Shark's Teeth

Today at work, a group of severely mentally handicapped children came in for a class. I mean, these are kids with really serious problems - tards, as we used to call them. Before you get mad at me for linking to Tard Blog, hush up. Sure she's evil. And her blog is all ended now anyway. Still, she was funny as hell, and she was working with those kids every damn day, which is probably more than you're doing, and definitely more than I'm doing, and so she got, in my book, a free pass on some serious gallows humor.

At any rate, one of the boys today was a little out of control. He was more out of control than the boy who kept coming in and out, panting and saying "Drink water! Drink water? Drink water!" and more out of control than the swaying girl and the boy with the big, huge scar that ran up and down the back of his head and neck. This boy had a devilish grin and more motor control than most of the kids. He came swooping by the front desk, where, as you know, there is a basket of free shark's teeth. He grabbed a whole handful of sharks teeth as he dashed by.

And ate them.

That made his aide angry and she was yelling at him and pulling them out of his mouth - and dropping them back into the basket with the rest of the sharks teeth even as I tried to stop her.

It's not that I'm prejudiced against the disabled - I'm not keen on anyone's drool in the shark teeth basket. I wouldn't let the Pope spit in the shark teeth, frankly. It's bad enough that a hundred little kids a day root around in there with their grimy little fingers - saliva is de trop.

The aide was actually more interested in shopping and talking to the other aides, though, than she was in watching her charge. I don't entirely blame her, but on the other hand, perhaps she might have stopped him before -

He came through again and grabbed another handful of teeth! This time I said "Oh, no, no, honey, those aren't for eating, they're not good for you, they don't taste good!" which I grant you is fairly idiotic but some of those teeth are sharp as hell and I can't imagine that they'd go down easily. So the kid paused, with a few shark's teeth in his mouth and the rest in his hand, grinned wildly, and flung the teeth all over the gift shop. And my desk. And just around. Which, you know, totally made the field trip for the third graders from the nice charter school who were all at the time standing there gaping. And the damn aide started picking up the sharks teeth off the floor and off my desk and (naturally) pulling them out of his mouth and putting them back in the basket while apologizing all over again.

"Oh no," I said, "Really, it's fine. Really, I'll clean it up. I'm just worried about him! I think eating those teeth could be dangerous."
"He's eaten everything else," said the aide darkly, "A few teeth won't bother him one bit."
And then she put a few more spitty sharks teeth and some gross carpet gluck from the floor into the shark tooth basket and went back to the gift shop. And I hid the basket and gave everyone my best great big fake customer service smile.