Teachers talk trash...or treasure? When it's "time" to walk away

"What could I do with a set of twelve mini-wiffle balls?" I wondered. "Well...beer pong is out," my friend Joanne said firmly, "But what about a variation, though, using buoyancy as the objective study?" Sold! I scooped the wiffle balls out of the junk pile.

This would not be my first experience with dumpster-diving in the teacher refuse pile. Educators are committed to the belief that someone out there would want their outdated, ripped, worn, useless stuff (I was actually thinking of another s~ word). Unfortunately, I am that someone. I conscientiously avoid the faculty room like the plague as it is laden with the off-casts of others. But the bathroom AND the Pepsi machine are in there. It's an endless cycle. "Oh my goodness!" I squealed, waddling over, "A stuffed penguin!" It was like a sign from God. I'd just spent over an hour earlier on a penguin font generator printing out the names of my students for their cubbies, delighted when I realized the U was represented by a dead cartoon penguin. How whimsical and fun!

Someone was also getting rid of a 3/4s filled notebook of black paper specifically for use with gel pens. Surely this was an accident, I thought to myself, Who would give this little treasure away?  What? Am I an idiot? Of course I nabbed it.

The lemon law is in effect, though. My friend Geri conned me into taking a beautifully bound photographic book depicting the Erie Canal. I lugged it over to my room to discover that the illustrations featured the architectural history of the homes and buildings lining the length of the 363 miles-long waterway. My nine-year-olds were going to eat that right up! As I snuck the book back to the faculty room, I spied yet another treasure: An old-school event timer housed in its own heavy box complete with convenient handle which plugs into the wall! I remember sports-type people using this little device during high school basketball games in the 80s. I plugged it in and an ear-spitting obnoxious wail filled the room...it works! I MUST have it! Turns out "I MUST have it" meant "I MUST have it until I came to my senses ten minutes later when I envisioned my 4th graders making this go off in Room 24 every other minute." Perhaps yet another sign from the Almighty. From the junk pile you came; unto the junk pile you must return. Until someone else comes along.