The lunch box that broke the camel’s back

As any good story might, it started on the bike ride home from school in the rain, when my sweet son told me he left his lunch box on the playground. Not in his classroom. Not in his cubby. Not in his desk. On the playground. Where it had been since lunchtime already and, at that point, was going to be staying overnight. Too bad if we needed it the next morning to pack his lunch. Too bad if it was going to get ruined in the mud and the bugs and I’d end up having to buy a whole new lunch box. Too bad, so sad. Just deal with it, or not.

So, as we peddle our bikes home, the rest of the story comes out: his teacher made the kids leave their lunch boxes on the playground on purpose. When the kids were called to line up and realized they’d forgotten their lunch boxes by the fence, their teacher wouldn’t allow them to get out of line and run back for them. She told them they’d have to do it “later” knowing full well that later would never come. She doesn’t even allow them to use the restroom when they need to. Every single second of every single day is scheduled. The teacher knew the kids wouldn’t be able to get their lunch boxes and that the parents would be bent. It was a foregone conclusion that the kids would get into trouble that night based on her actions. She was punishing the kids through their parents without having to do a thing. Who does stuff like this? And why???

She’s been nasty like that since the beginning of the year.
She’s an anal-retentive, controlling, manipulative, grown-up mean girl.

And you know I can’t resist making her as crazy as possible (in a good way.)

Like the time she assigned a “cereal box book report” and the kids had to decorate the outside of an empty cereal box with their book report materials (synopsis of the book, picture from the story, list of characters, etc.) Yeah, we did ours on a single-serving, miniature size cereal box.

In my defense, she didn’t specify the size of the box.

(Alright, alright, we sent in the “real” book report on the bigger cereal box the following day. But still.)

But this lunch box thing sent me over the edge.
It was the lunch box that broke the camel’s back.

First, you don’t let my kid pee when he needs to.
Then, you can’t let him (and six other kids!) run and get their lunch boxes out of the dirt after recess.
And to top it off, you make me ride my bike all the way home in the rain just to learn that I have to turn around and go back to school to deal with you and your ridiculous lunch box set up. 

Game On.

We get to school, walk out to the playground and find my sweet son’s little transformer lunch box in the mud, along with the lunch boxes of several other kids from his class. I grab his lunch box and go looking for Professor Snape’s sister, who I like to refer to now as El Diablo.

I get to her classroom and see the overgrown mean girl talking to another teacher and I do something kind of out of character for me: I stop and think before I act.

Shocker, I know. I was as surprised as you are!

I really didn’t want my behavior to be a poor reflection on me or on my kiddo. 99% of the time, we are happy, fun-loving people. We get our revenge with miniature cereal boxes.

I stopped in the hallway and turned around, talking to myself: really think this through. Before making a big scene in front of another teacher (who I know and like), decide if this is what you really want to do.

Standing in the school hallway, debating out loud with myself, my sweet son facing me, and the door to the classroom at my back, it was like a scene from a cartoon. As I was talking to myself, my son makes a swirly motion with his finger, smiles and says, “Mom, you might want to turn around.”

And there she was. El diablo herself. Nine months pregnant, 3 days past her due date, asking me in her sickeningly sweet southern accent, “Can I help you?”

Oh heck yeah, you can help me. I’ve got plenty you can help me with.

And that, folks, is how I got into a verbal altercation with a pregnant lady and *might* have caused her to go into labor.

(The class was emailed photos of the new baby less than 10 hours later.)

Whoops.