It's my penguin and I'll cry if I want to...you would cry too if you got burned by hot glue

I have a heat blister.

Today was our annual 4th Grade Craft Day. How I loathe it. I am NOT creative. I am NOT patient. And I have a heightened fear of hot glue guns which I have named hotglobophobia, loosely based on the term, hoplophobia, which is an irrational aversion of weapons. And for those of you who scoff at my categorizing a hot glue gun as a weapon, I shall challenge you to a duel. Hot glue guns at twenty paces! I assure you, once your finger has been stuck to the pointy metal nozzle end, you will laugh no more.

If it's not bad enough that 65 students and I have to attempt to wrestle 65 pipe-cleaner penguins together, I am also assigned "a helper" to witness my idiocy. In this particular case, it's my friend Kristi. Great! you say. Oh no, I moan. Kristi IS creative. Kristi IS patient. Kristi, if given the chance, could spin several glue guns around her fingertips like Wild Bill with his sharpshooters. She can calligraphy WITH PUFFY PAINT! Is calligraphy a verb? Ask Kristi...she would know.

After giving the children gentle directions ("Stab your penguins with the sharp pointy end of the white pipe-cleaner," I instructed encouraging. "Mrs. Mosiman, I can't," one cherub admitted reluctantly. "Oh yes you can," I shrieked, turning on him, "Stab it! Stab it!" I made helpful gestures to accompany my reasonable request. In the profession, this is called differentiated teaching.), I took my post alongside Kristi to begin the task of hot-gluing penguins to circles that were cut too small ("Cut them bigger," I shouted, "This gun is searing my skin." "What does sear mean, Mrs. Mosiman?" This is what those in the business call a teachable moment. We added the word sear to our Word Wall so that my scholars would be sure to never spell it correctly on any of their future finely-crafted written responses. "Use your resources," I will remind them. "What resource?" they will ask. "Our Word Wall," I will repeat for the thousandth time. They will glance at our Word Wall, utterly flummoxed. "When did we get a Word Wall?" I will then be asked before I begin screaming.), then gluing the too small circles to the clear cups, before attaching a sparkly pipe-cleaning finish around the circumference.

Calm, cool, and collected, Kristi worked with robotic precision while I cried and complained. Heat blisters erupted from my skin and I resembled Spiderman with webbing erupting from my fingertips. "Can I have the bigger googly eyes?" one student asked as I sat frozen, paralyzed with pain in my chair, with the glue gun stuck to my hand. "How can you be so selfish?" I seethed, "You'll take the puny-penguin-sized pupils and be grateful." Kristi disappeared briefly after I had clearly stated that one should NOT poke anything other than a penguin with our toothpicks. I snatched a toothpick away from a pupil-poking perpetrator and immediately poked him with the pointy end before heartlessly snapping it in two. "There! How do YOU like it?!?" I thought she'd gone to report me but she instead had just gone to get me a Pepsi. I used it to ice my wounds and salve my spirit.

My 4th grade colleagues came in at the end of the day to admire our handiwork. My friend Geri had conned us all into painting our own popsicle sticks for her craft, a decorative frame. During her forty-minute rotations, children would occasionally ask her for help because they couldn't get the adhesive backing off their decorative stickers for their pre-painted frames. That must have been really rough on Geri. I'm glad we assigned her a helper, too."I thought these were going to be snow-globes,"  Geri said, picking up my craft and shaking one dramatically. "Where's the snow?" She then also felt compelled to comment on the message inscribed on the tiny flags stabbed gently into the side of each pipe-cleaner penguin. "Welcome to the North Pole," Geri read. "You do know that penguins don't live in the North Pole, don't you?" It was time to challenge her to a duel. Hot glue guns at twenty paces!