How in the world do these things happen?

Kevin and Marcus who are both in my morning kinder class and my two o'clock class consistantly out-perform the rest of the kids, so I've taken to keeping extra worksheets on hand to keep them busy while the other kids slog through the intitial work. Kevin in particular loves writing, and I have several pages of alphabet writing practice just for him. He'll fly through one then beg, 'One more! One more!' It's great.

Anyway, this morning I was browsing through some materials in the staff room, and I found a book of beginning cursive. I thought, 'Kevin'll love this' and copied the first two pages for him. Sure enough, during my two o'clock, as everyone else was deep in a cutting and pasting project, Kevin had finished and was waving at me, yelling 'Work, work!' Mentally patting myself on the back for having thought ahead, I gave him the cursive worksheets. He dug right in. A few minutes later, Marcus, who will usually settle for a dot-to-dot or a regular alphabet sheet as extra work, was asking for a cursive work sheet. I was annoyed that I hadn't considered Marcus might like it too but decided that it would be no problem to quickly run another copy--I often slip out of the room for this or that while the kids are working.

I was gone less than a minute.

When I returned, my room looked like a crime scene being reenacted by Korean children on cheesy television. Kids were standing on chairs and pointing and yelling, I think. But my eyes first went to the floor where I saw a suspect pair of scissors lying on top of a medium dusting of paper snow. When I raised my eyes, I saw Katie holding Nicole's hands as though she were helping a wounded soldier, and Nicole's face wore a look that could have won a victim of the year award (I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that she herself had played a large role in her own distress; she is quite possibly one of the most evilly sneaky girls I have ever met). When Katie saw me, she removed her hands along with a blood soaked tissue. 'Dear God,' I though to myself, 'Nicole's severed a finger.' Shaking myself out the bad TV show and remembering that I was in charge, I hastened to inspect the damage. What I found was a relatively small cut that had simply produced alot of blood. FORTUNATELY. I don't think I would have relished rushing to the kitchen to pack a detached finger on ice. Luckily, I have been outfitted for such occasions--I had her slathered with ointment and bandaged and coloring again in no time.

Forget teaching, I should be an EMT.