Indoor Recess

I have spent the last two weeks subbing in elementary schools.  This is a little out of my element, I am usually at the Jr. high or high school.  Part of the reason I took the jobs at the elementary school was because it is was orchestra and fifth grade (not too bad, and I am smarter than a fifth grader, especially with the answer books) and my daughters class.  She is in third grade and her teacher had to leave town for medical treatment.  I can't even imagine what it is like for my third grader to have her mother as a a teacher for a week.  She was actually a pretty good sport about the whole thing, but did expect some perks.  She got bent out of shape if I didn't call on her first.  She got to come in and eat lunch with me every day.  She used this to her advantage too by going around the playground before lunch and inviting certain student to come eat with me as her exclusive friends.  On Thursday, I was a bit surprised when one after another, the whole class trooped into the classroom with their lunch trays and sat down. 
She had invited the whole dang class to come and eat with 'us'.  It was actually fun though, it gave me a chance to talk to them in a non authoritarian manner and see me as a bit more human.  Today, was interesting, because the weather was bad, and the sign was black.  Of course having had kids in this school for the last eighteen years straight, I knew what this meant.  Indoor recess.  I don't know what it is about those little fifteen minute breaks during the day, but when they are gone, they are truly missed.  An hour or so after the missed recess, I took the kids down to the library and dropped them off.  I hurled myself into the faculty room and shut the door and slammed my back against it,  "They are in the library!"  I said, more to myself than to the lucky, free faculty members lounging around the table.  They just smiled and nodded, they knew.  After lunch recess, when the kids were lining up to go get their food, my daughter came up to me and whispered, "do you want me to announce that they can all eat lunch in here?"  "NO!" I found myself saying a bit too loud.  "I think they need to go to a different room for a little while".   Subbing my daughters class was fine, even fun, but I miss the fifty minute class periods with two of them free.  Where the kids who drive you crazy are gone in less than an hour, and no one comes in to   eat lunch with you, and the indoor recess, is  the librarians problem.