Urine in a Water Pistol Couldn’t Stop Me From Teaching
Sometimes the bigger picture holds all the answers
The child’s face was beyond gleeful. His grin had that manic quality, the kind of expression I recall having at that age while running through sprinklers or being chased at recess. Unbounded joy, mischief and something electric, the experience of being utterly alive and free and no one could stop me.
In the context of being a teacher in a middle school classroom, and what the boy had in his hands and subsequently sprayed in my face, my reaction to his expression held more terror than nostalgia. Though it was smack in the middle of seventh grade English, I believe we were reading something from Sandra Cisneros, his tiny frame darted in practically shaking with glee, aimed his blue water pistol at me, and fired.
His face fell. Though he looked only thirteen, the language that spewed from his mouth afterward was not at all unusual in that Bushwick, Brooklyn school, at least not in the early two thousand’s. He hadn’t meant to aim at me, I could see it was a huge mistake. Terror replacing joy, his eyes shot behind him. “Sorry, Miss…” he stammered. “Sorry, I…” His jaw opened again, then closed.
My class erupted in laughter, the kind I knew I’d never recover control over regardless of the thirty…
