Wet pants

Isn't this a precious story?

Come with me to a third grade classroom... There is a nine year old kid sitting at his desk and, all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.

The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, "Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now, I'm dead meat."

He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered. As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.

The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!"

Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie.

She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. "You've done enough, you klutz!"

Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

Susie whispers back, "I wet my pants once too."

*****

Isn't that sweet? Susie took the ridicule for her classmate! I have no idea if it's a true story or not, but anyways... The only thing is that wouldn't the classmates have spelled the pee while they were cleaning up the "water" on the floor? I digress... hopefully that little interjection didn't ruin the whole story for you! :)

So, today was my last day of work! I will technically be an employee of the MS Society until the end of the month because I'm using up some vacation for the next four business days, and then I'll just get paid out for the remainder of the vacation time that I've earned to date. I didn't really get everything finished today that I needed to, so I'm going to go into the office for an hour or two sometime before I leave to finish up everything and empty my office of everything that belongs to me. It's a goodbye that keeps going and going...

I went out for lunch today with my boss, the executive director, and my other fundraising co-worker, which was fun. Good company, my boss bought me a bouquet of very pretty flowers, and the society paid for lunch, so it was all-in-all a good time! :)

Tonight, I went over to the house of a family from the church and had dinner with them, which was again such a blessing! I must say that I feel very loved!! Everyone keeps saying that they are going to miss me, but that they are so excited for me at the same time.

I have realized that saying goodbye is a rather odd thing. It totally depends on who I'm saying goodbye to, but what do you say to the people that you are most likely never to see again? "It's been nice knowing you, have a good life." That seemed a bit harsh, so I've pretty much got it down to something like "it was a pleasure working with / knowing you over the last x number of years, take care and all the best for the future." And then some people just don't want the goodbye to actually take place, so they keep talking and trying to drag it out. It's been interesting to try to figure out how to actually say goodbye and then end the conversation, without seeming rude.

I guess some people don't like or don't know how to say goodbye, so it's just kind of awkward. Or perhaps I'm so at peace with leaving and excited about the future that saying goodbye is a bit easier for me than it is for everyone else. That said, I haven't yet said goodbye to anyone in Victoria that I am really close with... which could be a totally different story. I'll keep you posted on how that goes! :)

Okay, now I'm really tired and I must sleep. I have to be up early in the morning to move all of my furniture out of the house.

... 6 more days