If anyone from my old school is reading this and want to know what happened to Bob, well he just turned up on one of my spider plants today and seems happy to be back home. Bob is a praying mantis and appears at odd moments just to remind me he's praying for me.
I am not sure why the children called him Bob or how they could tell he was a he. When I first entered the library it had only fake plants so I had to remedy this to bring in the oxygen. So about half my indoor plants took a ride in my Funcargo and ended up going to school. By the stairwell was a box filled with fake plants that I removed them to put in the real ones, and put the fake ones by the couches in the library. At the time the couches were mostly used by the Year 1s and 2s as slides, as they were those faux black leather and chrome 80s monstrosities that looked like they were discards from the tv show Gloss.
I am usually not averse to furniture but those couches were particularly bad, even an ugly Friends style couch would have been better. I made my complaints known to the powers that be but they just shrugged and thought I was being a little precious. I was not allowed this that and the other, and was starting to get carpet burns from all the work I was doing picking up books from the floor. How I wish I had bean bags to cushion my poor knees.
In the end I removed all the books from the top shelves and put plants in, and started to breathe a bit easier, until one day the Primary Principal walked in and saw I had changed the library around from what it used to be and from then on it was like I had the cheese touch.
"Did you change the library...again? Without my PERMISSION?"
I don't recall exactly what I said except I was very sorry but I had.
She called the Big Principal in and they both looked at me with their arms crossed, tutting. I am sure they had a meeting about me behind closed doors deciding what to do with this new, disobedient librarian.
Things went on ok for a few weeks while I carried on with my work and the children where quite excited to spot some ants, a spiders, a lizard, and various other wildlife in the library that they were not used to. But what they liked most of all was the praying mantis who lived amongst the new plants they called Bob. They also read books, and I tried to wean them off video games and on to actual board games, like Chess. The chess club teacher came to help in the library, and he watered the plants with the staffroom teapot.
One afternoon the Year 6 boys were playing chess as usual after they had borrowed their books. There were about four games going on and I am sure they were learning something. I don't know, I don't play chess. I'm more of a Scrabble person. The Primary Principal walked in and saw the boys playing chess. Where are these chess sets from? I didn't authorise chess in the library.
Miss Selina got them for us.
Well Miss Selina got in big trouble for doing that. And after that everything Miss Selina did was wrong so that she couldn't even buy any books for the library. And even when there were new books she couldn't put them on the tables, or move them, or scan books in, or catalogue them, because Principals can make life very difficult if you don't do exactly what they order you to do.
One morning Bob turned up out of the blue on a seniors device and he hitched a ride while I picked up the rowdy year 4 class. That was one day after my supposed probation period was over and they were going to decide whether to keep me or not. I'd emailed the Principal that morning because I knew that class was a handful and asked if she would come help but she replied it was not ideal and we could discuss it in the Friday meeting. She was not going to come.
Well the Year 4 class was so excited over seeing Bob again that they forgot all about reading and borrowing books and they all wanted a turn petting and holding Bob and making an origami box for him. But while this was going on three boys who didn't like each other started picking a fight and next thing I knew it was chaos. I sent the boys straight to the Principals office and it was like she was waiting for them the whole time.
After this incident Bob hitched a ride to the staffroom while I had morning tea and then, after that at lunch the year 4s asked where Bob was and he'd mysteriously disappeared. "Oh he's around the school somewhere' I assured them but one boy just said 'You mean you lost him!'
I didn't find him the next day or the day after that either and on the Friday meeting the Principal cut me so I never did find out what her ideal was.
