Miracle on 6th Ave.

I am officially on holidays now. Let the season of late sleeping, reading, and general slothing begin.

Yesterday, the last day of school, was party day in my classroom. We had just finished our novel study on "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" and were planning on watching the movie on Friday. The students brought copious amounts of junkfood, I ordered pizza, and we all settled in for a long winter's movie day. We brought our pillows and blankets and wore our pyjamas to be comfy for the marathon movie (it's, like, 17 hours long). One of my students had a copy of the movie so she brought it in. All was right in the world.


Until I tried to get the video to play. Remember back in school when teachers *never* could get the TVs to work? And all the kids knew *exactly* what to do to get the movie working? And so all the student shouted their suggestions at the teacher to "help"? Yeah. That was me yesterday. For whatever reason, the stupid movie wouldn't play, so another teacher offered to take my class for a few minutes so I could run to the video store.

In my pyjamas.

So I drive like a mad woman to the Movie Gallery, obeying all traffic laws of course. They have the movie, and I wait forEVER for the slowest video clerk on earth to check out the customer ahead of me. When it's finally my turn and say "Idon'thaveanaccountherebutI'minahugerushI'mtryingtogetbacktomyclasswiththismovie." To which Ms. Slow replies "Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhh. . . It's not that simple. We have to get things set up properly, you know." I take a deep breath and say "I understand. No problem. I had a video lined up for my class, but it's not working. I left my class so I can grab this movie." She needs my driver's licence and a credit card and a blood sample and a copy of my employment history and lock of fairy hair.

I explain that I ran out of class really quickly and only grabbed my bank card and some cash, but told her where I work. No dice. I offered for her to keep my cell phone and house keys until I return the movie. No. Fine, I asked if I could buy the movie. They don't have it for sale. Ms. Slow is getting ruder by the second, and I am desperate. "Can I please pay for the movie replacement in full now and you can refund it or even keep it when I return the movie?" Ms. Slow says "NO. It's store policy. I can't do anything for you." That's when I noticed her name tag says STORE MANAGER. "Please," I pleaded, "it's Christmas. I've got a class of ten year olds who have worked so hard on this novel study. We just want to watch the movie. You can call my school and confirm that I work there. Please."

"NO. There's nothing I can do. It's store policy. I'm sorry."

Then I was mad. She's SORRY?! "No, you're not sorry. If you were sorry, you would have helped these kids out. You're the store manager. And it's Christmas. And you're a bitch." Ok, I didn't say the last sentence out loud, but I sure wanted to.


So I ran across the parking lot (in my pyjamas) to Cooper's grocery store. There I met the two kindest women and employees ever - Theresa and Marjorie. I have never met these ladies before, and they were so kind. I asked if they sold DVDs, and they said they did. "Great! Do you have the Narnia movie?" No, they didn't. I hung my head so hard I pretty much bent in half. I explained what had happened, and they were horrified that the store manager had been such a hard ass. Theresa offered to run home and her copy of the movie for me, but she lived to far away. She looked up the phone number for evil Movie Gallery and called over there to rent the movie for me on her own account, but their phone number was incorrect in the phone book. So Marjorie walked over there with me (still in my jammies) and let me use her rental account. I was so close to tears over Theresa and Marjorie's kindness. The video store clerk wouldn't even look me in the eye.

Needless to say, my class was so excited when I returned with the movie. We agreed that when we return to school in January, we are going to write thank you letters to Theresa and Marjorie and Cooper's, and that we would never rent from Movie Gallery again. It was a Christmakkah miracle!