Footprints

I'm sure you read the title of today's post and you may have instantly thought of the poem, Footprints. It is one of my favorites, but it isn't what I'm writing about today. Today we had a crazy morning. When I walked into the classroom before the children arrived, the heat had not yet been turned on, so I turned it on to warm up the classroom. Well, while we were saying morning prayer, the classroom began to smell, kind of like the typical smell when you turn on the heat and dust is on the coils. The children began to complain of the smell, but since we were in the middle of prayer I told the children I had just turned on the heat, that dust was probably on the coils. I was also thinking, we were in the middle of prayer and God would definitely protect us.

Well, come to find out that the hallway began to have the same smell, which the hallway and my class share the same unit. After the maintenance man took a quick inspection on the inside of the ceiling, the classrooms were instructed to go to a different section of the building, the parish hall. I lined the children up with work and we went to sit in the parish hall. Then we had a number of firetrucks at the school and the firemen instructed us to go outside the building. Today was rather chilly, hint the heat needed to be turned on, and slowly but surely our coats and jackets were brought to us. When I finally got my coat, we were told we could go back in the building, but only back in the parish hall. The children got back to work and eventually we were allowed back to our class.

It took a few minutes before one of the children saw a black spot on the floor. I told the children that it must have come from the bottom of one of the firemen's boot. WOW, the children thought, we have fireman's footprint on the floor. Yes, this was exciting news to some in the class. Raphael raised his hand and asked, "Can I get on the floor and kiss the footprint?"

"I'm not sure you want to do that, we don't know where his boots have been," I said.

"Oh, that's right, he could have stepped on a dead body." Ralph replies.

Gwen finds in her reading book an old story we read titled "Fire!" "We should have read this today," she says.

Many of the children agreed with Gwen. I said, "Too bad we didn't think of that earlier, we could have got our books autographed by real firemen."