Mr. Ice Cream & Mr. Jeremy

Last fall, I asked Rick if he thought he could get some football players to come read to Mallory’s class, like Devin Gardner or something. Rick asked if I thought Devin could read and I said yes, because he wore glasses. :-)

Anyway, over the next few months, apparently Devin kept checking in with Rick about when he could come read to Mallory’s class. When we saw Devin at Christmas on the bowl trip, Rick & Mallory went to ask him officially if he’d come to her class.

He ended up being able to come last month, and brought Jeremy Gallon (or Jeremy B’Gallon, if you ask Carson). I took the afternoon off – you know – to be a chaperon or photographer or something. Another mom made cookies so she could get into the classroom too.

Rick gave the players a ride out to Mallory’s school after their morning workout and were a little delayed because of some winter weather. Before they got there, Mallory’s teacher Mrs. Himle prepared the class about what question are (vs telling stories) and asked who’d been to a Michigan football game or watched one on tv. One of the girls said she’d been to a Tigers game, and Mallory quietly told her that wasn’t football.

When the players showed up, Mrs. Himle introduced them and Devin told the class that they could call him Mr. Ice Cream because he had ice cream on his shirt. The kids called him that the.entire.day.

There was about 10 minutes of question and answer time – the kids asked how old they were when they started playing football and how long they had been playing football (which prompted Devin to go to the board to do a math problem, which prompted Mrs. Himle to try to explain math and carrying numbers and stuff that was way too advanced for first graders). The guys were so stinking cute – instead of just answering “who is from Michigan and who is from Florida”, Devin & Jeremy turned it around and asked the kids who they thought was from each state.

The kids learned that Jeremy has a dog named bear (Nathan offered to dog sit if needed), and that neither Jeremy nor Devin had been sledding! Then the guys each took turns reading a book and then we went down to the cafeteria for a team, I mean class, picture. Then it was back to the classroom for snacks. It was HYSTERICAL how cute all the kids were with the players – they all wanted to hold their hands.

At this point, all of the kids started asking for autographs, and the girls started writing love notes to both Devin & Jeremy. One of the girls even asked Devin to babysit her sometime (with a “please say yes” on the note). When Mallory asked Devin for an autograph, Devin told Mallory that she had to tell her dad to give Mr. Ice Cream anything he wanted (like sweatshirts, etc). I don’t think anyone in Mallory’s class knows what Rick does for Michigan football but the whole class started yelling at Rick that Devin should get what he wanted.

It was pajama day at Mallory’s school that day – and Devin gave Rick a hard time for not telling him that it was pajama day. Mallory had her pajamas on for most of their visit, but changed into her Michigan stuff (for a picture for Rick’s work).

Devin doing math…

An hour after the players left, Devin tweeted this picture on Twitter [to his 23K followers. OMG] caption is below:

Just finished reading to a 1st grade class with @jgallon10 & let me be the first to say that workout this morning had nothing on this experience!! We read, they made us art work, had question time, snack time, walked the halls supposedly in a organized line, autograph time, picture time, & I even got to take an 8 second nap in the Magic Tree House!! In a nutshell #exhausted!

I spoke to Mallory’s teacher a few days later and she & I gushed about how polite and appropriate and fun the players were. It was a fun experience and I was so glad that everyone in the class had fun even if most of them didn’t really know who Devin & Jeremy were :-)