Okay, I no longer have the student whom I shall call Bad Boy Number One (he’s not really bad, just rather difficult to discipline). I sat in the row in front of him during t’filah (prayers) today, moving back and forth behind my students, who sat in the row in front of me. I’ve learned that sitting behind my students is the best way of keeping them on task and in line.
So I’m moving back and forth, and I feel a squishy object beneath my shoe. I lift my right foot, and there on the carpet in the Sanctuary is what looks like gum. Extremely annoyed, I reach down and pull it up. It turns out to be a putty-like substance, so I wonder if perhaps a workman dropped it. In any case, I leave the sanctuary, go downstairs, and throw it away.
When I come back, I see Bad Boy Number One and Bad Boy Number Two pulling something out of One’s turned-out pocket. “He left some Silly Putty in there and it got all over,” Two said. Now I’m even more annoyed, and I very frostily tell Number One that I found his Silly Putty, stepped on it, thought it was gum, and threw it out. “That’s okay,” One said, “I don’t really want it anymore.” That’s what he said last year every time I took something away from him. And yet, after class, I saw that he had a large lump of what was left of the Silly Putty. Perhaps he wasn’t quite done with it after all.
“You know,” I told him, “you’re not even my student anymore and you’re still giving me trouble.”
He did apologize, though. He said he dropped the Silly Putty and then forgot he had dropped it. Yeah, that’s what he used to say last year, too.
Not missing my old students nearly as much today as I was on Sunday.
When that kid grows up to be a business tycoon (or a rabbi), you’ll have the goods on him!