Confessions of a one-time Sub

Last Friday Frank and I let out a big “schwoo.” That’s a collective sigh of relief. They had layoffs at his company (a large manufacturer of snack foods). We got the word in early November and panicked for about a month before we found out. During this month I thought of different options for us if he did lose his job (not that I don’t make enormous amounts of money writing this blog).

I thought maybe we could substitute teach. I actually have experience in this area. You see when I lost my job in 2001 I was a substitute teacher—for one day.

I was assigned to an elementary school in the very affluent Highland Park. Does this mean the children are better behaved? Smarter? Nah. Just means they all carried cell phones. And this was before cell phones were cells.

I was to teach computer class. Great-I’m an IT genius! Well, not really, but come on, this was 1-5 grade, how hard could it be? The computer-teaching part actually wasn’t hard. We cut and pasted, learned how to change the color of fonts and practiced typing spelling words.

I couldn’t, however, master the art of getting kids to walk in a line. I thought they just did it automatically. Not if there’s a sub. Especially a sub who seems easy to overthrow. I tried to walk a class of first graders back to their classroom and they all walked in a mob.

“Get in a line!” I yelled. A couple of kids wandered off towards the bathroom. “Oh? Is it like an organized bathroom break now?” I asked (big mistake). “Yes,” one of the boys answered and giggled. Several ran off to the bathroom. A few more just ran away. The ones I could find I ushered (maybe shoved a little) against some lockers. “Sit there! Don’t move!” I said. “But we’re not even in this class,” a little boy cried. “Oh, well then you can go,” I said. When I finally delivered the kids to their regular teacher, we were probably missing about 1/3 of the class.

Whatever. It was time for lunch. Now this I was excited about. I had missed school lunches for like 12 years! And that day, in the rich elementary school, they were having chili cheese dogs—yes! “I’ll take a chili cheese dog, some tater tots and two chocolate milks!” I said. “Um, you know, the teachers can have salads,” the cafeteria guy said. No way was I gonna waste this opportunity on a teacher salad! The coney was so good. Yes, the other teachers looked at me weird as I dipped my tater tots in catsup and mayonnaise. (Just like old times!)

Later that day I had another first grade class. We were practicing something in Word and the Microsoft Office Assistant (paperclip man) popped up. “Who’s that?” one of the kids asked. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I said and deleted the paperclip man for him. “NO!!!!” the kid shrieked, “I-want-him-back-I-want-him-back!!!” “Oh, sorry!” I said and found the paperclip man for him again. Soon the whole class was shrieking, “I want him too! Why don’t I have him?” I had to go around the room and get the paperclip man to appear on all 30 screens. We didn’t make any progress on changing the font color that day.


As I helped one of the first graders find the paper clip man she looked up at me and asked, “Why is your tooth crooked?” How do you respond to that? “You know. My dad is a dentist. He could fix that for you.” Stupid rich kids. Although she’ll be happy to know that based on her “encouragement” I did eventually get a crown on that tooth. But not at her dad’s office in Highland Park. In the shopping center with the sign that just said, “Dentist.”

So I never substituted again but not because the kids scared me away. Or the paperclip man scared me away. Or because I lost some of the kids. Or because I asked for seconds on tater tots. Just because I got another job. But if it came down to it, I could sub again. But next time, I hope it’s on free ice cream day. I’m so craving a push-up!