Bulletin Board Blues

I am not tall. Even standing on a chair I am not tall. Therefore setting up and taking down my classroom can be a royal pain. Last year Mr. R. helped me. This year Mr. R is in Georgia helping someone else. Lucky someone else. Poor. short, me! So, I am standing on my tippy-toes hot glueing stars and stripes material (and a goodly portion of my left hand) on the cinder block wall above my whiteboard. Nearby is Brandi, a nine year-old who has consented to help me. Brandi is in the process of putting the classroom library on the bookcases. Her step one in this process is stringing all 5000 books across the floor so she can see which ones she wants to put where. So, once I get the wildly patriotic material glued to the wall, I begin to put the "antique map" motif border around it. About half way around the material I run out of border. Climbing from the table to the chair, the chair to the floor, getting the remaining border and climbing back up sounds like too much trouble to my lazy self. I say, "Brandi, there is more of this border in that red shopping bag. Would you bring it to me please?" Brandi obediently goes to the red shopping bag. "There is no more border like that," she tells me. I say, "Look again, Honey, I'm sure there were two rolls." Brandi pulls a couple of rolls of border from the bag. "This is what's in there. It doesn't match," she says. Great. I can't believe I was paying so little attention to my supplies! "Thank you," I answer. Then I reach up and begin tearing the border down. After removing two pieces I stop. I know there was more of that border. I get down, go to the table and look in the red shopping bag. The border is not there. I look in the yellow shopping bag sitting right next to the red shopping bag. The border is there. I make a sound of disgust, hold up the border and say, "I knew there was more!" Brandi says, "You didn't tell me to look in the yellow bag." Note to self: Take all supplies to work area at the same time. I've only been teaching 10 years. In ten more I'll get things right the first time.