Adhesive Bandages For The Teenage Soul

Sigh. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a form of crack. Students flock to me willy-nilly for free adhesive bandages. We ain't even gonna go to BandAidLand. It's generic all the way, baby! I must be a charity. A free syringe station. Why do these kids think they can flounce into my classroom, any day, any time, to beg for free medical supplies?

In the classic musical movie, The Rose, Bette Midler told us, "Ladies, we are waitresses at the banquet of life." Quite astute, The Divine Miss M. By the same token, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom must be the supply clerk for the global first aid station.

Now the students are branching out. I am expected to fork over cough drops to the little beggars. It's one thing if a kid is actually coughing. I don't begrudge them a cough drop to get them through class. A Halls Mentho-Lyptus will last over an hour if you don't gnaw it like candy.

Nobody has told me to supply the needy. I did it a couple times out of the kindness of my cold, cold heart. The nurse gives out cough drops, and when she ran out one day, she told me I could give them to the kids. Clever, that one. She's always out. Of cough drops, and the building.

This morning, a snarly, unpleasant chap presented himself to me after first bell. "Can I have some cough drops? You give them to other students." Well. Good morning to you, too. I told him that I was not going to walk to the far corner of my room and rifle through my desk and dig out a cough drop for him, he who was not even in my class until after noon. By that time, he might have stopped coughing, or expired. I did, however tell him that I had a cough drop in my shirt pocket, and that he was welcome to it, but that it might be stuck to the wrapper. He looked at me like I had offered him a piece of gristle that I had chewed and spat upon my plate. "Great. I guess it'll have to do. Until later, when you can give me more."

I resent it, by cracky! I resent students thinking I OWE them stuff that their parents should supply them with. I'm not even bemoaning the Puffs With Aloe, the GermX, the pencils, the paper, the rulers, or the cockulator. A few necessities here and there would not irk me. It's that gosh-darn entitlement attitude, and snarky, sing-songy, thank you that sticks in my craw. A good more than half of them are just jonesin' for attention. Another thing their parents should supply them with. Don't cost nothin'.

The only way I can work myself out of a snit is to chant under my breath: handbasket, handbasket, I'm going to invest in handbaskets, and rule the world. What is left of it.