We love the girls' school. One reason is because of their principal. Here is her weekly letter, which was sent out yesterday:

There are days when being at an elementary school can feel a lot like entering the Twilight Zone. Are you really sure that what is happening can possibly be real? When dealing with what children know and think, sometimes you just have to go and see for yourself what they are talking about. Last Friday was one of those days as we faced the Great Dog Poop Crisis.
It really makes me angry when people do not clean up after their pets. We use both the upper playground in the park as well as the baseball field for lunchtime recess. Some days we just have to deal with cleaning up a child’s shoes when someone neglects to take care of their pet’s business. I have learned to expect this. But Friday was completely different.
When the first grade students went out to use the field the cry went out that there was dog poop everywhere. Not just in one or two spaces, but EVERYWHERE. How could that be? Children were running to get me so that I could see the big mess. Lots of children. So off to the field I went to see what all the excitement was about.

All over the field, and I mean all over the field, were little tubes of brown stuff that if you had a limited knowledge base and a vivid imagination could possibly have been dog poop. I bent down and picked one up to the squeals of the crowd. “Don’t touch it.” “Ooh, gross.” Lots of children saying it stinks. And what was it?

Little tubes of compacted dirt. Apparently someone had decided to run an aerating machine over the field, punching little holes everywhere. From each hole came one of these plugs. And they were everywhere you looked on the field. What looked to the little people of Lafayette who had never heard of such a thing as aerating a lawn exactly like a field of dog poop.

We’ve had similar experiences before at Lafayette. In the spring of 2004, the great cicada invasion occurred. All over the school grounds thousands of cicadas emerged from their 17-year hibernation. They left suspicious little dirt mounds wherever they dug their way to the surface. Our youngest students thought the same thing had happened all around the school. It looked like dogs had been everywhere. At least until they actually saw the cicadas drying off on the bushes and became fascinated with the whole process for the next few weeks.

Children have all kinds of interesting ideas. Many children ask me why my father spends time at the school. When I explain that Mr. Main is not my father but is my husband, they are surprised. “But he has really white hair.” White hair is their definition of really old. Certainly lots older than me. I’ve consoled children who have swallowed a lost tooth. How is the tooth fairy supposed to come if the tooth is in my  stomach? Just tell mommy or daddy and they can leave a note for the tooth fairy. She accepts notes in lieu of a tooth sometimes. I’m asked where my clothes are at school and where do I sleep. I surely stay at the school all the time. This year someone started a rumor that there is a ghost that lives in the tower. The big kids just laugh but many of the younger ones at times seem genuinely scared that there just may be a ghost at the school. Lines blurred between fact and
fiction when something is seen on TV or in a movie. Just part of what we do each day up here.

So some time take a little time with your little one to tease out what may have really happened when they tell you something occurred at school that seems unbelievable. It just may be. Or it may be something as humorous as the Great Dog Poop Day. Remember these are children who no matter how hard I try to convince them otherwise believe that the water in a toilet is completely different from the water that comes out of a bathroom sink tap. That’s right. There is something called special toilet water. And you never, ever touch it. If something falls into a toilet it just stays there forever. It’s the Twilight Zone all right. But instead of being scary, sometimes it’s so funny that you don’t think you will ever stop laughing. But you can’t laugh when the situation
is so serious to the little teller. Learning to keep that poker face took me a long time to develop. But when I go back into my office sometimes I just can’t stop laughing. Isn’t L School just a great place to be?