That's Just Wrong...

I was late to morning bus duty today.  Not by a little, mind you.  By a lot.  Morning bus duty for those of use entrusted with the care and monitoring of the 7th graders is a three person job.  Without me, the remaining staff were a man down.  This was not good.  My fellow kid-wranglers were understanding, but still...

Worse, I have no good excuse whatsoever.  It all boiled down to a gross misunderstanding of the forward movement of time and the belief that morning time is somehow more forgiving than time during the rest of the day.  I also may have forgotten that, when I gassed up the car the other morning, I only put in enough for a couple of days.  You know how it is...just tiding the tank over until payday.  Stopping for gas this morning was necessary, but did not help with my timely arrival for morning bus duty.

I should be punished for this.  The universe should heap vast amounts of badness upon me.  There should be a plague of locusts zeroing in on my location right at this very moment.  A festering boil should be forming directly upon my backside.  Every size 1 dpn I own should snap simultaneously and without my even touching them.  

But it didn't work out that way.  Instead, I had a bit of luck.  Most undeserved luck.  I should feel badly.  I should probably call The Powers That Be and ask that they correct the oversight.  

I am not going to.  Sometimes you just have to sneak off into the dark of night cackling over your good fortune and try to not attract attention.

As one of my students went down to the library to retrieve something from the printer, I jokingly called out to him that he should pick up a book for me.  I was rather specific about that which I sought.  He's a reader and knows the library well.  Since he'd returned my last finished book for me, I figured he wouldn't mind perusing the stacks to help out his favorite teacher.  But, alas, he did not hear me.

Continuing in my jocular manner, I followed him to the library to continue begging him to get my book.  He continued to exhibit Teenaged Deafness Syndrome.  He later said that he hadn't heard a single word I'd said.  That was OK.  I had a couple other kids heading for the library and they were the types who needed supervision.  I had to be there anyway.

As I stood by the desk waiting for the kids to finish, I saw it.  It was The Book.  The one I'd been waiting for.  The one that eight million of the kids are also looking for.  It was right there on display and waiting for the next young reader to enjoy.  I stopped breathing for just a moment and began calculating just how much bad karma I might incur should I check out the book.  

On the negative side, I have already started reading one library book and don't want to start another.  It would be wrong to take advantage of the Teachers Can Take As Many Books As They Want And Keep Them For As Long As They Want clause.  This book should be made available to the children.  They are our future.  We must honor them.  Some of them will probably end up working in that Elder Care Facility for which I am destined.

Then there was the matter of that missed bus duty.  I had clearly not earned the right to take out a book for an indeterminate period of time, especially not one that is in pretty high demand.  

Grasping at straws and, I must admit, now holding the book, I remembered that I'd agreed to rip back that mitten yesterday.  It was supposed to be a gift and I knew that I needed to fix it before popping it into a box.  I am not normally one for ripping back and this represented a great sacrifice on my part.  Who but a person of great virtue would do such a thing?  

Clearly I deserved this book.  What else could I do?  If the universe saw fit to drop the very thing for which I had waited so long into my lap, then it would be rude to not accept it.  

I handed the book to the parent volunteer manning the desk and checked it out.  For the record, she confirmed that I was more than welcome to take it.  She even enabled me just a little bit when I waffled for a second there.  

So now I have denied some poor child the chance to read Eclipse and have probably spat right in the face of Karma.  Karma was probably on a lunch break and didn't see me sneaking the book out of the library.  Karma will figure it out, though.  Karma always does.

Now that I think of it, that may explain all that weirdness with the yarn today when I was knitting the second pair of mittens.  Why else would the non-working yarn keep sneaking out to the front and getting stuck in the stitches?  That isn't the sort of thing that just happens normally.  It could very well be that Karma is already back on track and making with the smiting...

I don't care.  We are looking at two more storms in the next few days.  I need to know that I have enough reading material to survive what might amount to enforced confinement.  You can only knit mittens for so long before you need a diversion, after all.  

Don't tell Karma about that.  All these mittens were supposed to be Christmas gifts.  Karma doesn't like it when you read ill-gotten bookish gains while avoiding the holiday knitting...

SA