Trouble in Room 5

Well, the honeymoon is over. Me and my kids are still in love, so to speak, but behaviorally, they've stopped coming home with flowers every night and taken instead to leaving their underwear on the floor. The things they do to the toothpaste tube are just outrageous.

The most serious incident: My beautiful, freshly-painted pale-aqua walls have been marred with graffiti. With the 'b-word,' no less. We all had a nice long talk about misogyny, vandalism, and our right to a welcoming, positive learning environment. "Whoever did this," I said, "basically cussed us all out and then asked me to paint." I was disappointed, and shocked, and offended, and I told them so.

The kids seemed to take this to heart. "I want to be in a school that's nice," said Rajanique. "This building is all old already, and stuff always be broken, so we don't need to make it no worse. I don't like to use words like this, y'all, but for real, whoever did that, that was triflin.' "

For readers who don't know, "triflin" is about as bad as somebody can get in the inner city. It's even worse than having "no home training." If you don't have home training, you might be rude or gauche from time to time. If you triflin, you don't even brush yo teeth.

The lead suspect for the triflin behavior is tiny, innocent-looking Alexus. Two days before the graffiti appeared in the coat closet appeared, I caught her and Taylor passing notes in which they were trading a long list of insults. "Your stupid." "Your'e dume." Meany...ugly...idiot...

And then:
Hore.
Bitch.

SAY WHAT?

Now since Taylor is an altar server in the parish, and Alexus' family is also part of the church, I knew their parents wouldn't approve of such language. We happened to be having Mass that morning, so I asked the priest to have a little talk with the two girls about keeping Christ on their lips and showing respect for women who are reflections of the Blessed Mother. (Yes, I actually said those things. Nobody at my job even suspects I am an atheist.)

After Mass I put the notes in my desk, called the girls' mothers at work during my lunch break, and after receiving coded promises that their daughters were in for a good ass-whoopin, I forgot all about it. Until three days later, when the b-word showed up on the coat closet wall, in black marker.

Welcome to the pilot episode of CSI: Elementary.

I got the principal and the first-grade teacher and we compared the handwriting from Alexus' note to the writing on the wall. "Both t's are crossed very low," Mrs. Thomas observed. "And look at the i's. The dots are way up high."

"The h's are similar, too," noticed Mrs. H.

"Everything matches but the b's," I said. "And that could be because the word starts right next to this ledge. Her hand would have been smushed at first. And notice how low on the wall it is. Written by a short kid, definitely. I think we've got our perp."

"We can't make it stick unless we get a confession," says Mrs. H.

"I've already talked to Alexus," I said. "She swore it wasn't her."

"Leave it to me," says my principal, with verve. "I'll talk to the mother and see if she can turn up the heat."

Of course, in true form, the principal dropped the ball on getting in touch with the parent, so the case went cold. I talked to the mother some time later, and she said she wanted to come up and take a look at the handwriting herself, but so far, she hasn't come by. Me and the kids taped some thick paper over the offending word, and sooner or later I'll paint over it.

Incidentally, Alexus volunteered to do the painting for me...