A Glandular Problem

So this is one of Gage's new outfits of choice.  Fortunately, he's moved on from his obsession with his coat (Our three-year-old pictures of him - our professional pictures that he will always have from when he was three, have him in that dang red coat.  He would scream and cry and make all kinds of horrible faces if we tried to take it off.  Which is better - a smiling kid in a coat?  Or a screaming, crying, tantrum-throwing kid?? So he is happily coated in his three-year-old picture.  FOREVER) and on to greener pastures - snow-friendly overalls.  With nothing underneath except a diaper.  (Because I'm taking a sabbatical from potty-training right now.  We've been at it since August and the boy still pees in his Big Boy Undies every. single. time.  He's just not getting it.)

Oh, and he's obsessed with shapes, especially hearts.  He carries around the fabric hearts from his quiet book around.  And he also constantly wears Sadie's old jingle bell necklace, but it has to be on backwards.  Alllllways.  The bell cannot be in front.  Very particular, this kid.

His little ensemble reminds me of a really, really funny story from when I was teaching.  Wanna hear it?  I thought you might!

So we in the English department always liked to stand out in the hall next to our classroom doors between classes.  It kept order in the hallways a little better, and then we could kind of chitchat with each other a little bit - yell barbs at one another, the whole bit.  It was fun. 

So one day, we're all standing in the hall, saying hi to passing kids, telling some kids to stop swearing, telling some kids to stop running, etc.

And then this girl walks by.

Wearing jean overalls.

With just a tube top on underneath.

You could see, like, her waist from the side opening and all of that. And she really had huge boobs.  I don't have to paint a picture, right?

We were all kind of in shock for a second.  The other two ladies just froze, eyes like saucers.  Deer in the headlights.  And I just eeked out a small, "Duuuuude....."

The only male in our department had the presence of mind to ask the scantily-clad damsel to go with him to the office. 

Later on, he told us the whole story - how, on the way to the office, she was accusing him of looking at her breasts, how he was a big old pervert, the whole thing.  Fortunately, the office staff agreed with us that this was a definite violation of dress code and called her mom to bring a shirt to put under or over the offending suspenders. 

That sounds nice.  Offending suspenders.  The accented syllable is in the same place in both of those words.  A thing of beauty.

Anywho, as many of the parents in this particular school often did, she got all mad, saying that her daughter was dressed just fine, and that any other girl could wear that, but because she had a "glandular problem" - those were the exact words she used (meaning that she had big boobs) - she was being targeted, dang it.  Targeted!!  Another mom said the same kind of thing when another girl came to school wearing a t-shirt that literally said, "Mama's Little Slut."

True story.

We often laughed about that in the few years afterward that I worked before I quit to be a stay-at-home slave.  One of my lady coworkers, Janet, would always say, "Duuuude...." when something shocked us or we were talking about something crazy one of our students had done.  She thought it was so funny I had said that when confronted with the glandular-challenged girl.  All I can say is that "dude" can convey many, many emotions.  Shock, frustration, agony, glee...  I loved when Janet said "dude" because she was like 59 years old and really, really proper.  Hahaha!  Good times.