Last week was teacher appreciation week in the United States. It is a week designated for parents and students to show their teachers that they are thankful for the hard work and dedication educators display every day of the year. This year, perhaps more than any before, it is important to acknowledge the lengths that teacher are going to educate the next generation.
My wife is a principal at an elementary school, and she and her VP (that’s “Vice Principal” in the education lingo) decided they wanted to do something special to thank the teachers at their school. They printed up yard signs that said, “An Outstanding Educator lives here.” The idea was to thank the individual teacher and to let their entire neighborhood know what a great job they were doing.
It was a nice idea. It was also a lot of work.
This would have been a much easier endeavor if teachers all lived together in one great big community with one massive communal lawn. Although it may surprise some of you to learn this, they are free to live in any neighborhood they choose. I’m not sure who allowed that to happen, but it is too late to fix the problem now.
They are among us. One might even be right next door to you, and you would have no idea.
At least until my wife stuck a sign on their lawn.
Anyway, last week my wife asked me if I would help her drive around town and post signs. She thought the job would go much more smoothly if one of us drove while the other jumped out and planted the signs. I reluctantly agreed.
Immediately after I said I would go, EM1 told her mother, “I’ll go with you.”
My wife said, “Great! Now, dad doesn’t have to help.”
EM1 paused for a moment. She seemed confused. Then she said, “Don’t you want dad to go with you?”
EM1 looked at me next and said, “Dad, don’t you want to go with mom?”
“Not really. You can go,” I told her.
The look on EM1’s face made me think of a poker player that had just gone all in on a bad hand, and someone had just called her bluff. She retreated to her room, muttering something about having a lot of work to do, so she couldn’t leave the house at the moment.
I guess dad was going after all.
I looked at EM2, but she just said, “Nope!” then lied down on the couch and pulled a blanket over her head. At least she was more honest about her feelings than her sister.
My wife and I headed out the door. We met up with her VP at a nearby gas station and split up a list of addresses. We ended up with 25 names and an equal number of yard signs. Looking at the stack of signs in the back of my truck, I calculated that we were going to be driving around town for somewhere between 3 hours and three weeks, depending on traffic lights.
I must have had a shocked look on my face, because my wife just shrugged and held up a piece of paper.
“Here’s the first address on the list. Go there.”
The rest of the day, we drove from house to house, sticking signs in people’s lawns. I drove, while my wife grabbed signs and ran back and forth from the truck. I’m sure we both looked incredibly suspicious to any bystanders that may have happened to see us. My wife would sneak up to a house, stick a sign in the grass, then come running back hunched over like a cartoon burglar because she figured if she made herself as small as possible, nobody would see her. Meanwhile, I would sit in the truck revving the engine like the getaway driver in the middle of a bank heist.
I’m surprised none of the neighbors called the cops when they saw us prowling around. Or maybe they did, and we were just too fast for those flatfoots to catch us. Either way, we managed to elude capture during our daylong crime spree.
My favorite sneaky move of the day was when we were trying to get to a particular home located in a gated community. As we sat in the entryway trying to figure out how to get in, another vehicle pulled up behind us. I turned around and started to drive away, but as soon as I saw the other vehicle go in, I made a quick U-turn and slipped in behind him as the gate was closing again.
At the expense of a little paint on the side of my truck and a few sparks, we got inside the gated community. I don’t even think the other driver noticed my maneuver. He just kept driving.
My wife gave me a look like I was completely crazy for pulling that stunt. I’m used to it, though. She gives me that look a lot. I figure it was her fault for letting me drive. She really should know better by now.
We got the signs delivered and I hope the teachers at my wife’s school liked them. Only minor crimes were committed to accomplish the task, but it is a small gesture of how much the teachers are valued and how far the administration at the school is willing to go to make them feel appreciated.
To any teachers reading this blog, thank you for what you do for us and for our children.
And if the cops show up at your house asking about a grey truck, I would be grateful if you didn’t say anything to them.
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