Oh yeah, and I did it in front of all of my students. It wasn't my finest hour, but I figured it would make a good blog post.
It all started when I was having writing conferences with my students. They would come up to my desk, and I would help them edit the stories they are currently working on. I tried to open the top drawer of my desk to grab a colored pen, but my desk drawer was jammed. Blast! This had happened once before, but that was earlier this year when Rex was helping me set up my room before school started. At that time he jiggled the drawer a few times and forced it open, so I figured maybe that would work for me too.
Bad idea, Mrs. Webb.
I jiggled the drawer a few times and jerked it really hard (which obviously meant I now had the attention of everyone in the room). The drawer opened...but only because I broke it. The bottom fell out and all of my stuff started tumbling to the floor. I hurried to pick it up, and I ended up emptying the entire drawer of its contents. Then I pulled the drawer off of its tracks so that I could assess the damage. The picture below is a picture of a drawer like my drawer, but it isn't mine exactly (I didn't have the foresight to know I would be blogging about this, so I didn't take a picture).
As you can see, the bottom of the drawer has to fit into the grooved sides. Mine had popped out at the back right corner, so I had to pop it back into the grooves if I wanted the drawer to hold anything. I tried to pop it back in, but the bottom of the drawer was half in and half out of the grooves so it wouldn't budge. I tried pounding on it, but no luck. Of course, by this time everyone in the room was watching me, and about seven of my students were crowded around my desk. Usually I would have sternly chastised them and told them to sit down and get to work, but I was on a mission to repair my drawer. My arm strength wasn't working, but guess what? Legs are stronger than arms! So when one of my kids said, "Mrs. Webb, what if you stomp it back into place?" I decided to try it. Yes, I realize I was taking carpentry advice from a ten-year-old. It was a volatile situation, okay? Stop judging me.
So I flipped the drawer upside-down and tried to (carefully) smash the bottom of the drawer back into place. What neither I nor my ten-year-old student had accounted for was the fact that I was wearing high-heeled boots today. High-heeled boots with a nice skinny heel. Guess what happened? YEP! My heel went straight through the cheaply constructed board and stabbed a hole in the bottom of my drawer.
A collective gasp sounded across the room. The students looked at me, waiting for my reaction to see what they should do. I did what any professional teacher would have done in this situation - I started cracking up. Once they had "permission" to laugh, the kids started laughing too.
"See, kids? What did we learn today? Don't try to fix something if you don't know how to do it, and also high heels are evil."
Personally, I think that's a pretty valuable lesson. Also, I patched up the hole (kinda), finally got the drawer to pop back in, and put it back in my desk. The hole is in the back corner of the drawer, so probably no one will notice it. Probably... And if anyone does notice it, they are going to be very confused as to how it got there. I don't think many teachers put holes in their desks. I'll just blame the rats.
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