Saturday Stories- The Random Bandaid

It’s no secret now that I’m a teacher. I have 20 little eight and nine year olds who keep me on my toes on a daily basis.

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I could easily fill an 800 page book with the things I see and hear and have to say (you know, things like: “Please don’t use your scissors to cut your nose hairs. You have at least 20 years yet until that becomes a necessity.”). They really are funny little people who give me endless material to chuckle about constantly.
For some reason this year, it’s really cool to sit under the kidney tables (a big table, shaped like a kidney that’s usually used for reading instruction). I’m really not sure why this is such an exciting thing, but alas I am constantly saying, “Please get out from under the table, we are all leaving for lunch/music/recess/home.”
I don’t get it.
Well, one of the boards that I use for process grids and charts happens to be right behind one of the blasted kidney tables. I teach at this board a lot, so I’m also having to say, “Please get out from under the table, so you can see what’s happening up here,” A LOT. I mean, I really just ought to get a recording of this exact quote, because I’m really freaking sick of saying it.
So, the other day, as I was emphatically explaining how the Inuit tribe would use trained dogs to sniff out seal breathing holes, I see one of my more precocious darlings under the freaking table.
“Um, Sally (obviously, not her real name), the learning is happening up here!” I even helpfully waved.

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She lifted her head just enough so that her eyes, wide like saucers, were the only things visible.
She went, “Oh, hi.”
She looked like she had no idea who, what, where, why, when, or how. I’m sure, like every other eight and nine year old I’ve ever known, she got distracted by her shoelaces or the texture of the carpet. Basically, ANYTHING OTHER THAN MY TEACHING.
When she slowly lifted the rest of her face above the table, I saw that she had the two ends of a bandaid (you know, the sticky end) on both sides of her upper lip.
She looked exactly like I do when I’m waxing my upper lip.
Exactly.
I just stood there and stared at her bandaid mustache.
I knew if I even moved a muscle, I’d lose all semblance of control and start laughing like a crazy person.
So, we just stared each other down.
She was a deer in headlights, because she knew she’d just been found out with someone’s random bandaid on her lip.
I was a deer in headlights, because every cell in my body wanted me to laugh and say, “So, it’s mustache day, I see. I feel ya.”
But a real, grownup teacher never says things like that (we only think them and write about them later).
So, after what felt like hours in a Mexican stand off between my adult self and my immature AF self, I was finally able to say, “Sally, we don’t put random bandaids we find on the floor on our face,” like a real grown up teacher.
She just said, “Oh. Gotcha!”

79 thoughts on “Saturday Stories- The Random Bandaid”

  1. Bean tables… we call them bean tables here Lol! And as for the needing to be mature… I hear you sista! I’m the same… having to fight the laughter back sometimes!
    Mexican stand-off…. 😂😂😂

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    1. OMG! I want to call them bean tables now! That makes SO MUCH more sense!! Oh man. I must admit, I laugh at farts now 🤦🏻‍♀️. I had a good 4 years of being mature about them, but that’s all gone now 😂😂

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  2. DEAD. My best friend is a teacher and she told me a story about a boy who always calls her Misses Ramos (NOT her name, btw) and one time he told her had an accident before school…and had been sitting in said accident for almost half the day. By the way…it wasn’t pee. Oh, kids. I could NEVER be a teacher. Idk how y’all do it.

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  3. Haha! I adore teacher stories!
    I can barely handle my 4 babies… I don’t know how you juggle 20. Bless you!

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  4. HAHAHA O-M-G!! That was hilarious!! But also super disgusting!! I have a note on my phone where I’ve started collecting “things I never thought I’d have to say in a sentence” from my kidlets but I’m sure that your stories can trump mine! BOOK IDEA!! Write it – I’ll buy it! Can you attach some curtains to the edge of the tables making it more of an obstacle to get under there? It might deter them from going under during…but also you wouldn’t be able to see them once they *were* under it…

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    2. I really need to properly record what I see and hear and have to say!! Awesome idea to record the things you have to say! I bet it’s all HILARIOUS 😂. Oh gawd, if I attached curtains, the tables would be even more amazing to them! 😂😫😫😫😫

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      1. The kids have me tell them stories sometimes or they will tell me stories and I always say after that I should have recorded it lol it’s such a shame that it’s lost now!
        And ooo dang. Yeah curtains would make pretty good hide-outs or caves or whatever lol

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        1. HAHAHAHA! They’d love it, though! I felt the same way about my cousin when she was little(er). Some of the stuff she’d come up with was just hilarious 😂😂. It’s a bummer I don’t have more of that on video.

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  5. Honestly, it doesn’t change much when they hit college. Actually, in some ways it gets worse. It’s still funny, but not necessarily for the same reasons!

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      1. Well, here’s an example: You’ve watched “Bugs Bunny” cartoons, right? You ever see one where Elmer Fudd is trying to “tip-toe,” but does it in an overly dramatic manner? I had a student arrive to class late on an exam day, and they tip-toed across the room like that. At first, I thought they were trying to be funny, but I realized that they were absolutely serious. I don’t know how I held it in during the exam, because just picturing that still cracks me up.

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  6. LoL…..as a former school nurse and the mother of a high school teacher I can totally relate…lol!!!!! I agree with “gigglingfattie”…….write the book…I’ll buy it too!! LOVE your writing!!!!!! We nurses also have a ton of silly, crazy, unbelievable stories that would practically blow the top off of most people’s heads if they heard them…lol..lol

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  8. My Mom was a teacher for 36 years, I have been a nurse for 17. The stories, oh the stories. Everyday people just don’t know the things that teachers and nurses hear and see. Yay you for maintaining an adult persona in that situation, that is the sign of a true professional.

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  10. Um, I totally say stuff like the mustache day quote.
    Yesterday’s highlights: “Oh how I wish John wasn’t sick, he at least has an opinion about things.” “We are not discussing DNA in this class right now, when you mutate yours next week, we will discuss it then. We’ll spend the whole hour writing an essay about it, because this is writing class.” “Student, are you trying to suggest I need to lose weight because you keep hitting me in flesh parts of my body with that flying dinosaur?”
    Guess that’s what makes me an amateur teacher? laughing.

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    1. Omg!! Right!! At least it was only the sticky parts and not the pad that goes on whatever nastiness the bandaid is for. Luckily, my students feel it necessary to use a bandaid for phantom injuries, so likely it wasn’t even properly used 😂😅

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    1. LOL!! Too funny! I wrote a blog post once after seeing a 12 year old go to town on picking his nose, that was about how you can determine age by whether or not they eat the booger they pick 😂🤮🤮

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  13. So, if I’m reading this right…looking back…the teacher hard stare was more about self control from cracking up than actually having a proper irritation at why young minds distract so easily. This explains much and my thoughts upon teachers as sinister beings with no sense of humour is all wrong…
    Obviously tongue in cheek there…I have been a school governor and have many nutty teacher friends…one here for a start lol. Oh, and Ritu…. but that’s adult me…junior me thought they were always cross lol
    Very funny post, much enjoyed reading it!

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    1. LOL!!! Yes, the hard stare was so I didn’t start busting up laughing. Well, and sorta because it’s more interesting to put used bandaids on one’s face instead of listen and that’s highly annoying to most teachers. We TOTALLY have to be nutters 😂😂😂😂

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      1. Ha, ha….I knew it..just figured better for the teacher to admit it! But come on…admit it….when you were little there MUST have been moments the stare was thrown at you too 😂

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  14. Eeewwww i hope it wasn’t a used one covering some boys verucca… sorry but boys seem to be the most likely to remove plasters and be gross… mostly. You should try teaching beneath. 🤓 they might know something.

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  16. You had me laughing at your first meme. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post. Interacting with a group of little ones is something I miss terribly now that I homeschool. You are correct, an 800-page book would be so easily filled. I can just imagine the whole bandaid incident going down. I also think you’re stronger than me. I would have been laughing hysterically.
    One of my favorite memories – which was one of my last memories of teaching – was when a sweet first-grader came up to me as I stood in front of this class. He stopped, adjusted his glasses, and proceeded to look into my front sweatshirt pocket. “Mrs. B” he said “Why do you have a basketball in your sweatshirt?” This must have been the first day my pregnancy was highly visible. Lol! I loved the kids’ innocent, always curious words.
    P.S. – Maybe you should start a kidney kick-back time or something of the sort where kids can kick back and read, write, or create something under the shelter of the alluring kidney fort. Then they can look at the interesting table as a reward or goal area. 🙂

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    1. SOO SWEET!! I mean, only if you’re actually pregnant 😂😂
      That is a GREAT idea! I never thought of that and I’ll totally be adding that to our rewards list!!

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      1. Oh, that is so true. I can see that actually happening though – they are so honest, lol!

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  17. Oh brilliant. I that’s the age of my eldest. His younger brother has a hell of a sense of humour- his teacher had to start wearing a scarf so that he wouldn’t see her laughing!
    See the under the table thing… could that be autism related? Where a child needs to stimulate the skin nerve endings and so gets into a tight spot, there’s a name for it but I haven’t learnt it properly yet.

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  18. I gagged. I have this thing about bodily fluids (especially other people’s bodily fluids) and used bandages are usually chock-full of them. I think I might have puked if I saw that a kid had put another kid’s used band-aid on their face.
    I commend you.

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    1. Normally, a bandaid makes me gag too. I think it was just the combination of how hilariously ridiculous they looked on her upper lip and her “Huh” deer-in-headlights look 😂

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  21. I want to say huge congratulations for going against what every cell in your body wanted to do, and nailing the “adulting” thing!! I don’t know if I could have controlled my laughter!

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  26. I am a teacher also and would kill to only have 20 students.
    I teach English in Beijing and have over 700 students. Twenty different classes a week averaging over 35 students each. It’s crazy. So, I think I know four of their names.
    However, I do have this advantage. Facebook is illegal and blocked here. I can’t even access it without doing some crazy internet hacking shit. Which means I can take any picture or story from my day that I want and write about it on Facebook. My employers will never know. And if for some reason that do happen to see it, they would have to admit that they had broken the law (which they are never going to do). My daytime exploits have kept many people back in the States entertained for the past year.
    Kids are crazy everywhere.

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      1. HAHAHA! I sometimes forget that this isn’t common knowledge to everyone.
        The people of China live behind what the government proudly call the “Golden Firewall”
        The internet here is heavily regulated. The Chinese government decides what it’s citizens can or cannot see. there is no Facebook here. But that just scratches the surface. There is also no:
        – Twitter
        – YouTube
        – Pinterest
        -Dropbox
        – Netflix
        -Hulu
        – Any Google site (which is an amazing number of sites, including Blogspot where my blog is)
        This means that even the blog that I spent years building a following for, I was supposed to give up once I moved here. The basic rule of thumb is “if it didn’t originate in China, then it is not allowed.”
        Social media is just as big here as it is in the States, but they have their own sites. WeChat, Weibo, Youku, etc. These sites are heavily monitored. Anything you put on there will be seen by authorities, so you have to watch yourself.
        In order to access outside sites (like your blog) I have to do something illegal. A VPN allows my internet service provider to believe that my computer is actually connected to a server in another country. I usually connect to a server in Tokyo. This allows me to access sites that are not allowed here.
        Communism is fun.

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  28. Yesterday I said to my 8 year old– is that a booger on your forehead? He reaches up, picks it off, says yup and eats it. No lie. We were walking to school and I honestly thought– well, at least his teacher didn’t have to see that. Thanks for the laugh. <3

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