Okay, if you are an elementary school teacher, what would be your absolute worst-case scenario? A sudden chickenpox epidemic? A food fight in the cafeteria? Mass hysteria over a bee bumping against the classroom window?
How about having six hundred kids -- each one equipped with a full bladder and bowels -- and no toilets?
That's what happened in Abilene last week when Bonham Elementary found itself with a load on its hands after the toilets stopped functioning. A break in a water main put the crappers on the fritz, forcing the children to pee or poop and then leave their contributions in an ever-mounting collection -- there being no water to make the necessary flush. In an act of pure desperation, school officials were forced to do something that, in more urban centers, might once have been considered politically incorrect: they bused.
Yes, they bused the squirming, cross-legged kids crying "I hafta go" to other nearby schools to seek relief. Working in shifts, teachers loaded children grade-by-grade onto the school bus for the potty shuttle.
City workers, meanwhile, toiled as quickly as they could to repair the water main that was the source of Bonham's woes.
And what of the accumulated nuggets in Bonham Elementary's toilets? Principal Diane Rose was stoic. "In an emergency, we had restrooms and we knew we could flush later," she said.
