The Kindergarden Blues

The Kindergarten Blues
By Lubrican

Buddy was a very unhappy young man. He had gotten caught driving with an open bottle and the judge hadn’t been very understanding. He sentenced Buddy to community service – six months of community service. And Buddy was on his way to the court clerk’s office to find out how he was going to have to spend those six months.

The clerk was a dried up older woman whose name tag said “Fran”. She wasn’t impressed with Buddy and made no attempt to convince him otherwise.

“Julian Elementary School” she pronounced, smiling at him in a way that didn’t seem friendly at all. “They have a new Kindergarten teacher and she needs an aide.” She shoved a piece of paper toward him. “Give that to the principal. Maybe working with children will teach you something. They‘ll train you, and I wouldn‘t advise missing any of that training.” She turned away. She’d already forgotten him by the time he closed the door.

When he got to the school the Principal looked him over and said “We’ll take care of your training soon. I’ll let you know when. Right now I want you in that room.” He was then sent to find, according to the slip of paper the Principal gave him, one Lillie Thompson, the new Kindergarten teacher.

================================================

Lillie Thompson was nervous. She was just out of college and was about to start her first real job as a teacher. Twenty-six five-year-olds were going to either learn to love her or hate her and she wasn’t at all sure which it would be. Still, she did have a little experience, after working with all those second graders during her student teaching.

Two hours later she was already almost in a panic. These weren’t children. They were monsters. They wouldn’t listen to her. They ran around like little self propelled crash cars. They screamed all the time, for no reason or any reason. They threw things. They ate the art supplies. She hadn’t accomplished anything at all. And to top it off someone was banging on the door to the room. How in the world had it gotten locked? She opened it to find a handsome young man standing there, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Uh … Miss Thompson?” he asked, peering past her at the chaos in the room.

“Yes?” she said. She glanced over her shoulder to see little Tommy something-or-other push a little girl down, knocking her head on a table. “Come in, quickly” she yelled as she went to help the girl.

It took about ten minutes before they both understood what Buddy had gotten himself into. When she found out he was her aide, she started firing orders at him like a verbal machine gun. Their first task was to restore order of some kind. Buddy found that if he frowned at a child they would stop doing whatever they were doing and stand there, scared to death. Then he’d put them in a chair and warn them to stay there.

In fairly short order he had most of the class seated, if not quiet. It seemed that each child had something extremely important to tell him, or the kid next to him, and all of them were doing so at the top of their little five year old lungs.

The teacher was over in one corner trying to get glue covered paper out of a girl’s hair, so he picked up a book and yelled “SHUT UP!!!!”

To his surprise it got quiet. The girl with the glue in her hair even stopped crying.

“Okayz, now listen to me” he said in his best bad guy voice. “My name is Buddy and I’m here to help Miss … your teacher. Now there isn’t going to be any more of this running and screaming and stuff, understood?”

All the kids just stared at him. He raised his voice again and thundered “DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” A couple of the kids sniffled but some more nodded their heads. “If you do NOT understand, raise your hand,” he said. No one did.

“Fine” he went on in a normal voice. “Now I’m going to read you a story. Everybody gather around and sit on the floor.”

Within ten minutes 25 wondering faces were gazing at Buddy in awe as he read the story of the Billy Goat’s Gruff, making up voices for all the characters. He was especially good at the Troll voice, which turned out to be the one he had used to get the kids to be quiet.

The little monsters ate it up.

Miss Thompson finally finished up combing the glue out of Tracie’s hair. she had given thanks several times during the process that it was water based glue. She’d been listening to Buddy read too, and was amazed at his skill at getting the kids to do what he told them to. She also knew a talented story teller when she heard one. She and Tracie joined the kids for the end of the story.

By the end of the day they were both exhausted. Now that the kids were gone and it was quiet, she finally had a chance to interview her new helper.

She read over the paper he’d handed her and was surprised to see that he was a criminal being punished by being sentenced to help her. She glanced up at him. He frowned. He obviously knew what was on the paper. But she had seen him in action. In fact she was glad she hadn’t had time to read it until after she’d seen his skills. They talked for a while and she decided he was just a cute kid who’d used bad judgment. She didn’t care why he was there, she was just glad he was.

At the same time, he didn’t learn much if anything about her. She wasn’t ready to give him that kind of information yet.

If she would have he’d have learned she was an only child who’d been kept a virtual captive in her own home by strictly religious parents. The only way they’d pay for her college was if she went to a Catholic college and promise not to have any boyfriends until she was graduated and living on her own. The only date she’d ever been on was to her prom, and her father had been her chauffer and chaperone for that. She and her date had never been more than 25 feet from her father, who watched them like a hawk.

Likewise, while she was in high school she was not allowed to have a job after school, though her mother did take her along to volunteer at the local library sometimes.