I was with my grade one class the other day. We're all outside, and I'm trying to repair the fences around the school yard. Some of these little kids are bolters, and they'll run right through those broken chain-link fences and book it into the street. It's no good. And so I find this roll of chicken wire in a storage shed, and we're measuring out pieces of it, counting out cable ties, stuff like that. That's counting, arithmetic, it's learning, right?
But it's pretty nerve-wracking trying to keep an eye on everyone and also do that job. And then some goblin sneaks in and grabs my snips when I put them down. I got to chase it all over the yard until I finally trap it under a garbage can so I can get them back. Which the kids think is pretty funny stuff and get all worked up. Garbage goblin, garbage goblin. And so of course one kid escapes through the hole in the fence I didn't get done fixing, and good thing that passing car did some hard braking there. See, that's what I'm afraid of. I must have accidentally cussed a bit when that happened, so of course the kids spend the rest of the day saying that word a million times. Teaching is a pretty hard job you know, especially when you're on your own. And I remember back when there used to be aides and whatever in schools, to help the spectrum kids cope. But I guess that's not a thing around these parts any more.