Snot emergency

I hate it when I am sick. I hate it when other people are sick. A couple of weeks ago I had strep. Now I have something else. It makes my nose run and my head feel clogged. My ears feel like they have some sort of fluid in them. The runny nose is the worst. I am constantly sucking it all in or blowing it all out. The only remedy I have found is a tissue up one nostril, like a white flag, surrendering to the snot war.

Today, I waged a great battle against the snot war. I was helping a kindergarten student finish a project and I looked up to see another boy dashing across the room in desperate search of a tissue. I always try to have my tissues in a place that makes sense to a student in a snot emergency. This boy definitely had a snot emergency.

He had two snot lakes calmly resting in his nostrils and the dam had burst from the force of an F.8 hurricane sneeze. Two engorged rivers had been unleashed and the green snot was gushing forth, over his lips and onto his chin. Snot emergency.


I didn't want to touch him, or be anywhere near him and no one else seemed to notice him with the snot stalactites about to unhinge from the edge of his chin cliff.



It was up to me: remain calm, and direct him to the tissue box. So I started giving him commands. Back there, turn, behind you, on the table....get TWO TISSUES....BLOW, more, you need more!

Of course I was simultaneously attempting to orchestrate an entire classroom of other student emergencies 'put your glue-globed artwork on the drying wrack', 'please pick up that trash', 'not so much glue,' 'if it bothers you when he sticks out his tongue, then you need to use your words and tell him that that is not appropriate and it hurts your feelings,' 'practice using your scissors safely, because it is not safe when you attempt to cut someone's eyelashes during art' 'don't play in the water bucket, I haven't changed the water all day and you could get dyscentery if you put the sponges in your mouth because every kid in school has scrubbed the glue and cooties off of their hands using that same water, in fact, don't wash your hands unless they are glued together,' 'what is dysentery? cooties in your colon,' what is your colon? ask your mom,' 'she just got glue in her hair? okay get a baby wipe,' 'stop pushing your chair back so hard, you keep bumping the person behind you' 'sit flat or else you might fall,' 'you just fell? are you okay? okay.' 'what? you aren't invited to his birthday party because you took that book out of his hands? I am sorry' etc.

About five minutes after the snot emergency with the boy... I had my own snot emergency. I needed to blow my nose. I needed to wave my white flag against the snot war. So I went over and grabbed a tissue off the top of the box. I held it up to my face. And I felt the cold chill of that boy's snot against my cheek. Somehow two or three weren't enough, he had to slime one of the tissues and then he left it on top. And I had it on my face. So I folded the tissue over, finished blowing my nose. And I went back to work dealing with a whole slew of other classroom emergencies. Only now, that I am at home...am I able to deal with the trama of the snot shower. ewwwwwwwww!!


Images courtesy of we heart it.