Hard day at work... can make for a hard night at home.

What a bitch of day... work just sucked. And to make matters worse, I took a bitch of day and managed to have to eat a plate full of shit at the last part of it.

Now you need to remember that I work with disabled kids... all kinds of disabled kids, developmentally disabled kids, autistic kids, crazy kids, angry kids, violent kids. I get name called, kicked, hit, spit on on an almost daily basis... and you know that does not bother me, because I have this thing called rational detachment. I remember that these kids are what they are... pick your label... and it is not me. It is them. But when I get pissed on... even just metaphorically by my coworkers I just get livid. No fucking rational detachment there... I fucking expect them to act professionally... to be nice... to fucking understand we all want the best for these little fragments of protoplasm that are other people's children.

Take today... I had a kid... a singularly crazy kid (crazy in the clinical sense). He kept running away from his classroom. I think because he did not want to do work... but I never got a clear sense of what work or why. Anyway, he was running away... but not from school... just from class. He would run all the way to the play ground and then climb to the top of the tallest monkey bars and sit there. Okay... fine by me... let him sit. He knows that eventually he will have to come down... I know he will eventually come down and when he does he will be calmer, we can sit down and figure out why running away and climbing up on the monkey bars might not be the best solution to his problem. And I am cool with waiting until that time.

But my problem is the other staff person that is not cool with waiting. This staff person was circling the monkey bars and demanding that the kid come down... amusingly the kid did not even say "no", he just sat there and ignored. Other staff person continued to demand, threaten with dire consequences (many of which weren't entirely legal... like "you won't get lunch" or "you will get suspended" or "we will come up and get you") Let me tell you, that kid was not presenting imminent harm to himself or anybody else. We do NOT just grab and wrestle kids because we are pissed at them because they ignore us, especially when they are high up on a set of monkey bars. And face it, if an obviously angry adult was at the bottom of your tree snarling and barking at you, would you come down? I know I wouldn't. I tried to get the dumb ass to please stop talking, that I had things well in hand, that he could just go in and deal with less frustrating pupils. But you know... that staff member was so involved in winning this power struggle that he was as about as responsive to my directions as the little lump on the top of the monkey bars.

Anyway, this crazy kid managed to get talked down off his perch no less than four times, coming in and then running away again FOUR FUCKING TIMES. As you can probably guess the angry staff person was starting to foam at the mouth. And I can sympathize. The kid was a royal fucking pain in the ass. But nobody seemed to be asking the question, "why is this kid doing this?"

Anyway, I got called away to deal with other issues... and other than hearing chatter on the walkie talkies I was out of the loop for the last two runaways.

When I got off lunch, I wandered up to that end of the school, to the "room" that is reserved for dealing with kids that need to sit and contemplate their transgressions. It is called a calm room. You go there to calm down. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just makes things worse. Anyway, I need something from there, a label maker and when I walk in, there is this scene, the principal has said "crazy kid" sitting on the floor beside him, holding his hand. Said kid is writhing, complaining and trying to hit or kick but the principal is calm and cool, and has good reflexes so he just deflects the blows and keeps trying to calm the kid down. But the angry staff person is still there, still stalking around, still making demands and threats. Then he stands close, only a three or four feet from the two people on the floor and begins to do this thing, he swings his hands, clapping them behind his back and then swings them forward and claps them in front of his body. He is a tall man, his arms are long, the tips of his finger tips are just inches from the kid's nose.

Kaboom, kid stops squirming and making small swings and kicks, he explodes. Um... duh... talk about poking a frantic person with a sharp stick. He ends up locked in a seclusion room. Last resort... but I cannot help but think that it could have been avoided. I ended up being the one dealing with this, putting that kid back together again in time to catch his cab to go home. (Yes, he is that crazy, we cannot put him on a school bus.)

It took that kid a long time to calm down. He hurt himself trying to beat the door down, nothing serious but I am sure he will have bruises on his feet and knees. I barely got him coherent. I did not try to do the "what happened/what could we have done different" conversation. I just soothed and distracted. And then when the cab came, I called down to the classroom... "Bring up this guys personal stuff, please so he can walk directly to his cab."

And when the person came with his things, just a back pack and the kid's shoes, they were still wanting to win, to somehow make this kid regret what they had done. They held the shoes just out of this kids reach and demanded to know if this kid knew he had to do homework... the very school work that started this whole fiasco... I reached for the shoes, just wanting to get the kid out to his cab without another explosion. And they pulled the shoes just out of my reach.

And you know, I just snatched those shoes from them. I was tired of the way they were just making things get worse and worse and worse. I did not care if that kid ever "got" what a dumb, crazy pain in the ass he had been all day long. I just wanted him out of there.

Long story short, that staff person transferred every ounce of frustration from the kid right onto me. I guess I should have realized. Snatching those shoes was not the smartest thing, but I was just done with the torment the kid game. He was crazy enough without their help.

Long story short, I ended up saying to the person that I was sorry that I had "disrespected" them. And they were right, I should have tried to get the shoes in a more professional way. I ate the shit warm with a big spoon rather than have a coworker all pissy with me for the rest of the school year.

And longer story short, I was so engrossed in getting this whole thing spewed out, regurgitated, that when Master walked in, I hardly noticed he was in the house until he was standing in front of me. I tried to stand up, to cower at his feet and he just knocked me down, hard back down onto the couch. I did a serious face plant onto the couch, twisting and compressing my neck. Something actually made a crunching sound. I was experimentally turning my head to see if I was really broken as he was laying into my ass with the cane. I grumbled that he was not being fair... that he had not stopped at his normal stop and unload his pockets place and I would have gotten up... I really would have... though I don't know if I would have... this day was seriously crappy, and I was not in my right mind.

And to make matters worse when I told Master about my day, he told me that I was too nice to my coworkers, that I should have gotten up into their faces. He was angry with me that I had not been more assertive. He says things like, "You should have said, "okay you dumb son of a bitch, get the fuck out of here and let me do my job."... yeah like I can talk like that at work and like people ever listen to anybody that talks like that.

Okay... I know I listen to him when he talks like that... in fact it sort of turns me on... but at work... pullleasssse.

But speaking of cheese... Master's big TV was not working. And I just suggested to him... "Have you tried whacking it on the side?" And you want to know something fucking cool... he did... and IT STARTED WORKING AGAIN. I am awesome!!!!