Cat Tales: Miscellany and Mischief

January 9 (30DBC)

30DBC January 9 Prompt: Late actor Bob Denver (known for playing Gilligan on the tv show Gilligan's Island ), who would've celebrated his 82nd birthday today, once said "You know, I have no worst experiences." What do you think? When have you had to turn a potential "worst experience" into something positive?

I think that's a great outlook to have on life. You either win or you learn. My potential "worst experience" was working with a lady at daycare. I was the assistant teacher in my Crawler room (age 7 months to 14 months). I'd been working there for a while, over a year, and when the lead teacher left around noon, it was essentially my room until the end of the day. We had to maintain a strict teacher-to-child ratio, so the lead teacher's replacement was one of the usual suspects, a member of a nanny service that the manager at the daycare typically called in when staff was really low (which it usually was). I was used to having these people come work with me, usually a different person every day, so I had to teach and reteach how the room's schedule worked and who each baby was and what they ate/drank, where their diaper changing supplies were, etc.

Anyway. If that weren't annoying enough, this particular day I had to work with...the lady. I'd seen her around the daycare before a few times, and typically our brief exchanges were pleasant. But there's a feeling you get when you just know that the person you're forced to share a room with just ISN'T going to work out. There may be no obvious signs except that little prickly gut feeling.

Well, this lady proved many times true on that gut feeling. She spoke very loudly during naptime, making me worried she'd wake the children. She commented on the teacher's hair next door in a very rude way. I had to stop myself from gaping at her, but found myself making much more sharp comments than I would normally dare to make (and they would all go right over her head, as if I hadn't spoken a word).

"Did you ever notice that woman's hair? I think she might be wearing a wig."
I sniffed.
"I wouldn't know. I don't make it a point to criticize other people's hair."
"But it looks like a wig, doesn't it?"

This was just one of the many instances where I had to restrain myself from saying anything further. She was obviously an extrovert and so dragged me from my attempts at writing in my notebook several times to make comments or ask questions about the room. She would also go to pick up or comfort a baby if it happened to wake in its crib, which was not advised (as they would typically fuss for a moment and go right back to sleep, enabling us to keep working without interruption/not cause a ruckus/not wake the baby permanently so as to mess up their sleeping schedule). I had to stop her several times.

When time came for snack time and diaper changes (right after nap time), many of the babies were awake and fussing in their cribs. She looked as if she wanted to bash her head against the wall and asked me if it was like this all the time. "With eight babies, it tends to get loud closer to snack time," I said as I filled sippy cups with milk. As usual, I had her change most of the diapers while I prepared snack, as some of the babies had specific foods or allergies that I knew about that would be too difficult to explain. I had music playing during all this, and I can't remember specifically what triggered it, but I just remember turning it up so that it would help calm me/the babies while they ate. I think I had several grumpy babies that afternoon, so they were shrieking and throwing fits in their high chairs. At one point I think she dared to touch my auxiliary cord/the volume switch and turned it down. Angered, I just yanked the cord out of the radio entirely. "Finally," she gasped. "That was too much noise." I didn't say a word.

After snack was where I almost lost my cool. In fact, I did. I just waited until I was safely in the bathroom to let loose my angry tears (I'm an angry crier). The straw that broke the camel's back was that I specifically told this woman to place the babies back in their cribs after cleaning them off from snack so that we could finish cleaning the room and putting away the high chairs without worrying about them crawling all over the floor/eating crumbs/getting under our feet while we were trying to move furniture. It was a safety issue. Obviously, the kids were never thrilled about being back in their cribs, even just for a few moments. I was used to this. She decided to take matters into her own hands, though. As I tried to sweep the crumbs from the floor, I noticed a child crawling toward me. "Put him in his crib," I asked again, thinking maybe she hadn't heard me. I noticed other children, crawling every which where. "It's okay," she insisted. "No, it's not. I can't sweep and clean this floor when they're crawling all over it." "It's fine. I'll watch them."

I looked at her like she was crazy. She refused to look at me and instead tried to chase down the 4 or 5 kids that were out on the floor and trying desperately to get to the crumbs on the tile I was sweeping. One slipped by her, sat down in the crumbs, and picked some up in her hands. "Look, this is why we put them in their cribs. They eat the crumbs and get dirty." She hurried to wipe the crumbs off the baby and pick her up, only to let two more kids onto the tile. I swept as much as I could and phoned the front desk. "I need a bathroom break."

As soon as the assistant director was at the door, I slipped out to talk to her before she came in. "She is driving me crazy," I said, tears already burning my eyes. "She won't listen to me. She let all the kids crawl around on the floor after snack while I was trying to clean. I can't do anything with her. Is there any way you can move her somewhere else?" The assistant director frowned. "I can't guarantee anything, but as soon as you drop to five kids, I can move her probably." I nodded, knowing she could do little else, and went to the bathroom to try to calm myself down. While there, I recited a few Hail Mary's and tried to look at the situation with clearer eyes. This woman was obviously a test. She grated against me in just the right way to push all my buttons. It hurt. It was rough and hard for me to deal with (and dealing with 8 kids day in and day out is enough to train one's patience fairly well). But how else does God smooth down our rough edges than by pairing us with a situation, a person, a circumstance that matches our rough edges and forces them down? I realized before I went back in that room to deal with her for another 30 minutes. She was my "emery board." And without her, I wouldn't have had to tap as deeply into my already deep well of patience to dig out another layer and not go completely ballistic on her like I wanted to. She made me realize how much I had already grown--and how much I had yet to grow.

To this day, I still look back on this incident and get a little heated, but I also laugh. It was highly unpleasant, trying, and grated on every nerve I had. But without emery boards every once in a while, we'd always be rough around the edges.

AlyCatAuthor