Doug! Tamer of Chaos!

[gridlore]

I got a very nice compliment this morning. The school where I've been working all this week is on a small residential street, with my station at a crosswalk right in front of the school.

The issue here is I'm trying to cross over 200 kids at the point when that street is choked with Suburban Assault Vehicles. The school itself has an army of volunteers trying to get these cars in and out quickly.

It's pretty amazing to watch this quiet street go from empty and serene to Times Square on New Year's Eve crowded and back. My job in all of this is to get all these kids across the street.

But I also have to watch traffic flow. I've been hopping trying to group kids to cross and then allowing cars to thin out. This morning the teacher in charge of the circus told me I was doing a great job of traffic management.

I also might have destroyed a 5th grader's chance of ever getting a prom date. Busy day.

Comments

[digitalsidhe]

Okay, I just have to ask about the prom date thing. I assume they don't have a 5th grade prom, so you thin you may have destroyed this kid's chance at getting a date for prom in high school... what, 6-7 years from now? The mind boggles. What happened, and what did you do? Inquiring minds need to know!

Congrats on the terrific traffic management, too.

[mdlbear]

I am also very curious.

[gridlore]

I was working with the School Safety Patrol kids, two girls, one boy, all 5th graders.

I mentioned that he might want to back off his teasing and trash-talking as in about five years he's going to be looking for a date for Homecoming.

At which point the two girls conferred and agreed that he was going to be totally single in High School.

Nonsense!

[ng_moonmoth]

There is no way you have destroyed that kid's chance at a prom date. In fact, you have done the opposite. You have let him know that his current behavior is prom-date unfriendly, gotten backing from two people in his likely prom date cohort, and alerted him to that being something it might be a good idea to work on. If he figures that out, your bringing up the issue will have helped: you are an adult with no parental or quasiparental authority, which improves the likelihood that he will accept the advice as being in his best interest, instead of the advice-giver's best interest.

You go!

Re: Nonsense!

[kevin_standlee]

Good point. Doug, you might just have saved this little guy.

There are times when I've gotten grumpy that being law-abiding, studious, and (I hope) a Good Guy means that I'm just letting the Big Manly Manly Manly Men Who Are Manly (i.e. angry, hurtful, and abusive) get everything they want. But I have a good home and a moderate level of success, and I think my grandparents who raised me would be proud of me, so who says Nice Guys Finish Last?

[claidheamhmor]

Nice going!