Substitutions Permitted — Day 3

Today's prompt from Lisa Romeo  is "Substitutions Permitted". I've been working hard on a new Website today (so exciting!), and almost let the day slip by without my 10 minutes of free writing. Even I can keep up a new practice for more than two days, however, so I'm taking a break from designing my site and setting the timer now for 10 minutes.

Prompt: Substitutions Permitted

We made the sub cry today in math. It was awesome. And not awesome. But mostly awesome. It was the end of the day. We have math for two periods every day now. OMG, so boring. I guess a bunch of kids did really bad on the standardized tests last year, and now I'm stuck in math for 90 consecutive minutes. Shoot me now.

So, anyway, Jack was being his usual Jack self, hopping out of his seat every 35 seconds, interrupting every time the sub tried to say anything and generally just being Jack. I tried to ignore him — we all try to ignore him — but he's so tall now (the biggest kid in eighth grade), that it's totally impossible to ignore him. The sub kept telling him to sit down.

So, Jack sat down. But, 35 seconds later and he was up again. And, of course, we all laughed. The sub, Mr. Gorquey (GORKY!!!!), started to get really pissed off. "Sit down right now, young man. What is your name?"

"Jack," said Jack. 

"Well, Jack, sit down and stay sat."

"Yes, sir," said Jack, giving Mr. Gorky a little salute and we all laughed again.

"What's so funny," yelled Gorky — and that's when it happened. Just when he said "so funny", this thing kind of fell out of his mouth. It was so gross! It had three teeth attached to it and he kind of spit it out, I guess by accident, when he was yelling at us. It clunked on his desk and Sophie yelled "Oh, sick," and AJ, quick as anything, reached out and grabbed the dentures or whatever they were right before Gorky could pick it up.

Then, AJ starts jumping from desk to desk and chair to chair, waving the teethy thing in the air while Gorky chases him around. And that's when the really bad thing happened. I'm sure it was an accident and all, just like he said, but Jack kind of was stretching those super long legs of his and Gorky wasn't looking or anything and he tripped over Jack's size 13 feet and … Splat! He fell right on his face.

Time: 11 minutes

My son told me that his math teacher is taking a "little break" because the eighth graders made him cry. My reaction as a mom was utter horror, but it also took me right back to middle school — that barely human time where school is really more like a holding tank for hormones than an institution of learning. That's where the prompt led me.