The first time I laid eyes on our classroom mascot he was laying down on the back counter in a huge pile of stuff dumped there by the painters last summer.
He didn’t look comfortable at all. In fact, his right arm was completely detached from his shoulder and his other arm and legs were bent in a very unnatural way.
I picked him up, re-attached his arm and found a nice quiet spot for him to observe our classes.
About a week into school we had a contest to name him and “Charlie” was the winner by a large margin.
So, Charlie stands near the door, atop the student mailboxes. He’s supposed to make sure everyone uses the hand sanitizer coming in and out of the class but he’s not very good at it. I suppose it would be helpful if he could speak or communicate in some way, but he can’t. He’s a model skeleton and that’s the only thing he’s trained for.
One day, last December, disaster struck. A student bumped into the desk that holds the mailboxes and Charlie toppled over onto his head.
I thought it was the end of the line for our little mascot. He was a mess. Broken bones were all over the floor. He broke several vertebrae, his jaw was snapped off and the top of his head rolled across the floor to the other side of the room.
During Christmas break, I took him home to see if there was anything I could do to reassemble him.
With some glue, masking tape and a lot of patience, I was able to put poor Charlie back together again.
So, Charlie is back where he belongs silently beseeching the students to use the hand sanitizer.
No comments:
Post a Comment