W-A-T-E-R!

Speaking of work... We moved into a new school building three years ago.  Well, it's not entirely new; it's our old building all redone.  I have the lucky classroom across the hall from the kiddos' bathrooms.  There are no doors to the bathrooms.  That's right -- no doors.  There are doors on the stalls, but nothing separates the boys' nor girls' bathrooms from the hallway.  The cavernous dual entryway causes everything to echo out into the hallway and beyond.

In other words, my students and I can hear everything ... EVERYTHING ... that is said or done in both bathrooms.  Gossip?  Got it.  Singing?  Heard it.  Peeing?  Nothing is private.  Farting?  The entire seventh grade wing probably hears it. 

It's a little embarrassing and a lot annoying.

Even more annoying, though, is the fact that the girls' room has two sinks, but only one actually has water.  Imagine that.  A brand new refurbished school where the faucet hasn't worked since Day One.  Every so often we check it (you know, put our soapy hands under the faucet and marvel when, yet again, it still doesn't work), expecting the miracle like Helen Keller with Annie Sullivan.  WATER!  W-A-T-E-R! WATER WATER WATER WATER WATER!!!!!

On the second-to-last day of school, I decide to wash my erasers so they can dry overnight and I can pack them away in the closet before I leave for the summer.  I could take them to the teacher lunch room, which I probably should, but the girls' room is right across from my classroom, and it is after school, so I shouldn't be bothering anyone.  I hog up the working sink and make a huge black-marker-residue mess all over the basin.

Before I can clean up, a teacher steps into the bathroom to wash her hands.  "Hold on," I say quickly, "let me grab some toilet paper and wipe the marker out of this sink so you can--"  I don't even have the rest of the sentence out of my mouth when the teacher instinctively puts her hands under the broken faucet.

IT'S A MIRACLE! Water spurts out of the faucet as if it had never done otherwise.

We both stop breathing for a moment, look at each other, make that "Oh my God, what alternate universe may this be" face, shrug, then bust out laughing.  Neither of us can believe what we are witnessing right here before our very eyes.  Water, just like Annie Sullivan convinced us to believe, right here pouring into cupped hands as if we've never seen such a spectacle in all of our lives.

Amazing.  Three years of 180+ school days and multiple professional development days (easily 550 days) later, and on the second-to-last day of school, someone finally fixes the broken faucet.  Also amazing is the sound of our laughter and wonder, echoing out into the empty hallways from the cavernous, open-air bathroom chamber -- a truly superior way to end the long school year.