Limits

So tell me, dude, what exactly do you want me to do?

I don't think the budget's ever going to allow for getting my job description back from the printer's--that sucker must be huge--but even in the fine print it surely doesn't insist that I pull Angel out from underneath his covers and get him and his sister to the bus stop on time. Even I draw the line.

Trust me: I'm sick of it, too! The waltzing in thirty or forty-give minutes late, disrupting my class, grinding things to a halt--think if he were twenty percent of your class's enrollment! So, yes, I feel your frustration, in fact was just as irritated by his sister's tardiness as you were by his today--oh, that's right. I told you. On the phone. When you called me! Extending the disruption to everyone because you wanted, what exactly? I answered because you have two other students who may have really needed something, but dude. I am not the principal, the attendance office, and most definitely not his mother, though you are not the first one around here to make such a mistake. Just tell me: did his native language make him late? I'm just his English teacher. Or at least that's the theory.

Not that I believe it either, or would stand for it, really, but this same day, this same kid was sent back from guidance with the warning signs I'd gathered to me, the Not a Counselor, because I am "not a stranger" though I've never met his family. This seems to be my primary qualification, my universal role. When I know what I'm doing, or when it makes sense, or when there's something to do, I'm glad to, even if someone else could. But they just aren't my students, not mine alone. Because you know what? I'm not a counselor, or, for Pete's sake, the business teacher. Does anyone have a Pawn Shop sign?