If you are a teacher, you are liable to get a lot of things nonchalantly flipped onto your desk. Allegedly corrected lessons, math pages, colorful notebooks, crumpled drawings…

Yesterday I got an old-man rock.

My first grader found it on the school yard. It’s large, for gravel, and dark gray. Held at the right angle, it looks remarkable like an old man crouching on the ground. His forehead is high and his nose decidedly pointy. He’s short enough to pass for a dwarf. He fits into a hand perfectly, not too smooth and not too rough.

She gave it to me amid the confusion of job time and the end of the day. I like it. Now, where do I put it?

She, and some of her classmates, like to give me everything that occurs to them to give. I have cards and a lopsided paper chain hanging in my bedroom. The wall behind my teacher’s desk is plastered with drawings and pictures. A whole page in my large journal is devoted to an assortment of delightful paper monsters with wonky eyes. My life is filling up.

There are days when I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with bloody knees, spelling battles, messy table manners, forgotten homework, and little girl drama. Life is a grand, or not so grand, chaos when you are a teacher. And then, someone climbs a chair and writes I LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH!!!! at the top of the whiteboard. Or I get an old-man rock, nonchalantly flipped onto my desk.