gabbed the door handle it came off in my hand. The rest of the hardware was still in place, but I couldn't get the catch to slide and let me out.
I was locked in the bathroom with two minutes left before I had to pick up my class.
There was a window but it was chest high and horizontally narrow. With the door inoperable, however, it became my only possible escape. The window's height would require me to use some type of step ladder to climb out. A quick inspection of the bathroom yielded no options. The toilet and sink were along the opposite wall and no furniture was available. I would have to jump for it.
I opened the window and looked around. No students or teachers were present in the breezeway to witness what I was about to do. Thankfully, the bathroom was on the first floor. A hedge was just beyond the exterior wall. I figured that I could jump up, swing myself through the window, and come down in the space between the hedge and the wall and no one would be the wiser.
The bathroom was wide enough to give me a short run to the window, so I walked to the sink, took three strong steps and, with both hands on the sill, pushed myself through the window. A gold medalist couldn't have pulled off a better vault. The amount of power and speed that my body had generated sent me through the window, over the hedge and face first onto the sidewalk at the feet of another fifth grade class who had stopped at the door before entering the building.
Being known around the campus for pranks, snide comments and other general naughtiness, I received no sympathy from the teacher. "Mischief managed, hmmm?" she said as she directed her students into the classroom.
After allowing them to honor me with a round of applause.
Here's the winner:
My teaching life had moved a few years and a few blocks down the road and I was now at Apopka Elementary, still doing the whole fifth grade thing. This particular day happened to be the day of my annual lesson observation, and I had signed up for the very first spot at 9:00. (I didn't much care for the dread of knowing an administrator would be coming into my classroom to watch, so I always scheduled these types of things early to get them over with.)
This particular day also happened to fall just after the weekend that I started Weight Watchers. During the meeting the leader encouraged us all to drink as much water as possible every day, consuming eight glasses minimum. On my way home I stopped at Walgreens for a few things and saw that they had a bin full of clear plastic jugs priced at a dollar each, all of them sporting a shiny sticker bragging that they held an entire day's minimum requirement of water.
I was sold, and that was where my troubles began.
My new jug made it easy to get my water in during the first half of the week. I sipped throughout the school day and returned home with an empty jug, confident that I had done my part in the battle of the belly bulge.
On the morning of the observation I was nervous. I had my sixty-four ounces of water with me as always and began sipping the water more frequently than usual. The closer the clock ticked toward nine, the longer and more often I sipped. The assistant principal walked through the door right on time. I took the final swig before starting my lesson and set the now empty jug on my desk.
After sending most of the class to literacy centers, I called my highest reading group over to the floor with me. The assistant principal took a seat behind the students and began making notes on a clipboard. I started an activity that used recipes to reinforce the idea of sequence of events, and I was suddenly hit with the urge to purge. (Suddenly is not a cliché in this sense. First the urge wasn't there, then it immediately was...and with great force.) As all experienced teachers would have, I ignored it, knowing that one of the very short breaks couldn't be too far away. Then the pain began. I talked faster. Then the sweat came, first a light misting, then gradually pouring from my brow in near buckets.
"You're sweating, Mr. Ralph."
"I know, Johnny. Please pay attention to the lesson."
Apparently, sixty-four ounces of water was planning to come out of me one way or the other.
I quickly, almost involuntarily, stood up. "And now Mrs. Adams will stay with you guys as you do the independent part of this assignment," I said to the kids while walking toward the classroom's lavatory. I closed and locked the door behind me, tore my pants open and began peeing immediately. If the Guiness Book of World Records committee had been standing behind me while I was letting loose, you would have heard about me long before stumbling upon this blog. This piss was so big I actually started talking to it.
"Come on, man...come on," I whispered through clenched teeth, begging each and every one of those sixty-four ounces to find their exit. Eventually the deluge ended. I washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom.
Two of the three group members were watching, horrified, as Johnny clutched his shin. Blood dripped into his sock.
"What happened?" I asked.
"As soon as you left the floor he started spinning around like he always does," said Rachel, "and he banged his leg against the broken part of the wall."
I smelled something burning. I looked up at the assistant principal and saw a steady wisp of smoke rising from the place where her pen furiously scratched across my evaluation form. My heart dropped into the empty space in my abdomen that had been previously occupied by sixty-four ounces of water. Quietly, I ordered the group to walk Johnny down to the nurse's office and told the rest of the class to rotate to the next center. The administrator clicked her pen, stood up, and followed the trio of students out the door.
A few hours later I dropped my class off for lunch at the cafeteria and I saw Mrs. Adams standing by the trash cans. I figured my teaching career would be coming to an end after that day, so I walked up to her to attempt some sort of apology.
"Oh, don't worry about it," she said, "we all get nervous from time to time."
I felt the need, the want, to explain further, to tell her about the sixty-four ounces of hell I had endured, but something deep inside of me said let it go.
"Thanks for understanding," I said, and turned to go.
"Oh, Mr. Ralph," she called after me, "It was a great lesson, and I tried to write down as much as I could while the students were working independently. The form is in your box."
I walked to my mailbox in the office and read the form. No mention about leaving the group or Johnny's injury. I put the form back in the mailbox, sat at the bad kids' desk next to the principals office, and enjoyed a sense of true relief for the second time that morning.
I was teaching fifth grade at Lovell Elementary in Apopka and, like all teachers, my body adapted to a schedule of very short breaks and very long teaching periods. As the longer periods are occupied with the business of teaching, those short breaks become vital to any teacher with a bladder.
As I finished my lunch one day, my body informed me that it was time. I headed for the men's room and as I came up to the door I noticed that the handle was resting at an angle that it typically didn't. I grabbed the handle and lifted it and heard a snap from within the locking mechanism. This probably should have stood out as a red flag, but when you're desperate you don't notice such things. I pulled the door shut behind me and pressed the lock button on the other side of the handle and heard something slide down the inside of the hollow metal door. After taking care of business I washed my hands and walked toward the door to leave. When I gabbed the door handle it came off in my hand. The rest of the hardware was still in place, but I couldn't get the catch to slide and let me out.
I was locked in the bathroom with two minutes left before I had to pick up my class.
There was a window but it was chest high and horizontally narrow. With the door inoperable, however, it became my only possible escape. The window's height would require me to use some type of step ladder to climb out. A quick inspection of the bathroom yielded no options. The toilet and sink were along the opposite wall and no furniture was available. I would have to jump for it.
I opened the window and looked around. No students or teachers were present in the breezeway to witness what I was about to do. Thankfully, the bathroom was on the first floor. A hedge was just beyond the exterior wall. I figured that I could jump up, swing myself through the window, and come down in the space between the hedge and the wall and no one would be the wiser.
The bathroom was wide enough to give me a short run to the window, so I walked to the sink, took three strong steps and, with both hands on the sill, pushed myself through the window. A gold medalist couldn't have pulled off a better vault. The amount of power and speed that my body had generated sent me through the window, over the hedge and face first onto the sidewalk at the feet of another fifth grade class who had stopped at the door before entering the building.
Being known around the campus for pranks, snide comments and other general naughtiness, I received no sympathy from the teacher. "Mischief managed, hmmm?" she said as she directed her students into the classroom.
After allowing them to honor me with a round of applause.
Here's the winner:
My teaching life had moved a few years and a few blocks down the road and I was now at Apopka Elementary, still doing the whole fifth grade thing. This particular day happened to be the day of my annual lesson observation, and I had signed up for the very first spot at 9:00. (I didn't much care for the dread of knowing an administrator would be coming into my classroom to watch, so I always scheduled these types of things early to get them over with.)
This particular day also happened to fall just after the weekend that I started Weight Watchers. During the meeting the leader encouraged us all to drink as much water as possible every day, consuming eight glasses minimum. On my way home I stopped at Walgreens for a few things and saw that they had a bin full of clear plastic jugs priced at a dollar each, all of them sporting a shiny sticker bragging that they held an entire day's minimum requirement of water.
I was sold, and that was where my troubles began.
My new jug made it easy to get my water in during the first half of the week. I sipped throughout the school day and returned home with an empty jug, confident that I had done my part in the battle of the belly bulge.
On the morning of the observation I was nervous. I had my sixty-four ounces of water with me as always and began sipping the water more frequently than usual. The closer the clock ticked toward nine, the longer and more often I sipped. The assistant principal walked through the door right on time. I took the final swig before starting my lesson and set the now empty jug on my desk.
After sending most of the class to literacy centers, I called my highest reading group over to the floor with me. The assistant principal took a seat behind the students and began making notes on a clipboard. I started an activity that used recipes to reinforce the idea of sequence of events, and I was suddenly hit with the urge to purge. (Suddenly is not a cliché in this sense. First the urge wasn't there, then it immediately was...and with great force.) As all experienced teachers would have, I ignored it, knowing that one of the very short breaks couldn't be too far away. Then the pain began. I talked faster. Then the sweat came, first a light misting, then gradually pouring from my brow in near buckets.
"You're sweating, Mr. Ralph."
"I know, Johnny. Please pay attention to the lesson."
Apparently, sixty-four ounces of water was planning to come out of me one way or the other.
I quickly, almost involuntarily, stood up. "And now Mrs. Adams will stay with you guys as you do the independent part of this assignment," I said to the kids while walking toward the classroom's lavatory. I closed and locked the door behind me, tore my pants open and began peeing immediately. If the Guiness Book of World Records committee had been standing behind me while I was letting loose, you would have heard about me long before stumbling upon this blog. This piss was so big I actually started talking to it.
"Come on, man...come on," I whispered through clenched teeth, begging each and every one of those sixty-four ounces to find their exit. Eventually the deluge ended. I washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom.
Two of the three group members were watching, horrified, as Johnny clutched his shin. Blood dripped into his sock.
"What happened?" I asked.
"As soon as you left the floor he started spinning around like he always does," said Rachel, "and he banged his leg against the broken part of the wall."
I smelled something burning. I looked up at the assistant principal and saw a steady wisp of smoke rising from the place where her pen furiously scratched across my evaluation form. My heart dropped into the empty space in my abdomen that had been previously occupied by sixty-four ounces of water. Quietly, I ordered the group to walk Johnny down to the nurse's office and told the rest of the class to rotate to the next center. The administrator clicked her pen, stood up, and followed the trio of students out the door.
A few hours later I dropped my class off for lunch at the cafeteria and I saw Mrs. Adams standing by the trash cans. I figured my teaching career would be coming to an end after that day, so I walked up to her to attempt some sort of apology.
"Oh, don't worry about it," she said, "we all get nervous from time to time."
I felt the need, the want, to explain further, to tell her about the sixty-four ounces of hell I had endured, but something deep inside of me said let it go.
"Thanks for understanding," I said, and turned to go.
"Oh, Mr. Ralph," she called after me, "It was a great lesson, and I tried to write down as much as I could while the students were working independently. The form is in your box."
I walked to my mailbox in the office and read the form. No mention about leaving the group or Johnny's injury. I put the form back in the mailbox, sat at the bad kids' desk next to the principals office, and enjoyed a sense of true relief for the second time that morning.
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