Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 20, 2018

Caulfield, so many places for you when you grow up.

Let’s see—-attorney for the prosecution! I’ll bet she copped a plea!

Caulfield is something else.

Every school needs a Frazz. I say that despite having been a teacher for nearly a decade of my career. Not every teacher is very approachable and I’ve seen so many students who needed some adult to listen to them and their parents wouldn’t. Of course, over the course of years, it breaks you down – but we owe it to the young generation.

Twelve years of Public Schools and I hardly ever even saw a custodian(janitor). I guess we kept our schools cleaner than this one.

Principals, teachers, aides – all come and go. Cleaning staff usually are the one common thread through all those years. Depending on their interests, they sometime provide the clearest historical view of a school. In our system two fit that description. For the others, school maintenance was just another 8 hours they had to get through.

Even the great Jean-Luc Picard had his Boothby – who was a groundskeeper.

If she clips her nails during reading time, it probably pretty hard NOT to notice.

He was always the man in the know

Funny, from learning how to properly fold an American flag, to how to ‘swab a deck’ [mop a floor], to which dust mop, broom or wet mop to use for a particular chore, Mr. Hanson my school custodian from K to 6th grade never thought a child was in the way and always taught the particular skill to the child when they were curious about it.

I think the custodial staff at my elementary school must have done most of the cleaning after the kids went home. That’s how one of the found the second grader Mrs. Kenny (our teacher) had locked in the closet and forgotten about.

Hey, flossing and nail-clipping are admirable behaviors. Timing might be a bit suspect, tho.

The school janitors all signed my yearbook. One of them – Tommy – I had tons of great conversations with. Pretty bawdy, he might get in trouble now for telling dirty jokes to a teenager, which is a pity..

That is how we were expected to do our jobs, stealthy and thoughtfully without leaving finger nor footprints, when you like what you do you become like that!

Totally off anything like the subject, but I have to say it to someone, and my wife and daughters are out of town: I went to a concert last night with Cheap Trick and Joan Jett, and I find it hard to avoid the overworked but accurate word AWESOME! Joan is 3 days from turning 60, and she still looks great and can still totally rock the house down. (I might not have gone because they were playing an hour and a half drive from here, but my 18 year old daughter wanted to go, so we went; she had a great time too. SO glad she wanted to go!

Frazz11 hrs ·

Inspiration has this reputation for coming along while you’re doing mundane things. I don’t buy that; inspiration seems to come along more often when it’s being actively pursued. But I suppose sometimes mundane things get done during the pursuit.

I worked as one part time for about a year. All of our work was performed in the evening at the school.