Save Hillbilly Mom

Let me set the stage with a scene from one of my favorite movies: True Grit. The bird-dog/little senator killer Tom Chaney, having joined up as low man on the totem pole with Ned Pepper's thieving band, has been sent to water the horses. Even the simple-minded Farrell Parmley who baas like a sheep instead of talking, has not been given this task. So Tom Chaney is surprised by 14 year old Maddie Ross sliding down the muddy bank like Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone, only not so special-effective, and he points his gun at her. Maddie, not being born yesterday, takes her deceased father's hog-leg of a Colt dragoon pistol out of the pillowcase in which she has toted it ever since Tom Chaney also killed her father (oh, the bad luck, to come upon the orphaned child of the man you killed and find her armed and out for revenge). Maddie orders Chaney to walk back up the hill with her, and he tells her, "I think I will not go." Which is not a good thing to tell Maddie Ross, of Near Dardanelle and Yell County, as she does not have much of a sense of humor. Maddie shoots Tom Chaney, causing him to whine, "Everything happens to me. And now I am shot by a child." Oh, and he also whimpers that he thinks one of his short ribs is broken, but that's beside the point. And I do have one.

I have not been shot by a child, but I have been corrected by one. All teachers and ex-teachers join with me now in declaring: THE HORROR!

It all began innocently enough. It was in my smallest class, the one in which I am really becoming fond of the students, except still remaining a bit pissed off at the one who laid down on the floor Thursday thinking he would take nap, like it is the most common thing in the world to do in a classroom if you're tired, because after all, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom did not have that item listed in her 1,200,101 Never Ever list. And even though he got back into his seat immediately, with no lip, so fast that half the class did not even know he laid down, Mrs. Hillbilly Mom will not forget. But let's get on with this exercise in humiliation.

We were going over the right answers to today's assignment. I read the question and drew an index card out of my deck of volunteers. The kid who was designated answerer mentioned a solar eclipse. But NO. The answer was lunar eclipse. So I emphasized the part that he had wrong by enunciating "LOON ARE eclipse". At which point little miss precocious informed me, "It's 'loon er'. Not 'loon ARE'." Thank you, Emily Post. I told her I was making a point. And that she'd better dummy up, or I would pronounce her name 'Cind EYE'. OK, not exactly, because that's not really her name, but you get my drift. I thought we were cool, dude.

On her way out of the room when the bell rang, as she passed by me in the doorway, she said quietly, "I was just trying to save you from future embarrassment."

Which is just TOO FREAKIN' FUNNY. Because that would be a full-time job.