‘Tis the season…for flu and strep at Helton Elementary School.
As a follow up to my post a few weeks ago, I’ve continued to receive recorded voicemails from Patty Grubner, principal at Helton Elementary School in Golden. As I suspected, the past several weeks have been very busy for students and teachers. Patty has called to remind parents about half days, school bus route consolidation, holiday parties and best of all, the flu and strep throat epidemic that has reached near pandemic proportions at this little school.
In fact, news last Wednesday was that Patty had decided to call the holiday concert off as Mr. Nye, the director of they Coyote Choir, had come down with a nasty cold that had left him walking out of his chorus room after only a few hours at school each day. In her words, “He just can’t shake it.”
So after Wednesday’s gruesomely detailed voice mail left me reaching for a packet of Emergen-C to add to my water bottle, my phone rang in the middle of the work day on Thursday. My caller i.d. showed it was coming from “Elementary Schools_GoldenCO.” I picked up immediately, and felt a little thrill.
“Hello, this is Bridget.”
“Hello Mrs. Campbell? This is Patty Grubner from Helton Elementary School.”
It was with a sort of sadness I had to tell her I was not Mrs. Campbell and that I basically had no business knowing the details of what’s happening at an elementary school up the road from my office. And also, I told Patty that I had contacted Francis in the front office in request to have my work phone number taken off the call list. And one more thing, there is only one Mrs. Campbell that works in our building, and she’s just recently become a Campbell (congrats on your marriage, Tiffany!)
Patty apologized and said she would see to it that I was taken off the call list. I asked her to please pass on my best wishes for a speedy recovery to Mr. Nye and hung up my phone.
I then stared out the window for three minutes. I felt…inquisitive.
Why had Patty been calling me DURING the work day? Is Mrs. Campbell’s son or daughter ill [most likely considering the petri dish that is Helton currently]? Is he or she in some sort of trouble? Had they stuffed a pea stone up their nose at recess? Forgotten their diorama depicting a particularly mysterious scene in on of The Boxcar Children book series? In desperate need of milk money?
It’s with a little sadness that I fear my updates of Helton Elementary are over, but I have no doubt that it’s only a matter of time before I’ll get another call for someone who isn’t me, and I’ll get a glimpse at a life running parallel to mine somehow.