I had a fun day yesterday. It truly was fun, it was a blast and a definite boost to my outlook on life in general. I keep telling people the story, and they all say I should write it down, so that's what I'm doing. I work with 4-H kids, and was asked to teach a group of novices at a Livestock Judging competition yesterday. The novices are the kids that have never judged livestock before, and range from 5 yrs. old to 16.
I have taught the novices for the last several years, but yesterday was different.
I had a group of 12 kids. We were in a very cold barn for 2 hours walking around to different pens of animals. There were two older boys in my group who were completely rowdy and determined to see if they could frustrate me, they kept this up the entire time. Okay, picture them as background distraction for the rest to come.
Right as I was making my opening instructional statement, one sweet little blonde girl, about 6, burst into tears. She was cold. I found gloves for her, pulled her hat down tighter and gave her a big bear hug and stuck hot chocolate in her hands. She proceeded to sob for the next two hours. She was very compliant, cooperative and participated in everything gladly. She just couldn't stop those sad sobs.
Now we're at the pigs. "Do you know where ham comes from?" I ask. Yank, yank, yank. I look down into a miserable face. Suddenly a raging river of tears start down another little girl's cheeks. "Teacher, my tummy hurts so bad!" Now we have rowdy boys (there's 3 at this point, their ranks are growing), sobbing cold girl, grunting pigs and sobbing sick girl. I look around and ask if her mommy is here. No, she's at home. Hmm. Another adult notices my chaos and asks if there's something they can do. I send the sick one with her and continue to explain about where ham comes from.
Moving on to wool. That went fairly well. None of the chaos has stopped, we're all just adapting to it. I can imagine how our little group appears to the rest of the people in the barn. It probably looked like we needed an adult with us. I huddle the group up and start to explain to them what "splay-footed" and "pigeon-toed" look like. There arises a disturbance over to my left and in consternation I ask what on earth is going on.
A bloody mouthed 5 year old looks up at me from his position in the dirt and says, "I lost a tooth. I can't find it, it fell in the dirt." By this time sick girl has joined us again. So all of us (even sobbing cold girl & rowdy boys) get down in the dirt and start raking it with our fingers looking for his tooth. It was a matter of utmost importance. It never occured to me to do anything about the blood all over his face. Finally, we gave up. I told him, "Buddy, we can't find your tooth. We have to go to our next class. I'll draw a big circle in the dirt so we can come back and look when we have time."
On to the horses. And then the steers. Rowdy boys are getting worse. Cold sobbing girl is now shaking. About 20 minutes after moving on from the tooth hunt, Toothless Boy starts loudly crying... "No! Noooo! Don't stand there!" I look across the big barn to the subject of his distress. A group of people were standing on our circle. Now we would never find his tooth. So, I told him we probably wouldn't find it, but that it would be okay. He was very concerned about the Tooth Fairy, so I said his parents could call her and explain everything. She'd still stop by while he was sleeping.
Well, we got done with the animals, and I took us outside for some more instruction. Oddly enough, it was much warmer outside than in the barn. We each were taking turns giving "reasons", which is slightly similar to a speech. I asked everyone to be respectful while each person was talking, and to give them their full attention. As you would assume, rowdy boys (now 4) went off doing their own thing in the snow. I finally reached the 'that's enough of that' point, and got their attention with a very fiery command to stand perfectly still and not utter another peep until we were done. I admit, I lost my temper. Not good, but they finally listened to me. Well, Ringleader decided he was going to win this battle of wills. We were done, time to go inside for food. Ringleader didn't move. I told him to come along, but he informed me that I had told him not to move. "Well I'm telling you to move now." Whatever. Pick your battles I guess. I have to admit, I chuckled on the inside.
I'm probably going to make an interesting mother someday.
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