Sooooo, I started getting calls about mid day from newspaper kids asking what the plan was, what we were doing etc. I asked if they had met with Scoobie Doo in the morning or at lunch. No, nope. Friday night, they still had not seen him. The last sighting had been at 2pm. So, I went back to the room and at 9:30pm I knocked on his door. Took about 10 minutes for him to get to the door. He'd been asleep; since 8:30; gosh he got up at 5:30 and he'd had a really hard day. I basically told him he had to do a better job. Meet with the kids have a plan, check on them.
In the meantime, my friend Cindy came out for the convention Friday morning and stayed with me. Love her. She helped me getting a meeting with Mark a graphic artist, if you will, so that we could talk about the design for "The Book". I have to meet with the real estate boys on Tuesday, so he's going to send some stuff to me to show them Monday afternoon.
Saturday morning I start getting calls from the newspaper staff back in Dallas at about 8:30am. Scoobie Doo had not scheduled for the kids to be at school with the head custodian. He had not scheduled an adult to be in charge of the kids working all day Saturday. So, they had to get me to talk to our Saturday custodian to let them in. Then they realized they needed in Scoobie's office, but by that time they couldn't find the custodian (school's pretty big with lots of places to hide.)
I saw Scoobie at about 11:30 and told him he needed to contact the kids at school. He comes back to tell me everything was fine. I'm thinking, sure it's fine cause I've been talking to them for the last two hours solving all of your damn problems.
He tells the kids that he has scheduled for them to go to Vanderbilt to take a look around at 1:30. So, he finally realizes perhaps he should have them meet earlier. So they meet at 1:15 at his room. He tells them he has an appt at 6pm that he has to be back for. I ask, "Is that the football game?" Yes, it is. He plans on meeting another adviser and watching the guy in the sports bar. "a restaurant" he says. "a bar" I say.
So in the monolith hotel he tells them, 1:15. Really, not enough time. Two kids head off to get their coats because it is cold, and sure enough they miss the bus. He tells the kids "guess we aren't going to go to Vanderbilt."
I get a phone call of distress because two of mine really want to go to see the school.
I talk to him. "You are still going right?"
He hems and haws and says they'll have less time.
I reply, "great, thanks."
I get a phone call at about 4:15 from the police asking me to go to X store in the mall because two of my students have been caught shoplifting. . . . please let this be a joke. please let this be a joke. So, I haul off to the mall. Show up at the correct store, still hoping it's a joke and see 4 policemen standing in a back corner (it's a pretty small store, but it was still a back corner.) Sitting on the floor . . . two students. Crikey.
4 stores, 2 hours, for them. 8 police reports and 2 hours later for me, we get back to the hotel. At one point the police tell me that if they hadn't been able to reach me they would have taken the kids downtown to the actual police station (instead of the substation in the mall) and booked them. At which point their parents would have had to FLY out to Nashville to get them out of jail. Horrifying. One too scared to stop the other, the other crying out for help by trying to get herself in trouble. (That's just me, the arm chair psychologist.)
Scoobie finally shows up with the other kids (turns out he didn't know the bus system very well, they got lost, missed the bus etc etc, raise your hand if you are surprised . . . no I didn't think so, no surprise.)
I spoke to one of the asst principals several times - LOVE HIM. We were trying to get those two a flight home immediately, but there were no flights out at that point, so they were put in a room by themselves in lockdown.
The rest of the kids got to watch a movie in my room while eating copius amounts of pizza. Cindy and I went downstairs to eat. Got a phone call while at dinner that one of the mom's of the other kids text her son and he replied they were in lock down. (Have you noticed a theme of the phone calls NOT coming from my student's parents?)
I just called Scoobie (Sun am 9) asked him if he had gotten the girls anything for breakfast. He says he doesn't have any money (another problem we've had all weekend, since he doesn't have a credit card and he didn't bring any money). He'd forgotten about the girls, but he'd go down and ask if they had money to get something.
Well, I'd better get my butt in gear and pack. I'm sure I'll have more when I get home.
No comments:
Post a Comment