Confession

I can't help it. I know I should be more patient with him. I know that he doesn't limit his attention span to twelve seconds on purpose. I know he doesn't mean to disrupt class by coming in late, talking, whining, and sighing so loud I can hear it clearly over everything else. I know he doesn't intend to be one of my most annoying and frustrating students. I know that I have to give him extra patience, so I know that I shouldn't take out my frustration at not being able to punish him when he's a pain on him. I know that I should be even more loving and patient and understanding since he just got back to school after being gone for a month because he fell off a cliff and landed on his face over spring break. I know he had extensive reconstructive surgery on his face, and am daily reminded of it by the scars stretching across one side. I know that his nose could quite possibly break if bumped at all. I know he's even more scatterbrained and stressed because he's behind in all his classes from his time in the hospital. I know that for naturally active person with a 12 second attention span, being unable to play basketball and horse around must be an agony of torture, reducing his attention span and usually sparse impulse control even further.

Still, after the tenth time he had blatantly interrupted my class "on accident" in the first fifteen minutes of fourth period, the reason my anger didn't boil over, and the only reason I faced the class with a delighted smile as I turned away, was because I, accidentally, for the briefest of milliseconds, imagined punching him in his fragile, reconstructed nose.

That probably makes me a bad person. But hey, I didn't yell at him like I was about to, right?