"Is this your homework, Larry?"

Every class has a "problem child." In my short experience as a substitute teacher, I've seen it's fairly common for a class to have 3 or 4. Today, my Grade Zero problem child was Larry. Capped with a Caucasian Afro of curly brown hair and standing a couple inches taller than every other kindergartner in the school, Larry caught my eye even before the other children warned me that "Lawwy don' lissen to duh teacha."

Truth is, Larry isn't that much of a problem to handle. He's just three shades more ornery than your average 5-6 year old. Sure, he threatened to mess himself if I didn't let him go to the bathroom the very moment he demanded to leave the room, but that problem was easily solved by a little alphabet bingo. I did, however, have a noteworthy moment with the youngster when he was inexplicably out of his seat for the umpteenth time and searching through his cubby for God knows what. When I went to the back of the room to see what was afoot, I saw what seemed like an entire month's worth of homework strewn around the floor near said cubby.

"Whose papers are these, Larry?" I asked, trying my best to be a sensitive corrector of wayward children.

"I don't know," he responded as (for the first time that day) he returned to his table unprompted.

Resisting the urge to call Larry a liar in front of the other kids, I simply picked up the worksheet nearest to me and read the name that had been written in green crayon at the top of the page. At that point in the day, I'd had enough exposure to the bizarre hieroglyphics that pass for English characters in kindergarten that I knew with 100% certainty that this Crayola chicken scratch was Larry's name.

So with a strong and confident tone I said to the boy, "I know these are your worksheets Larry because your name's on this one." It wasn't until the drive home that I realized I'd missed a golden opportunity to toss out a verbatim quote from The Big Lebowski ("We know this is your homework, Larry!").

My experience as a kindergarten teacher went much more smoothly than it did for Arnold, but it still wasn't a cakewalk. I can now tell you, Erin, that children that small are not too shy to tell you when they need a potty break. In fact, they're so eager to piss that they'll invent the urge to go if it's not already present. They also looooove to sharpen pencils. Third and fourth on a 5 year-old's list of "Things I'd rather be doing than learning" are getting a drink of water and washing their hands. It was so demoralizing trying to keep these little suburban achievers on task that I spent the last hour of the day doing nothing with them but playing bingo and eating goldfish crackers.

I can also tell you, Nick, that children don't need to be asked whether they have any questions before they start pouring on the autobiographical trivia. "My brother's name is Scott." "I have a pencil this color at home." "Guess what! I had three cats once, but they all died." And that's why kids this small could never be undercover narcotics officers. "Guess what, Manuel duh Cwack Dealuh. When I was weeeeeally little, I won da sack wace at da police picnic." Cover blown. Game over.

Despite all the irritations that came my way, I did enjoy many good moments with these wee persons. One girl decided to give me a little toy bear she had in her cubby. When her friend saw this, she decided to give me an empty plastic bag. After the children had left for the day, I realized the first girl had given me a teenie beanie baby, so I'll be returning this potentially valuable collectable to her tomorrow.

Another quality moment came during Activity Time. We joined the other kindergarten class to watch the last half of The Little Mermaid. I sat in chair behind the children to keep an eye on them while the other teacher graded some papers. A blonde tike named Chelsea pulled up a chair next to mine, sat in it, and then crossed her legs in a mirror reflection of my own.

One last highlight: This morning I finished a certain set of activities with 10 minutes to spare before the next scheduled lesson. So I grabbed a random story book and instructed my young disciples to sit at the feet of their teacher. The book, When the Leaf Blew into the Barn, is a tale of cause-and-effect that ends up circling back on itself. The leaf makes a cow sneeze which blows a spider onto a owl, etc., etc., until finally a robin chased by a squirrel into a tree causes another leaf to fall and drift into the barn. The book took only 6 minutes to read, so I killed the other four by asking the kids to review the story with me. When we'd finished revisiting each event in the sequence, I concluded with, "And that why the story starts over again." Then a boy named Jeremiah called out, "Noooo! Not again!"

The bottom line is that nearly every single kid in that class would be a joy to hang out with outside of school. But their respective cuteness levels drop a fair bit when they're keeping you from meeting your learning goals for the day.