First Floor Flood and a Silver Princess Coat

As our students exited our building in a stream of multi-colored coats, jackets, scarves and mittens...I watched them thump and clump down the hallway and remembered an incident last year involving first floor flood waters. Last year we were temporarily located for the year's duration in an old Bausch and Lomb warehouse/factory on Saint Paul street. Day one...water rained through the ceiling of the room where our first staff meeting commenced. Throughout the year, bathrooms overflowed and certain sinks malfunctioned. The occasional bat, mouse or rat made an appearance, the elevator broke down and the stairwells stayed fairly miserable and very cold...littered with squashed ketchup packets and torn up carpet pieces.

One bitter cold Friday, a random set of pipes somewhere on the first floor gave way and in a fit of wrath, wet the first floor with a vengeance... flooding out a large portion where all the kindergarten rooms were. A general slosh of water seeped into the heavy floor rugs and around the table and chair legs and into the cubicles and closets where childrens' coats were. One moment one of the teachers stood talking with students and noticed waters rising in one corner of the room. The next moment, everyone scrambled to lift books and bookbags and children to higher ground and away from the rising stream. Children, purses and bookbags were quickly rescued. There was not enough time, however to retrieve a number of winter coats, which soon found themselves submerged in murky cold water.

The school was fresh out of industrial sized drying facilities. Sending children home in soaked coats and mittens was not optional. A surplus collection of donated coats was quickly located. All well and good.

In English we say "Beggars can't be choosers". The German way of saying this phrase is "In der Not, frisst der Teufel fliegen"...translated..."In an emergency, even the Devil will eat flies"...we reached "fly" status that afternoon as students were stuffed, vacuum packed, pushed and coerced into coats which did not quite fit...either too big, too small, or worse...too gender specific. One poor little male tike exited the building wearing a silver lame' (clearily female) princess coat. His facial expression was priceless. It was a combination of disgust and resignation. How could he complain? There was nothing else to wear. One teacher told me they convinced him to get into the coat because he would look like a robot...or something from Star Wars. We don't think he bought it, but we suspect he knew, should he run into a challenge on the bus (most likely) that he had an excuse. "I'm NOT a girl...I'm a robot"...doubtful outcome...

I wonder what the parents thought as they received their child home. "I sent my boy in a gender appropriate coat to kindergarten this morning...in the afternoon I received a boy child dressed in a princess/silver lame' robot coat..." Hmmmm...doubtful outcome...