Unintentional Sarcasm

So, this happened a while ago, but I just thought of it again and it made me laugh. On Fridays we have movie day for the extended care children during the last hour of day care. On this particular day, the teachers were running around trying to get into ratio before other teachers had to leave for the weekend. In the scramble, I take my kids to join the kids in another classroom that stores the TV. They had just finished coloring and cutting projects and left paper all over the floor. To my frustration, however, I didn't know who had been in the art area and having already started the movie, I asked the one little three year old girl who was still over there to be a big helping and clean up her friends' mess along with her own. 


This little girl agreed, but I felt bad because the mess was large so I offered to help her out. She tried to use the small "floor sweeper" to sweep up the paper clippings from off the carpet which to no surprise of mine was not working. I told her she needed to pick those pieces up with her hands. Knowing she really wanted to use the floor sweeper, I suggested she sweep up the pieces on the wood flooring and then help me with the carpet mess. When I was nearly done picking up the pieces on the carpet, I got a little frustrated again because the mess on the wood flooring was much less and I expected her to be able to sweep those pieces and help me with the larger mess on the carpet. As if to suggest she was taking too long and she should hurry up instead of dallying, I turned to her and gently said, "Look at all the pieces I picked up already; I'm almost done."


Though it sounded perfectly sarcastic to me, she replied with love and sincerity, "Good job, Ms. Ashleigh," as she smiled and nodded with approval.


It took everything to fight the explosion of laughter within me and to just simply say, "Thank you."


My frustration was instantly gone and when she was done cleaning her part, I just gave her a hug and reminded her that I love her.