Charles posted on May 28, 2010 13:45
As we approach the end of the school year, it's good to be reminded of why I'm here: To keep 8th grade boys humble. It's why God made me a dad, an uncle, a grandfather, godfather and, once upon a time, a coach and athletic director, etc.
A nice quiet end to this week, a week in which I had to visit with each faculty member and have 'that talk' about more structure, not less at the end of the school year, a peaceful Friday afternoon until...I hear screaming from the Boys' Restroom down the hall. Isn't there an old Ray Stevens song about "The Day the Squirrel Came to Church"? Well, today the chipmunk came to school...
And my brave 8th grade boys volunteered to capture the varmint who was hiding out in the Boys' Restroom. Ya gotta picture eight big boys trying to cram in between the stalls and an adjacent wall, they are two abreast and four deep as they chase the rascal into a corner when...
The chipmunk runs out of room and turns around wide-eyed and... "Ahhhhelppppnoooolookouttttrunnnnn!"
I've got 8th grade boys jumping and waving their arms in the air, and it's sounding like a bunch of girls at a Justin Bieber concert. "Get out of the waaaaayyyyy!" They're jumping on top of radiators and counter tops and each other and, of course, all this gives the little guy plenty of room to run so he scurries to the other end of the room. The boys all climb down off the walls, and the whole process repeats itself only this time in the other direction. Back and forth they go.
I'm crying, and laughing, and trying to take pictures of them, but the pictures won't do this scene justice because it doesn't capture the sound of the boys screaming.
Every now and then one of the guys picks the little chipmunk up by the tail, but then he panics, starts jumping around screaming and drops the it. "Wash you hands, wash your hands, eeeeewwww..."
And they say these guys are descended from people who hunted T-Rex - I don't think so...
