So, So, So

So I got a comment that says I have a "damn good blog." That's not something that happens every day. So, to commemorate the occasion, I figured I'd update. It's been a while anyway.

School started back. So all of THAT's going on again. Do you realize how many sentences I start with the word "so"?

So Friday, I decide to bond with the children. I circle up the desks, all twenty-five of them, and create this huge mess in my room, all for the sake of creating "meaningful connections" with my students. Once we are in the circle, we play a game I like to call "Pass the Baby." Now, it's not what you might think upon hearing the title.

In college, once, I went to Toys-R-Us in the middle of the day. And I had been drinking, in the middle of the day. Not a terribly serious amount, but enough that I made a random purchase. I bought a tiny plastic baby-doll just because she was fat, and her face looked mean. I named her "Mean Girl," and took her home to sit on the desk. Since then, she's sat on every desk I've ever had. I think I posted a picture of her on here in the beginning of my blogging days, if you'd like to reference the archives.

So, Mean Girl is at school with me, of course, on the desk. That's her place. Wherever my current desk-of-use happens to be, that is where she sits. For all eternity forever and ever Amen. So, she's the baby that we pass during "Pass the Baby." The kids like the story about how I got her, except that I leave out the drunk part because I have to keep up my role model image. But, I think that they suspect it, because what other reason would there be behind a nineteen-year-old buying a baby-doll because she's fat?

Anyway, during "Pass the Baby," I ask a series of silly questions and we all take turns answering, and we pass the baby along around the circle. Only the person holding the baby talks. One of the questions was "If you were a Navy SEAL, and you were being put through painful torture by your enemies because they wanted information, important national security information, would you crack under the pressure or do you think you'd be strong?" I asked the kids to look deep into their hearts for this one. I told them that I would love to think that I'd be strong, but that I know I'd start spilling the beans after a certain point because I'm not really into torture, so therefore I probably will never be a Navy SEAL. Anyhow, we pass the baby around and a lot of the kids insist that they would be strong and not give up any information, even if they were being skinned, having their eye lashes plucked out, having their toe nails and/or finger nails pulled out, etc. etc. all sorts of painful torture. They swear that they'd be strong. But then there was this one little girl, she grabs the baby and says, "I'd start telling as soon as they walked in the door."

And I laughed so hard.

Here's to another year, with 8th graders, off and running.

something hardcore kungfu and a bowel movement

"yes, i ordered two chinese throwing stars and a set of camouflage nunchucks from ninja magazine and that shit still hadn't come yet. it'd been four weeks-why was everyone in the world trying to keep me from realizing my dream of becoming a shadow assassin?"

-brian oswald, narrator, hairstyles of the damned by joe meno


"a couple of years ago, he frantically denied that he ever passed stools, and would only admit to peeing; i was reduced to insisting that i, too, had bowel movements, but he wouldn't listen, and nor was he interested in hearing confessions from other members of the staff."

-katie carr, doctor, narrator, how to be good by nick hornby