just another day in the life of a "professional child-care worker"

I have a job that is the strangest combination of frustrating/joyous/idiotic/hilarious/demeaning that one could possibly imagine. Today, a number of interesting things happened to make me question my sanity and the point of working with children. I had a child forget something at the skating rink and decide to tell me once we were back in town (we skated at Juan de Fuca) and this was the 1,278,450th time that this particular child had left something behind. Eighty to 90% of the time I remember to pick up after him, but today I was not so on-the-ball. All I could do was shake my head and tell him that I could not drive all the way back for his lost item. Then, I had one child pull out the tooth of another child whilst we were driving in the bus!! It further confirmed for me that children have absolutely zero common sense at the best of times. So Mr. No Tooth smiles at me and when I look in the rearview mirror all I can see is BLACK because of all the blood! By this time, I am not sure whether to laugh or sob because I have already dealt with a frantic skate (about 10 other out-of-school groups were there, so 250 kids were all clamouring for their skates to be tied! You can only imagine...), kids asking non-stop questions, spills of food and liquid in the bus, and continuous complaints and tattling about inanely stupid things. I have to take the kid into STARBUCKS to stop the bleeding because it is the closest place with both a sink and napkins. He, of course, makes a mess everywhere with the blood because it doesn't occur to him to attempt tidiness, though it is more than possible. Little boys are so much more difficult than little girls most of the time! By the time I got off work I was cursing the strike, my job, and anything/one else that occurred to me. Do I get too stressed out? Yes! Do I overreact? All the time! Is my job ludicrous? Absolutely! I am laughing about it now, but am sobered by this thought: tomorrow I have to do it all over again. Look at it this way, I am storing up my treasures in heaven by putting up with this crap while on earth. And at least I get to make my friends laugh with all the stories I have accumulated over the years!