At our school, we are required to do two “duties” outside of our normal classes. One of mine turned out to be lunch duty with two other teachers, for the entire middle school.
So today while walking around the cafeteria and watching the students, I found two nickels on the ground. I sneakily picked them up and put them in my pocket, and continued walking. I was sure nobody saw me, so I thought nothing more of it.
About fifteen minutes later, I found another nickel. I again looked around, and put it in my pocket. It was about five minutes later that I found two more spread across the floor between two tables. I couldn’t believe how many nickles I was finding.
For the next 10 minutes, I continued finding about a total of 8 nickles. Before the bell rang, I reached in my pocket to feel the pocket full of treasure I had found. It was gone! I had been robbed!
I looked over at a table of adolescent boys, and saw them giggling at me. When I asked them what was so funny, they said, “reach a little deeper!”. After taking the young one’s advice, I quickly realized that there was a hole the size of my fist in my left pocket. When I asked the boy laughing the hardest how he knew, he said that their table watched me the entire period, picking up change, taking a few steps, and watching the silver flow out of my pant leg.
I immediately turned red, but found the humor in the situation. Putting myself in their situation, I could only imagine how funny and ridiculous a teacher looked in this scenario.
Disclaimer: The reason I looked like a moron to the entire 7th and 8th grade is because that table of boys told just about everyone in the room. I had a girl in the hall say to me, “Mr. W, can I borrow a nickel?” This was followed by a roar of laughter.
