She did not appreciate my novelty whistle.

One of my duties as an English teacher is to stand in the front lobby of my school and chat with students in a non-threatening manner.

I’ve had many injuries in the lobby. A kid once thought that it would be "cool" to drag the sharp corner of a Lego piece down my spine to see what I do when exposed to great physical stress. In return, I taught him the word “MOTHERFUCKER.”

I didn’t and still don’t care. You drag a piece of blue Lego down my spine in any situation – even if it's when I'm at a funeral, standing over an open casket – and I will yell it out again. What? You think that it's a horrible word that should never be spoken, under any circumstances? Then have your kids use Lego to create medieval castles, or aircraft carriers, or pirate ships, or maximum-security prisons in which they can incarcerate themselves for 8-10 years.

When I think back on all of the things that have happened to me in our school lobby, I wonder if I've earned the reputation as a kind of “freak” of the school – if not of my local community.

Take last week for example. I saw a mom sitting and holding her baby. I thought that I would introduce myself.

I brought along my slide whistle – the long, cylindrical kind that extends and makes the “whooooooop” sound that you hear in cartoons when someone's pants fall down. I bent over the baby, and just as I put the wooden whistle to my lips, I realized that the mother was not just holding her baby, but also breast-feeding it. She looked down at my whistle, and since it was practically dipping into the milk, I guess she thought that I was using it as a kind of straw to get a drink of my own.

She looked horrified. To show her that my wooden instrument was a whistle and not a straw, I stood up, wrestled my bulging eyes away from her breast, and started blowing it (the whistle). The cartoon “whoooooop” sound made it look like I was trying to make a joke out of the whole thing, and so she put the baby to one side – like she preparing to kick my ass. I have to say, this was the first time in my life when I’ve literally run away from an awkward situation.

Another time the lobby was much more crowded. A little boy was sitting beside a plastic bag of colored wooden blocks. The boy was crying and tugging on his mom’s pant leg, but she was typing on her cell phone and not paying attention.

“Oh, hi there little guy,” I said. “You want to play with the blocks?”

I dumped the blocks out on the floor, and we built things together.

We built a technicolour pyramid.

“Pyramid,” I said.

“PEER-mit,” said the boy, smiling. Then he used his fist to bash the pyramid that I'd spent five minutes making, and I wasn't even angry.

I thought to myself, “You know, I really think I have a way with children. And at least that’s something.”

Basking in my new role as a kind of “fun uncle” figure, I took the empty plastic bag and put it on my head – like a *crazy* hat. Because the plastic was thick and the opening of the bag was just smaller than the circumference of my head, the bag stayed there, like a transparent top hat. The boy was loving it.

For kicks, I removed the bag and put it on the boy’s head. The opening of the bag was too big, so I ended up putting his head inside the plastic bag. I was laughing, because this truly was a *crazy* hat. After all, what kind of hat do you put your entire head and face in? What kind of weird hat would that be?! At that moment, in my mind, I was the funnest uncle in the world and of all time.

Things changed when I saw the boy staring out at me, trying in vain to remove the bag. His breath was fogging up the inside of the plastic, and I realized that he wasn’t in a *crazy* hat at all, but in a dangerous situation that could cause him to suffocate.

All at once, things became very clear. I had just "plastic bagged" a boy's friggin' head at my workplace, in a lobby that was full of hostile witnesses. Mothers. His mother. With the way everyone was looking at me, you'd have almost forgotten that I was a "fun uncle" figure. I took the bag off (much harder to get off than to put on, by the way), and I pointed to the blocks that we’d been playing with earlier.

“Pyramid?” I said.

From now on, I’m only going to appear in the lobby if someone specifically asks for me. Since this hasn’t happened yet, I expect things to get better.