The Farm Days - The One Where The Professor Broke Up 2 Fights and Got Hit With a Coat Hanger

The Professor and I worked at The Farm (Happy Hill Farm and Academy Home) from April 2004 - May 2005. We were house parents to 8 kids who had a variety of issues. We even had the Dr. Phil boy for a few days (that is our claim to fame - hahaha). We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment at the end of a house. The house had a formal living room, informal living room, huge kitchen, 4 bedrooms (with 2 beds in each room), and 2 bathrooms. In our apartment we had a monitor that allowed us to hear everything going on in the house. The only time we got to turn the monitor off was when we were off (which wasn't enough!). The Prof and I are very glad that God allowed us to move on, but we both look back on those days and would not change them for anything. We learned so much and have so many fun memories, as well as ones that were not fun at the time, but are nice to look back at now and laugh.

Our first shift had to have been the best memory of them all. It was the evening of day 4 of our first shift alone. The shift had gone pretty good. We had the usually problems though...boys getting up after lights out and getting into trouble. We had been trying to whole shift to figure out which boys were involved in the light night adventures, so we had a plan in action for that night (i will come back to this later in the story). After supper that night, since things were going well, I took Johnathan (who was about 8 months at this time) back to our apartment to give him a bath. Almost as soon as I got him in the bath tub, I heard one of our guys come inside and tell all the other guys, "Man, you gotta come out here! There is a fight!" I jumped up and ran to see what was going on. About that time the fight was over and The Prof was the hero that broke it up. Just as I turned to go back to the bathroom (where Johnathan, 8 months old was still in the tub) a fight broke out right in front of me...The Prof ran inside and broke it up. Yes, 2 fights in one night...he was my hero! :-) Anyways, by this time I remember where Johnathan was and ran back to the bathroom, finished bathing him and put him to bed. I knew this was going to be a long night. The boys settled down pretty quick and soon it was time for lights out. It was time for the plan to come into action. We waited for all the boys to get in bed, turn the lights off and then we pretended to go to bed. What the boys did not know was that The Prof was not in the apartment with me. He sneaked into the hallway without them knowing, so that as soon as he heard something he could catch them. I went back to room to listen on the monitor and see what would happen. About 20 minutes went by and then I heard them begin to move around. The next thing I heard will make me laugh forever. I heard someone throw something, heard the light come on, and then heard, "oh ----!" I knew they had been caught. What I later found out was that at night they had been playing tag, or something like that, with their coat hangers. The boy throwing the coat hanger that night saw a shadow and thought it was another boy and so threw it. However, it was the Professor. As soon as he was hit with the coat hanger, he turned the light on. The boy was caught and he knew it...so he said some bad words and jumped back into bed.

We will always remember our first shift as "The one where The Professor broke up two fights and got hit with a coat hanger" and we will always laugh about it.