It’s been a week of ‘runners’ and it’s only Tuesday. ‘Runners’ are the children who won’t or can’t or shan’t stay where they are supposed to stay; places like the classroom. The district insists that we call these students ‘elopers’. Whatever. My husband and I eloped. We also came back. Therein lies the greatest crux of difference.
This daily urban living is a delicate dance between tipping tables and reading the riot act and moving graciously…extending buckets of mercy to those who stepped on one’s toes…
I have finally found an opportunity to teach the idiomatic phrase ‘on the lam’. When a particular student, an ‘eloper’ begins running laps around the open spaces where I am teaching, my students look at me and say simply, “Hey, he’s on the lam’.
Mission accomplished.
690 Saint Paul 