The four classes that make up the Junior Kindergarten at Tater Tot's school went to the zoo Friday morning for a quick field trip to the bear exhibits. The timeframe worked out so that I could go and only take a half day, so I met everyone at the zoo and our adventures began.
We had a very nice tour guide named Karen who escorted us to see the grizzly bears, the black bears, the polar bears, and the Giant Pandas, where she showed the boys a giant block of shellacked panda poop. I'm not sure what the purpose of sharing that was except for the fact the five-year-old boys love anything associated with potty humor. I'll bet if you asked the 10 boys in our group a month from now what they remembered most about the trip to the zoo, the panda poop will be the answer, hands down.
The Panda exhibit was the last stop on the tour, and I had to scoot out a little early in order to make it from midtown Memphis ALL the way to the eastern edge of the county where I teach by 12:15, so I left Tater Tot in the care of the mom he rode with and made my way to my car.
Ignoring the route David told me to take, I did my own thing and probably saved about 10 minutes, meaning 1) men cannot always be trusted when telling you the quickest way to do something, and 2) I had time to stop at my favorite Circle K for a gigantic diet coke to get me through the 3 1/2 grueling hours of a Friday afternoon, which would include taking the kids to lunch, teaching about 20 minutes of math before going to some sort of assembly, a restroom break, about 30 minutes of social studies and recess. Oh yes, I had a mighty challenging afternoon planned.
So, 39 hours into this post, I went into the Circle K and headed straight for the fountain drinks, pulled out the COLOSSAL size cup, filled it with just the right amount of ice, and held it under the nozzle where the diet coke HAS ALWAYS BEEN. Before hitting the button I happened to glance up and to my absolute horror did NOT see diet coke. I was about to fill my cup with some sort of fruit punch.
What am I? A six-year-old?
As you can imagine, it took me a few seconds to steady myself. I looked across the drink choices about eight times, each time thinking I'd forgotten what DIET COKE looks like, but I finally accepted the fact that the diet coke nozzle was not there.
And then a single tear dropped to the floor...
I took the next best thing and filled up with diet Dr. Pepper, which will do in a pinch. But I've got to tell you that it threw me off my game for a while.
But, really, what should I have expected, seeing that my day started with a brick of preserved panda poop?
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