A Warning To Mabel

Old Mother Hubbard needs to go to the grocery store. Her dog will be getting no bone from my cupboard. By that, I mean the black metal cabinet at the back of my classroom in Lower Basementia. Mabel knows what I'm talkin' about. She bequeathed that cabinet to me back when the new school was built. She didn't wanna haul damaged goods into a brand spankin' new building. Actually, I think there was not enough room for Blackie. So rather than face jail time for abandonment, she gave Blackie to me. He can't hold his goods. He is insecure. You have to jiggle and hold him just right to shut him up. What I am trying to say is that he will not lock unless you fiddle about with him in just the right way.

Yep, Mabel gave me Blackie, back in the day when she had a multitude of Blackie's paler cousins ringing my room. They were tan. The fleshtone color of Band-Aids. OH SO MANY goodies were stored in them. You see, my old room, which I was booted from this year, used to be a storage room. I worked hard to clean it out. And then I was yanked from my happy home, banished to Lower Basementia. But getting back to those cabinets...Mabel would pop in every now and then, looting her own cabinets, while my students looked on in awe. Mabel even went so far as to tell me, "If you ever need any scissors or rulers or tape, it's all right here in this cabinet. LOCKED UP! Bwahaha!" That's the way I remember it, anyway.

Now Mabel has forsaken me again. She has broken the routine. Every year, we drag our graduation robes out of the cardboard boxes piled in the office, and hang them side-by-side in my wooden cabinet at the new building. This usually happens a week or two before graduation, and the robes have time to de-wrinkle. This year, nobody cracked open the boxes until yesterday. Graduation is Friday. Still, I hung mine in the cabinet, on a pink plastic hanger that Mabel had sent to my room for just that purpose. Mabel has a scam going, methinks. She ends up with an inordinate amount of plastic hangers. And I see the custodians providing her with black market pencils, too. Anyhoo...Mabel seemed a bit antsy, a bit beside herself, just not quite right this morning when we performed the unveiling of the robes. She did not put hers down. She draped it over her forearm like a waiter's towel. Then she broke the news, "I'm not hanging mine. I have to take it to MathCrony. I promised her." WHAT? Mabel is two-timing me with a new best friend!!! Who knew? Though I must say, the signs have been there for a couple of weeks now. Mabel doesn't drop in to chat. She sticks her head in my classroom door and tells me how busy she is. Unh huh. That's how it starts. She's too busy for me. I see. And now this.

I know all about MathCrony. In fact, she used to have the room right across the hall from me. We were buddies.We were hired the same year. We were like ebony and ivory. Except that we're both white, so I suppose we were Ivory & Ivory. But seriously, we were Math and Science. What could go together better than that? We broke up fights together. We attended IEP meetings together. We watched to make sure the students didn't take advantage of substitutes. But then I had to move to the junk room. I was forgotten. I was no longer a real teacher. Ivory moved on. And now Ivory is just MathCrony, Mabel's minion. I wish her no harm. (Which is disturbingly what a guy I used to carpool with would say before he threatened to kill the person he was dissing.)
Don't worry, MathCrony...the scissors are all LOCKED UP!

Why, why, WHY, Mabel? Just because my husband will not iron your gown for you, you go and abandon me? What about all the good times, Mabel? Sure, I am not quite so entertaining as MathCrony. I do not come to a faculty inservice with my flowered panties hanging out my pantsleg. But we have a history, Mabel. Who was there to comfort you when your TV-to-VCR cable disappeared? ME, Mabel. Not MathCrony. Who drove you 30 miles for a flu shot, Mabel? ME. Not MathCrony. Whose shoulder did you cry on when Mr. Girly Italian Shoes dared to walk on your stepping stones, Mabel? ME. Not MathCrony.

So I'm just sayin', Mabel, that if you don't offer me candy to put down in the sleeve of my robe during graduation ceremonies...IT'S OVER! I will kick the remaining brokeback doorstop to the curb, and use the giant wooden doorstop my little ol' Hillbilly mother swiped from the outer door. And perhaps I shall rekindle my Ivoriness with MathCrony.

Two can play at that game, you know!

Disclaimer:
I'm not really mad about it, Mabel. I'm just funnin' with ya.
I don't care who irons your gown.
You'll come back to me.
Because I make you look so good when you stand next to me.