"If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis"

I had my first couldn't-make-it-to-the-bathroom-on-time experience with a student today. Just as we were about to sit down on the carpet to learn about adjectives, I had a student ask if he/she (I am not uncertain of the gender of this child, I am just trying to disclose as little information about which child it was as possible) could use the restroom when their classmate returned from the restroom. I said, "Of course," turned my back for a second, and then heard the tears as I turned back to see this young child literally covered in urine. I have never seen that much pee in my life. I frantically asked the rest of the class to be awesome while I ran to the office with this kid, only to find that the pee was actually dripping down the leg of this student and creating a trail down the hallway; GAH! I told him/her to wash up in the bathroom while I got help and luckily I found the counselor down that same, pee-pathed hallway and she called this students parents. When I got back to the classroom, I almost instantly ran back out as I had somehow forgotten that the puddle of urine in my class needed to be tended to. The counselor, who is obviously skilled in this area, handled that one too.

I almost dreaded walking back into class because I assumed it was going to take the rest of the school day for those kids to stop talking about the incident that had just occurred. For a second, I toyed with the idea of taking the "Billy Madison" approach and wetting my own pants to make the kid feel more comfortable.  Luckily, my students were easy to convince that this was not an issue that needed to be mentioned ever again. I asked everyone if "that" was something that we needed to discuss with the student and they all said no. I asked if "that" had happened to all of them at one point and they said yes. I told them that I had done "that" yesterday and though I don't think they believed me, they all laughed. Then, I pretended to throw magic forgetful dust all over them and they all started saying things like, "What happened?!" and "What are you even talking about?" It was actually quite adorable. One kid even felt the need to admit to the class that the same thing had happened to him one time but it was when he had "dee-uh-ray-uh"

:)