"But I'm not crazy!"

I teach, therefore I am... crazy.

Truthfully, I love my job. I'm teaching seven classes a week, with an occasional eighth or ninth thrown in when I substitute for someone else. Each class is an hour long, full of high-energy activities focusing on speech, movement and improvisation. The kids, while sometimes a challenge, are always coming up with interesting things, and no two classes go the same way at all.

It's the parents that kill me.

I teach at a particular school on Tuesdays at 4:30. The class starts exactly 1/2 hour after my first class at another campus ends, and I have to traverse a very busy boulevard to get to work at the second location. Sometimes I stop for a quick drink (Like Fanta, get your mind out of the gutter!) and then go to class. Yesterday I had to get a bite to eat because I'd be facing three more classes instead of my usual two.

So I arrive exactly at 4:28 and go directly to the school office. Apparently the school cannot spare a person for 5 minutes to walk my one student who attends school there over to my building. Picking this child up usually takes about 5 minutes because they have to find him. He is usually on the playground, so I am inevitably starting late.

Yesterday I go through this rigmarole and ask at the front desk for him. They clear me in to go get him, but another mom stops me in the lobby.

"When did you change the class time? The class starts at 4."

"The class always started at 4:30. I teach at another campus and I end there at 4. The class here CAN'T start at 4 because I'm not here."

"I know I'm not crazy. I get off work at 3:30 so she can be here at 4."

"Well even so, I can't BE here at 4. I'm teaching another class in another location until 4. I can't get here before 4:30."

"I always brought her at 4. I'm not crazy! I know the class used to start at 4."

"No, see here on my sheet? The time is listed, and has been listed since the 19th, as 4:30."

"No, it used to start at 4, and I want to know why you changed it."

"I have to go get the other kids. You can talk to my boss about it - I'll have her call you." And I went to retrieve my student and THEN make my way to class and set up and THEN start teaching.

So later, after I get home, the boss calls me. It turns out the lady argued with HER too, and also sat outside my class and railed against me to the other parents. She concluded her account to my boss with the statement that I called her crazy.

Now, pause a minute. In the above exchange, just WHERE did I do that? It was HER saying she WASN'T crazy. Or did I dream that?

So the jist of it is the boss called another parent or two. The first parent she called, when asked about the encounter (which only the school staff heard, but apparently the woman did go talk to other parents,) asked "You mean the crazy lady?"

Pow. Case closed.

So the boss talked to the woman who had to back down and admit she was wrong, and said she guesses (GUESSES?!) she owed me an apology. But she still wasn't crazy, she said.

It's a good thing I love my job. Especially since I have to deal with strange people. Because that lady? Man, she was crazy.