Hallowe'en

It often proves advantageous in scarfing school stuff (how's that for alliteration?) to mention that I am a teacher.  Many years ago, a few days before Halloween, I stopped at a roadside stand to see about pumpkins.  I mentioned that I was an elementary teacher and was looking for pumpkins that my school kids could carve.  The man asked how many I needed.  "Thirty-six in the class, working in pairs... I'd need eighteen."  He never batted an eye and told me to take whatever I needed for free.  Score!

Besides the obvious art lesson that designing an appropriately gruesome face would make, my grade 5 class also planned to roast the seeds for a snack.  The afternoon of the day before Hallowe'en was set aside for the carving.  On short notice I had to leave early that day.   As we often do in schools, I asked my co-worker and good friend, Barb, a grade 8 homeroom/girl's phys. ed. teacher to cover my class on her prep and I would pay her back at a later date.

It was after last recess, we had paired up, put newspaper on the desks, transferred  the face designs to the pumpkins and I had just finished cutting the tops off of each pumpkin, when Barb arrived.  As I gathered my things, I quickly asked her to please make sure the students collected as many seeds as they could, and hurried out the door. 

The following is the gist of Barb's encounter with me the next morning.

     "Hi Barb.  Did you save a lot of seeds?"

"You left me with a room full of kids wielding sharp knives and cutting pumpkins!  Are you crazy?"

     "No.  The students and I discussed knife safety before I left."

"But there were 36 of them!"

     ''And I knew they would be in great hands with you, Barb"

"In great hands?  I was wondering if any of them would still have hands OR fingers by the end of the day!"

     "Did anyone get cut?"

"No.  But that's not the point, Rick."

      "You did great.  Thanks, Barb."

"If you ever ask me to cover your class again and there are knives involved, I'm not doing it."

These are not the kid's pumpkins.  They are Greenfield Village's.

The next day I did send a couple of students to her room with a peace offering - some roasted pumpkin seeds.

And yes, we're still friends to this day.