Drugs and Bugs

I wanted something interesting to start this journal off with, some quirky story about the daily experiences of being a preschool special education teacher. Wow, was I mistaken to wish for something interesting to happen. By now you would think that I would have learned to not want anything other than plain, average, dull as paint drying days (and perhaps a flask in my hip pocket to make me believe that would actually happen). A darling child was escorted into my room by a bus attendant who pulled me to one side and whispered - because the other three year olds might accidentally overhear- that said child might perhaps have head lice. Ugh! I immediately started scratching my own head out of that association response - just think about lice for a while and you will start itching. So I quaranteened said child and called for reinforcements from the school nurse. Turns out we had a lice highrise and nursery firmly established on her head with rooms for rent and a flourishing community. Now somehow I escaped my childhood without catching headlice and I really have no desire to entertain them now. So itchy child was isolated and the rest of the children were given a good checking (as were the now very nervously scratching teachers). No one else has anything creeping around upstairs thankfully, but I do now have the wonderfully fun job of bagging up our dress up clothes for its two weeks of solitary confinement in the closet as well as spraying down the beanbag and cushions. Just writing this is making me itch. Try explaing to a three year old that you need to check their hair without freaking them out that there may possibly be bugs crawling around in their hair. Um, yeah. Then another parent decided that it might be entertaining to send a bag full of prescription medication to school in their child's backpack for me to theoretically administer to the child. No warning that the child has prescription drugs in his bag that they could have completely injested on the school bus. And really, have childproof lids ever prevented a child from opening a container? I have frequently asked a child under the age of ten to open those containers for me when I can not pry or contort the things open. They never fail. So now I have a very angry parent because, well, the medication did not return home in the bookbag but was kept safely in the office for a responsible adult to pick up. I wonder who that will be? I don't like surprises when I greet kids in the morning, because 99% of the time they are the start of a bad day. Like a day of bug catching, head checking, drug confiscating, and all over itching. So now at work everyone is walking a good foot or two around me in the hallways because of the bugs in our classroom and I am feeling slightly like I am horrifically deformed or a victim of the plague. I expect to be given a scarlett L tomorrow and have a sign posted on my classroom door warning all who pass by of our shame. Anyone brave enough to come play with us?