Misadventures in the first grade

I already told you that I spent the better part of Friday volunteering at the school. It was teacher appreciation week and parent volunteers take over the classrooms so the teachers can go to a catered lunch off campus. I spend several hours a week in these classes so I thought the whole experience would be fairly mundane.

As I was returning from lunch with a first-grade class we stopped at the bathroom. One little boy went in to take care of business, and came out grabbing himself and hopping around as if someone had set fire to his pants. I quickly pulled him aside to search out the problem. As he stood before me, ferociously clutching himself and hopping on one foot, he explained that, "I went in there and went potty like I was supposed to and pulled my pants back up. But I guess my ding-a-ling wasn't empty, 'cuz then I went a bunch more in my pants."

Good grief. How can you wet your pants after you just went to the bathroom?!

I took him to the office to get cleaned up. I picked out the appropriate clean clothing and asked if he needed help. He declined and went into the bathroom armed with some wet wipes and the fresh clothes. He was in there for quite some time and I didn't hear anything. I knocked and asked if he needed help. I'll paraphrase the next part... apparently, he tried to remove his pants and underpants simultaneously without first removing his shoes. I'm confident enough to admit that I've done this myself (although not after wetting my pants. And not recently.) and the result is inside-out-pants-bunched-into-a -hopeless-ball-around-your-ankles. Trust me when I say it's very hard to extricate yourself once you've gone down this road.

I asked again if he needed help only to be told no. I waited another few seconds, and then I heard muffled sobs. Aw, crap. He doesn't want me to come in, but what am I supposed to do? Leave him sitting naked on the floor with his wet pants wrapped around his ankles?

I really couldn't think of anything intelligent, so I morphed into silly-mommy-mode. I'm embarrassed to admit this but with young kids, if you're willing to check your ego at the door, you can pretty much get them out of any mood/funk/tantrum/whatever by acting like a giant goofball. And since I didn't know what else to do I started drumming a beat on the door. And the crying stopped. And then I started singing along to my beat:

I can sing...
And I can dance...
But I can't do it with pee pee in my pants.
Let's just do what we have to do...
Take those pants off on the count of two...
ONE... TWO...!

I had to sing loudly to be heard through the door, and by the time I got to the ONE... TWO... a lady from the office was poking her head in to see what was going on. Nothing like a little mild public humiliation to get the day started, right? I had to sing for a couple minutes, but he stopped crying, asked me to sing it again, and eventually got himself out of that bathroom without me having to go in. I think we were both relieved.

By this time I realize that I've abandoned the other mommy helping in the classroom for a good chunk of time, and am anxious to get back. I'm walking quickly down a long hallway and trying to encourage my little friend to keep up by doing more of my stupid rhymes. I was saying something about keeping up the pace, and we had to race when suddenly he wasn't there. I stopped and turned to look for him, and there he was 10 paces back with his pants around his knees.

I'm pretty sure my mouth fell open. I've been volunteering at school since my kids started school and this is, by far, the most ridiculous chain of events. Ever. How many incidents can one child have with his pants in a 30 minute period anyway? I must have been silently staring at him longer than I thought because he said, "Jeez Mrs. B. You raced my pants right off."

I have never been so relieved to get a kid back to the classroom in my life. I just hope he transfers schools before fifth grade. I don't think either of us will forget this any time soon. It's kinda cute now, but by that age? Not so much.