Nuggets of Goodness

Okay... looking over at my last post, I realized a few things:

A. I should be shot for typos alone.
B. People who don't know me probably think that I have no middle ground. It looks like I'm either up up up, or homicidally (never suicidally) depressed. I was searching for an explanation to this and it occurred to me--we write about not only what we know, but also what is interesting. If I produced acres of blog about Sacramento Traffic Patterns, not only would you people fall asleep, but someone might come and stalk and kill me for being criminally boring. I do assure you that I go for whole seconds at a time without a trapeze swing from manic to depressed--I even have conversations with my husband that would need the phonebook to spice them up, but instead of trying to bore you into believing me, I'll focus on some good stuff--or at least marginally funny stuff, or at least the stuff that keeps me from dropping trou, mooning NHS and telling everyone therein to kiss my fat white ... nevermind.

Following are some nuggets of gallows humor from the chicken in Chicken Run who would have to knit herself a noose in order to accomplish any act of true desperation. For the record? I don't have that kind of time.

* I caught a parent who had been one of Satan's victims during back to school night last night. (Lady in Red, forgive me, you've heard this story already.) Anyway, the poor woman wanted to know if I was going to be like Satan, and make her son re-write his papers six thousand times without offering any clear direction sas to what, exactly, was the problem. (Again, forgive the typos--I'm not toh today, but my keyboard keeps freezing, making it near impossible to fix the errors I do see.) Anyway, I thought about the sheer immensity of making my students re-write that much, and the thought almost dizzied me. "No, ma'am, to be honest, I don'thave that kind of spare time." I said, trying for tact. "Excellent." The woman said, "I'm so happy to hear that." I guess I'm happy to oblige.

* A darling misunderstood creature left a note on his desk (literally on--but nothing a bottle of Fantastic couldn't handle) alluding to the size of my (admittedly) sizeable ass. This initially depressed me, but then I realized something. (Insert evil giggle here.) The little bastard didn't count on being the only kid in that desk for three periods. I've got him dead to rights, and I hope he has to tell his mother.

* I totally nuked a lesson about Ben Franklin by mentioning the fact that Franklin was bi-sexual--and that he liked his female mistresses older. When we got to the part about his precepts, and the one on chastity, they couldn't understand how he could even be a great statesman if, in their words, "He did the nasty with men." Now the reason I mentioned it was A. to get their attention--not much does. B. Because our GSA is now defunct, and our school is so redneck homophobic, that anything I can do to further the cause for gay-rights and against prejudice of anysort, I try and do--the fact that Franklin was bi, is, I think, sort ofcool. Anyway, I was terribly depressed because their minds all closed like a fucking steel trap, and suddenly the kids were (literally--you have to know this damned class) screaming at me about how awful he was and how they wouldn't listen to anything he said. There was two minutes left in class and I said "I totally pity you guys. YOur worlds are so small--there's such a big exciting universe out there, and your little minds will never see it." I don't know if this is good or not, but I actually felt the pity (as opposed to the simmering anger) that I was espousing. I must have grownup a little when I wasn't looking.


* (For the record, my blogger froze up on me last night, and I'm trying to get back into that 'little nuggets of goodness' mode...hard to do when you're running 15 minutes late and have a truckload of paperwork on your desk, but, hey, I am a pessimistic optimist, I can do anything...) Anyway, back to Franklin and let's move up a period, because I love my fourth period intensely, and they were totally cool with the Franklin thing... and when we got to the bit about chastity, I suddenly, in the face of their open-minded bemusement, found the perfect 21st century words to define Franklin's attitudes towards sex-- "All he's saying people, is don't let the little head do all the talking!" They laughed (but not uncontrollably) and then one girl piped up, "But that doesn't mean he doesn't get to have his say!"

Bingo. It was awesome. Now I just need the ghost of Ben Franklin to come back and scare the crap out of my 3rd period and my day will be complete. (He must have, because today I'm having my 3rd period translate three of his precepts, using the above anecdote as an example, and they're working in *relative* quiet. Go Ben, go!)

* And on the cave troll front? I am thrilled to announce that one of his parents taught him a swear word--the big one, rhymes with truck--and, hold on to your drawers, IT WASN'T ME!!!!!! Mate was doing the bathroom (still gutted, btw) and he cracked a piece of drywall and shouted said word, (for clarification, I think I used it somewhere earlier, but I'm not in that kind of mood right now...) and he's got this fabulous, deep, carrying voice, and from four rooms down Kewyn came chanting... well, you know the word. He forgot it the next morning, but this incident has had a salutory effect on our language use, because Kewyn is the consummate parrot, and unless we want him to go around repeating this word for the grandparents (one of whom, we must remember, actually taught this word to me, for sweet irony's sake!) we can never repeat the word in his hearing again. Let's see how that works out, shall we?

And it's a new day, and my kids are walking in, and the whole fam damily is going to the Ren faire this weekend in Gilroy and (hold on to your knickers...) we got two hotel rooms, and the kids auntie Wendy (not really my sister) is going to stay in their room. I'm almost faint with joy.

Have a good weekend everybody!
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