Overhead While Subbing

This week has been a busy subbing week.  Not only am I working every day, I also am turning down calls right and left that I can't take.  I suppose it's prime time for teachers with kids to have field trips to chaperon, awards ceremonies to go to, children to pick up from college - that sort of thing.

Today I was in a preschool classroom that I had never been to before.  I was the associate teacher, which meant that I just had to help out and try to direct their attention to the head teacher as much as possible.  Which actually wasn't as possible as you might think, considering that they were a very lively bunch.

During the center time I looked over to where some boys were playing at the sand table.  This is the only classroom I have seen with an indoor sand table.   Of course, I know no one asked me, but I still just have to say here that a class of 16 lively boys and an indoor sand table is not the best combination.  Anyway, when I looked over at said table, I noticed one little boy staring in a concerned fashion down at his index finger, which was pushed through the hole in the end of a sand shovel. 

"It's stuck," he said in a puzzled kind of way.  "I can't get it out."  Sure enough, when I went over to him I confirmed that yep, it was stuck in there. 

"Oh, this is very bad," said another little boy seriously.  "Now the police will come.  The police will come and cut your finger off."

Fortunately, the boy-with-stuck-finger either didn't believe this, or didn't hear it, (which is a good thing, because he turned out later in the day to be quite the crier).  He was just relieved when we squirted some hand sanitizer on his finger and got the shovel off.  So the police didn't have to come and cut his finger off after all.

This comment made me wonder why the other boy thought that the police would come, and if perhaps someone at his house had got some body part stuck somewhere and the police had to be called in.  Of course, if we follow that line of reasoning we would assume that he also saw the stuck appendage cut off...

Or perhaps this is the threat his mother uses to keep him from sticking his head through the iron gate out in front of his apartment building.   "Don't do that," she says.  "If your head gets stuck, the police will come and have to cut it right off."  That might work for me, if I were five.

Regardless, no one had their finger removed by the police today, nor did they have to wear a yellow shovel home as a new part of their hand.  And the sand table was closed shortly after that due to sand abuse (sand flying everywhere), so that was enough sand adventure for one day.

But there's always tomorrow...