As you may or may not know, Wife is a four-year old kindergarten teacher.

Hmm, that sounds kind of odd, let me rephrase: she is a kindergarten teacher for four-year-olds.

Much better.

She’s been at the same school for two years now and has had, oh how should I put this, a wide range of intellectual prowess in her students.

In the beginning of the year, a lot of children haven’t been away from home for any length of time and have trouble with concepts like “crapping in your pants is bad” and “peeing in the middle of the hallway is not allowed.”  However, about half the class is already able to read and she has a lot of really bright kids.

Even the smartest of children can still be a dumbass when they’re four.

This week, Wife had a student chew a hole through his shirt.  I’m not sure if he was trapped inside his shirt and he had to use his teeth to chew a path to freedom or what the case might be, but I’m sure he had a good reason for it.  Perhaps he suffers from a disorder that causes his incisors to grow like a rodent’s, and he couldn’t find a nearby block of wood to chew on.

In the same day, Wife had another student get his head stuck in a chair.  Of all the life skills that someone can screw up, you should be able to sit in a chair without protective headgear.  I offered to draw him a diagram of how to properly utilize a chair and minimize risk of injury, but I was voted down.  Getting his head extracted from the place where normal people put their butt resulted in some bruising to his face, which I hope serves as a reminder the next time the child is faced with a furniture dilemma.

Wife also has one student this week who came in wearing a pair of white gloves.  When she asked why he was wearing white gloves, he said it’s because he’s Mario.  And then he proceeded to jump around the room like Mario trying to get coins out of a ? box.  When the student was advised that he couldn’t wear the gloves during class, he threw a tantrum.  They reached a compromise that allowed him to wear the gloves during lunch and recess but not during class.  It seems as if this kid never takes these gloves off, because after a couple days, they are no longer close to white.  They’re now a much more realistic color for an actual plumber whose hands might spend all day in poopwater.

Wife is a saint for even being a teacher in the first place; I think I would have snapped long ago.  She’s even sad that she only has 17 more days of class and that all her kids are leaving.

Even the one who got his head stuck in a chair.