High Noon

The wheels on the bus go round and round, all through the town.......12:30 it arrives at school and the cutest cowboy stepped off decked out in his light up boots, cowboy hat and wearing

pants that looked as if he was doing a little steer wrestling before school. With his twinkling blue eyes, blond curly hair and a coy smile tucked under his black felt hat, he could melt any country girl's heart. A cowboy right down to the core, even his odor had a familiar smell. Being somewhat of a farm girl myself, I know the difference between cow dung and horse dung but his aroma didn't come from the animals on the farm, rather it was something he produced himself. This is where the familiarity comes into play. It's not uncommon for our four year old cowboy to arrive at school with messy pants.

Here let me back up a bit, before the bus dropped off our busy bunch, the teacher of our class was on the phone informing a parent the schools policy; if a child throws up, for any reason, they can't come to school for at least 24 hours. It just so happened that this particular parent's child threw up on the bus, it looked as if chocolate pudding was part of his lunch. As a matter of fact, the bus driver should get a special award for having to deal with the clean up, the smell and keeping the rest of the children calm, all the while maintaining his sunny personality. The mom of throw up boy was pleading her case trying to convince the teacher that her son is not sick and couldn't understand why she had to come pick him up after the bus arrived. But rules are rules, and he needed to go home. So while our fearless leader was waiting outside for the argumentative mom to retrieve her son, who was wearing chocolate pudding, the other parapro and I took the remaining children into the school. That's when I noticed the old familiar smell coming from the little cowboy and knew he I had a cleaning to do in a stall. With the mess creeping out the back of his pull up, I had him remove his shirt so it wouldn't get soiled during the cleaning. He's actually very capable when it comes to his self help skills and normally I would have had him take care of the mess himself, but this was an explosion of the worst kind, which actually baffles me how he can be so comfortable in it. None the less, I cleaned him up then directed him towards a stall to get dressed. As soon as he entered one, he turned right around and said, "Not that one, it has poop in it." He was right, some other student forgot to flush, but after what we just experienced and knowing he could have stayed in that messy pull up all day, why a little unflushed poop bothered him, I will never know......