Fired by a first grader

I began the year of 2009 as a full-time employee.  I spent the morning working in an ASD(Autistic spectrum disorder) classroom. There were six children and four adults.  When I first substituted in an ASD room, I really knew nothing about autism.  I remember being afraid to talk to them or touch them, thinking that would upset them. The staff ALWAYS were extremely helpful.  I can say with certainty that people who work with special needs children are the nicest people you will ever meet.  Another trait they seem to have is an extraordinary good sense of humor. The work can be very stressful and we would look for reasons to laugh.  We did not laugh at disabilities. We laughed at situations and at each other. You could say we lifted each other up.
The teacher was wonderful.  She always took time to talk through situations and the reason for doing something a certain way.  She was a wealth of information.
In the afternoon, I worked with two students who were mainstreamed into general education classrooms. One fond memory that I have is accompanying a first grader to his art class.  If he didn't like what I said, he would say "You're fired!" quite loudly. You just had to laugh - it was funny. One not so funny memory is trying to subdue a student on a field trip who wanted to run.  Do you know how hard it is to  keep a 5 year old from running when they want to run? I found out it can't be done very gracefully.
It was going well though and we were almost done with the school year when:
In the spring, there were news reports that GM was going to be terminating some unknown number of dealers.  All information was coming through the media.  GM was not communicating directly with any dealers.  This was a state of panic for our family and the employees that made up Dalgleish Cadillac. Everyone started speculating about how the decisions would be made. This went on for awhile until the press came out with the news that GM would be notifying the terminated dealers via FedEx on May 15th.  SHIT...