Hot Dog Surprise

This is part two of my volunteer hijinks from Friday. You know, the day the teachers left the building and left me in charge? There might be a part three and four, or I might save those stories for another week. I don't want to go overboard with this...

I'm sitting at the lunch table with a first grade class (not the same class from yesterday's post. I have twins remember so I get to do everything twice. Sometimes it feels like the movie Groundhog Day) and the kids are enjoying their lunches. Please don't infer that they were eating their lunches just because I said they were enjoying them. Let me explain:

I was having a conversation with my daughter and her friend while watching a little boy at the opposite end of the table. You know how it is when you can look at a kid and immediately tell that they're up to no good? Well, this particular child was just short of sprouting devil horns. From this point forward we'll refer to him as wiener boy.

As I sat half-listening to my daughter, wiener boy very meticulously loaded his hot dog with ketchup. He then removed the hot dog from the bun, and held it - almost resting it - on the shoulder of the boy sitting next to him. Let's refer to this child as friend of wiener boy, or FWB for short.

FWB is having some sort of deep conversation with the child to the other side of him, so he's turned away from wiener boy. He feels something on his shoulder... turns his head to look... and... whap... turns his face smack into the ketchup-y hot dog.

At this point my uncanny mommy radar is sounding a loud alarm and I'm struggling to disentangle myself from the lunch table so that I can get over to wiener boy because FWB has now removed his ketchup-y hot dog from the bun and is shaking it at wiener boy, who is also shaking his hot dog in return. Trust me when I say there was a lot of wiener shaking, ketchup was starting to fly and it needed to stop. As I approached, wiener boy must've gotten a good look at the expression on my face, because he started frantically trying to stuff the evidence down his throat.

As I raced to the other end of the table I had a brief moment to think about Darwin. And survival of the fittest. And whether I should let this questionable example of humanity choke on his hot dog rather than grow to maturity and pollute the gene pool with his DNA. Fortunately it was a short distance to the child and I got there: A) Before I got any farther with the Darwin theory, and B) Before the evidence was completely consumed.

I'm not sure why, but I took wiener boy's remaining hot dog. After briefly asessing the handful of yuck I'd acquired, and a conversation so ridiculous I can't quite remember exactly how it went, I finally surmised they had been playing a game called Hot Dog Surprise where you try to "surprise" the person next to you by unexpectedly whacking them in the face with your hot dog. I was skeptical, but several other children spoke enthusiastically about the game. I explained that there would be no more Hot Dog Surprise and I was getting ready to hand the hot dog back to wiener boy. I was sizing up the hot dog and wondering if it was worthy of eating given that I'd had my hand all over it. But then I remembered that he'd whacked his friend in the face with it.

I was in the process of handing the hot dog over when FWB said, "Hey Mrs. B. I bet my wiener is bigger than your wiener."

If you are looking for Wenda she left two clues FOR TODAY -- one in this post's comments and one in yesterday's comments :)