Waxing Crescent, 43% of the Moon is Illuminated (and the teacher is more than 43% embarrassed)

It would have been an uneventful day at school, but things never go as planned. I had four back-to-back classes today--one preschool class, two kindergarten classes, and one advanced elementary reading class--with only a few minutes in between, not even enough time for a bathroom break. The first class of the day was fine. During the second class, I went to sit down on one of the tiny wooden chairs in my classroom, but I miscalculated and hit my butt pretty hard on the back corner of the chair. I stood up and tried again--better aim this time. I thought nothing of the incident and moved on.

During the rest of that class and the next class, I noticed that my students were giggling a little more than usual, but since I can't understand much of their chatter to each other, I didn't pay attention to it and wondered if maybe there was a full moon tonight (little did I know).

During one of our action songs with my third class of the day, I had the kids standing up and doing stretches, putting their hands on their lower back, fingers pointed down, and moving their upper body around in a circle. As I demonstrated this stance, my fingers felt something peculiar on my rear end. Was it? Could it be? Oh, I'm afraid it's true . . . a gaping hole in my khaki pants where my butt had made contact with the back of the chair in the previous class, revealing a nice patch of blue underwear at about eye-level of my little students every time I turned around.

I quickly untucked my shirt to cover some of the problem, but I still had another long class to go and then a few more hours of office work before I could go home. I needed a better solution than just a partial covering. A quick survey of the teachers' room revealed only one viable solution to the problem--staples! With the help of a friend (talk about an awkward moment), I stapled the seat of my pants back together and kept on teaching for another few hours.

I'm afraid my pants are beyond reasonable repair, at least for work clothes. I can sew them back up and still wear them around the house and out on the trails, but I won't be wearing them in the classroom again. I don't think my students need to review today's . . . um . . . astronomy lesson.