Please come to the school clinic for a…….TEST.

Today during last period an announcement came on over the P.A. system. It was our principal, asking all teachers to report to the school clinic for a required test. Hmmm…..teachers AND students were confused. What was this test? I was in the middle of a very exciting lesson (YAY nomenclature of polyatomic compounds!) and I really didn’t want to interrupt the LEARNING (yes – they GOT IT!) for a random test. However, it was the boss’ orders and I left my class as a hall monitor came in to cover for me.

The “doctor’s office” is a small room near the main office of the school. There are three beds in the room where students go when they complain of upset stomachs (they are never REALLY sick, but they are always REALLY tired…) and there is a desk where the doctor, who is not actually a doctor, sits. Today, there were some extra bodies in the room. The pretend doctor referred to them as “nurses”….and so I mentally inserted “pretend” before their job description too. It freaked the hek out of me when I discovered that one of the pretend nurses was going to take a real blood sample. I thought it was a joke. But, no. And so I pretended too……“there’s no place like room 33….there’s no place like room 33..” An ineffective chant – that did not return me to my classroom!

I am going to limit the details of the actual blood-taking, as I do not want to reflect on the experience for any longer. So, here it is: the tourniquet was actually a lanyard. The alcoholic swab that sanitizes your arm before the needle pricks you……did not exist. AND – the blood was randomly squirted into another tube once is was drawn. SKETCHY.

Another “I MISS CANADA” time for the memory book :)