The last major event that happened at CCA, the school where I teach, was the direct fly-over by the space shuttle Endeavor. Today's event was much scarier.
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The three children playing Four Square had asked me earlier if I wanted to play with them, and I said I would. I set my water bottle down, and stepped into square one. Soon enough, a crowd gathered, and the girl standing in the "King" square informed me that the newest variation of the game allowed the king to revise the rule he and his people must abide by: saying the name of your color, TV show, vegetable, or whatever the king chose as that round's theme whenever you touch the ball.
Interesting, I thought. It took me a while to come up with a TV show I wanted to admit before my children, though. Perhaps I'd do well to restrain my TV consumption more...
The game went on, more children gathered around (for they all wanted to get a piece of the teacher!), and the usual complaints came to me as the referee. One of the boys brought an empty cardboard box that looked like it had once housed a small package from Amazon.
It was only when I looked up from the king's square that I noticed him flailing the box wildly above his head that I knew something was terribly wrong.
Bees! Swarms of bees were everywhere, whirling and buzzing in frightful cyclones, descending upon the picnic tables, a maddening swarm flying through the empty volleyball net. And there were children on the playground on the other end of the campus!
"Children, go inside. The game's over. You will spend the rest of your recess inside, alright? Hurry!"
I quickly stretched my vision towards the playground and didn't spot Simon, the boy with crazy allergies, so I turned towards the walls used in handball games. Ah.
"Simon, go inside! Inside, all of you! There are beeeeeeeeeeeeez!"
Looking back, it was kind of comical, but for Simon, who has never been stung before, I didn't want to take that risk.
"Mr. Pollard, now that you're done with Four Square, do you want to play handball with me and Peter?" a sixth grader asked me. He mustn't have heard.
"No, Jake. Go inside; there are a lot of bees coming this way." And with that, he scampered off towards the wrong door, the door for the elementary students. The other teachers were peeking out the doors, and I was grateful that there were only two more minutes before recess would've ended. Even the goofiest of my boys had listened and ran for shelter from the angry tornado.
As I was leaving school after I prayed over the students, I realized that I had left my water bottle on the ground by the Four Square court, and O! how thirsty I would be in my psych class devoted to stress. Small potatoes.
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