Confessions of a Drama Teacher: Pizzagate 2016

My students are interesting folks. They seem to know right where my line is and they often live right at that line. Such goofballs. I just returned from the annual week-long trip where I accompanied 91 students to Southern California. Last year, some of the kids joked about buying me pizza in the middle of the night- fast forward to the last night of the trip. It was late- having just returned from Medieval Times and I was exhausted, and irritated. All I wanted to do was sleep. Right before I went to bed I received the following text message from my student Ben at 11:46 pm "Hey, random question, what is your favorite kind of pizza?" To which I responded, "Please don't order us pizza, I just want to sleep." Then I plugged my phone in and settled down for the night so I never received the following text- "Pepperoni it is." At approximatley 12:45 in the morning I hear a knock on the door. I immeadiatley think, Oh no- they've ordered me pizza. So I stumble out of bed and there is the delivery man at the door with a bit of an apologetic look on his face. He says, "Enjoy your pizza"- and hands it to me. Now, I am still in a bit of a just woke up fog so I stand there for a moment and say to Sarah- they ordered us a pizza. The room in question was right next door- so I knock on their door. They open the door pretending to be asleep... I just stand there- hair disheveled-without my glasses and say- you guys ordered me a pizza. They start laughing and I glare at them and go back to my room. By this time, Sarah and I are both laughing but all I want to do is go back to sleep.

So, I set the pizza down- but the smell was making me nauseous- so I decide to give it back to the boys. I get out of bed and because it is dark in the room, promptly trip on Sarah's suitcase and rip my toenail so it starts to bleed. I go next door and shove the pizza at the boys and start complaining about my bleeding toe (you still have to keep in mind how incoherent I was at this time). I tell them the smell is making me sick- and they are having a hard time not laughing uncontrollably while trying to have sympathy for my bleeding toe. I am about to leave when one of the kids say- since you're up, could you get us something from the vending machine? Well, that was irritating to me- so I pick up the pizza (My first thought is to throw it at the boys, but then I figured we would get charged if there was a big mess) so much to their protests, I dumped it outside on a pile of woodchips and went back to bed. As I fell asleep I couldn't help but giggle at their shenanigans.

Little did I know the boys spent the next 20 minutes debating how to get the pizza (some of the pieces had landed on each other so they were still salvagable) Finally, they army crawled out of their room and ate the pizza.

It was truly one of the goofiest experiences of my life! Those boys! This is us the following morning with the pieces they didn't eat... (If you look closely you can notice the wood chips).

Overall, it was a fantastic trip with no drama and no trips to first aid! (That hasn't happened in 4 years!) I am reminded of how blessed I am that I get to rub shoulders with these individuals. And even though they drive me crazy at times- I couldn't help but think as I fell asleep how much these yahoos really care about me. Such yahoos.