Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind (31 page)

How does he know
that
?
“Uh… yes.”

All of a sudden his face broke into a giant smile. “Are you Mr.
Done
?”

My eyes grew big. “Uh-huh.” Immediately I started flipping through the Rolodex in my head.
Is this guy one of my former students? Is he the officer who spoke to my class at the Bike Rodeo about safety on the road?

“I’m Laura’s dad!” he announced, patting his chest. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. “Laura
loves
your class.” I knew that Laura’s father was a police officer but had never met him. He didn’t come to Back to School Night.

Just then I heard the school bell ring. Lunch was over.

“Sorry I was going so fast,” I said. “I was trying to get back to school in time.”

“Oh yes. Of course.” He handed me back my license. “Just watch the speed. Okay?”

“Yes. Yes. I will. Thank you, Officer. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you, sir.” He started walking away. “Uh… excuse me,
sir.” He turned back around. I cringed. “… would you mind not telling Laura about this?”

He laughed. “I promise.”

I quickly grabbed my burrito, locked the car, and flew to my classroom. The kids were waiting for me in line. Rebecca spotted
me first.

“You’re
late
!” she scolded.

“Where were you?”
they all shouted.

“We’ve been waiting for an
hour!
” Trevor whined.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said, searching for my keys.

“Why are you late?” several asked as I unlocked the door.

“Well… I… uh… I… (
Ding!
)… I was having a parent–teacher conference.”

T
his year for spring break I splurged and flew to Paris. I adore Paris. I went with my good friend Heidi. She is not a teacher.
On our first day in the city, we visited the Eiffel Tower and took the elevator up to the observation deck. After about twenty
minutes, Heidi said, “Phil, you’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“That… that teacher thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, since we’ve been up here you’ve helped a kid look through the telescope, pointed out a girl’s untied shoelace, picked
up litter, and when a boy ran by — you patted your pocket looking for your whistle.”

I laughed. “I did?”

“Yes. And when we were waiting in line to get up here and some woman stepped in front of us, you shouted, ‘No cuts!’”

“Well,” I huffed, pretending to be offended. “I can’t help it. I’m a teacher. And
that’s
what teachers do.”

Heidi was right. I was in Teacher Mode. It turns on automatically whenever children are near and goes into overdrive when
it senses busy streets, mud, gum, or bloody noses.

As our week in Paris continued, my Teacher Mode got worse. I played crossing guard at the Arc de Triomphe and nearly fell
into a fountain trying to retrieve a boat that sailed out of reach. At the Louvre, my camera was almost confiscated while
I tried taking photos of the
Mona Lisa.
When I explained to the guard that the pictures were for school, Heidi pretended that she didn’t know me.

One afternoon when Heidi and I were strolling by some souvenir shops near the Moulin Rouge, I spotted some “I Love Paris”
pencils in a window.
My students would love those,
I thought. I turned to Heidi. “Just a second. I’ll be right back.”

Well, I really should have known better than to walk in there. No one should ever walk into a souvenir shop when he is in
La Mode de Teacher. The shop was a teacher’s paradise, packed with a veritable smorgasbord of goodies I could use for school.
I grabbed a basket and started filling it up with postcards of Notre Dame, a miniature bust of Napoleon, a map of France,
a Monet calendar, a chef’s hat, a Picasso tie, Eiffel Tower sticky notes, Moulin Rouge magnets, the French flag, a beret,
and a Paris Metro mouse pad.

“There you are,” I heard a voice say as I was counting out my “I Love Paris” pencils. It was Heidi. “What’s taking you so
long?”

I pointed to my treasure. “Look at all this great stuff!”

Her eyes grew wide. “You’re buying all
that
?”

“Yeah. Isn’t this fantastic?”

Heidi made a face and threw up her hands. “Here we go again.”

“What do you mean — here we go again?”

“Remember when you came home from Boston?”

“Yeah.”

“You brought back everything short of Paul Revere’s horse.”

My mouth fell open. “I teach American history.”

Heidi knelt down and started rummaging through the basket. First she held up a mug. “How many of these do you have?”

“None.” She looked at me like I just told her the dog ate my homework. I snatched the mug out of her hands. “Well… none with
the Paris Metro.”

Next she pulled out a stack of bookmarks shaped like baguettes. “Why do you need so many of these?”

“They’re for my students. I can’t go to Paris and not bring back something for my kids.”

Heidi shook her head and reached into the basket one more time. She pulled out a shot glass and gave me a look.

“For my boss.”

I bent over the basket and picked up the calendar and the Eiffel Tower sticky notes. “Heidi, just
look
at all this! Where else could I get this stuff?”

She crossed her arms. “Target.”

I threw back the sticky notes and snatched up the basket.
Clearly
she did
not
understand.

“Listen,” she lectured, “don’t ask me to put any of this into my suitcase. And don’t come whining to me when you have to pay
a hundred bucks extra because you’re over the weight limit.”

I hadn’t thought of that.
I looked down at all my goodies, pursing my lips. “Well… maybe you’re right. Maybe it is a bit much.” I gave a loud sigh.
“Okay, I won’t buy it all.” I reached into the basket and put back the Van Gogh night-light. Then I turned back to Heidi.
“
There
. Satisfied?”

A
ll teachers have those days when we think the cashier’s position at Wal-Mart is looking pretty good. But then just when we’re
about to lose our minds, a student does or says something that reminds us of why we went into this profession in the first
place.

When I spotted Eleanor praying over a dead baby bird by the bike racks — I remembered. When Erin asked if the stars in the
sky are pointy like the ones we draw — I remembered. When I asked Carolyn how she came up with the words
chestnut brown
in her story and she said it’s on her mom’s box of hair dye — I remembered, too.

When Brianna wrote “I love you more than pancakes” in her dad’s valentine, when Sarah asked me how blind people write Braille
in cursive, and when I told everyone to partner up with a buddy for their math game and Jason asked, “Can we have a three-way?”
— I remembered.

When Caleb pinky-promised me that he’d do his homework, when Blake covered his eyes while labeling the states on his blank
US map (I had asked him to fill it in without looking), and when Alex wanted to bring me an apple for Teacher Appreciation
Week, but didn’t have any at home so he gave me a ripe avocado wrapped in foil instead — I remembered.

I remembered when Luis called an exclamation mark
the excitement point,
when Ji Eun scratched her mosquito bite and said,
“It inches,”
when Jerod thought an autobiography was a story about cars, when Tae Hun called toast “jumping bread,” and when Ricky asked
me to draw him a horse and I told him I didn’t know how. So he asked me to draw him a sand-blaster instead.

I remembered when I handed out the multiplication timed tests and Ralph said, “Do you want it fast, or do you want it accurate?”;
when I said “Gesundheit” after Vanessa sneezed and she told me her mom speaks French, too; and after Christopher asked why
we always have to end a sentence with a period and Trevor answered, “Because it’s a commandment.”

I remembered when the class broke out into a heated discussion over whether or not girls can be elves, when Michele wanted
to know how wine can be dry, when Kohei said the time was “
Two o’watch,
” and the day Sebastian walked up to me with a bruise on his arm so I took a look. “What happened?” I asked. “I was sucking
on it,” he answered. He had given himself a hickey.

When I asked the class where french fries come from (I was looking for
potatoes
) and Eric said
McDonald’s,
when Ronny wanted to know if there is such a thing as a
left angle,
when Evelyn was shocked to find out that I get paid, when I asked the class to give me a synonym for
laugh
and Greg said
LOL,
and when Juan looked at my cuff links and said, “My dad wears handcuffs, too” — I remembered.

When Aaron thought covered wagons were called station wagons, when Marci asked me how to spell
DVD,
when I couldn’t get the TV to work and Christopher announced, “Houston, we have a problem,” and when Theresa (a kindergartner)
dropped her name tag and asked me to pin back her “price tag” — I remembered.

When I said I’d like to see “some new hands” in our class discussion so Adam lowered his right arm and raised his left; when
a first grader ran up to me on the blacktop and shouted excitedly, “Mr. Done! I have diarrhea!”; and when I passed out marshmallows
for multiplication and Skyler announced, “I just
love
when we eat what we’re learning!” — I remembered.

When Kyle, unsure if he should write
which
or
witch,
pointed to his paper and said, “Is this the good witch or the bad witch?”; when Layla wrote that the main character in her
story was
tall, blond, beautiful, and lactose-intolerant;
when Crystal said that her sister can say all the presidents
in a line
(she meant
in order
); and when Isabelle was reading to me about beavers and refused to read
dam
because it was a bad word — I remembered.

I remembered when I asked Mark why he was a mile away from his desk and he replied, “I got lost,” when Brian wrote in his
science journal, “The first person to orbit the earth was a dog,” when Andrea explained that the difference between molecules
and atoms is that “Molecules are small. Atoms are itsy-bitsy,” and when I pointed to the edge of the rug and said, “This is
the
exterior.
Who knows what the center is called?” Tyler answered, “The mush pot.”

I remembered when Laura asked why a ship is a “she,” and Dylan proclaimed, “’Cause the men are on it,” when Brian was bouncing
because he couldn’t wait for his birthday (it was in three months), and when I walked into class one morning grumbling that
the coffee machine in the staff room was broken and a couple of minutes later Gabriella handed me a drawing of a full cup
of coffee and a doughnut. With sprinkles.

I remembered when Rachel said she was tardy because her mom couldn’t get her eyelashes on, when Steven taped an
Enter at Your Own Risk
sign on his desk for Back to School Night, when Jill said that I was her first boy teacher, when Chloe’s mom couldn’t find
a shoe box at home for a school project so she went out and bought herself a new pair of pumps, and when I asked Carolyn what
she liked best about her new fifth-grade teacher and she answered, “He sticks a pencil behind his ear.”

I remembered the day I asked for a volunteer and Paige begged me to be the “bunny.” (It took me a second to figure out that
she wanted to be the guinea pig.) I remembered the day I moved the hands on the plastic yellow teaching clock and asked Allison
what time it was. She replied, “Happy Hour.” And I remembered when Ronny walked up to me during the last week of school and
said, “Mr. Done, you could probably teach fourth grade. You’re smart enough.”

May

“Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa. Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa.”

— C
harlie Brown’s teacher in
Peanuts

I
’m starting to feel like a relic. The movies I grew up with are on the Classic Movie Channel. The Speed Racer lunch pail that
I carried in second grade is in a collection at the Smithsonian. One of the new hires in the district is a former student
of mine. (I had her when she was seven.) Christopher just about had a heart attack when I told him that I saw
Star Wars
when it first came out. And out of all the valentines that my students gave me this year, there was only one Snoopy, one
Spider-Man, and one Tinkerbell. All the rest were of Orlando Bloom.

Sometimes I feel like my students and I don’t speak the same language. When I said, “Wax on. Wax off,” no one got it. When
I sang, “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun,” they looked at me like
I was completely nuts. Recently when I was explaining to my class how kids used to clean chalk erasers by going outside and
banging them together so the dust would fly all around, Danny asked, “What’s chalk?”