Careful, I Might Hear You

Tap, tap. Is this thing on?

Is everybody as busy as I am this week? I have been thrashing just to keep my head above water. Tuesday, I found out some new things are expected to be done within the next 6 weeks. So I'll be staying after school every day until 5:00 to get them finished. Like I did this week. Hey! Did you know that when you stay after school until 5:00, then get home and cook supper, and check the kids' homework, and make lunches, and wash dishes, and throw in a load of laundry, and pay the bills, and lay out the clothes for the next day, and do the routine school work that you brought home because there wasn't time after school...the day is pretty much gone, and it's midnight, and you have to go to bed whether you've gotten everything done or not? And that the 30 minutes you stole for blog time could better have been used elsewhere?

The students have been teaching me about life. You are justified in complaining that your laptop needs a new motherboard and more memory and it will cost you about $150. The laptop that you got for absolutely free when you asked a friend's mom if they had any desktops they wanted to sell, and you heard his dad in the background yell, "We've got that laptop. Just give it to him."

It's good to have a girl that you cheat on your girlfriend with, even after you marry your girlfriend, because then you don't have to worry about getting kicked out. You'll have somewhere to go. But make sure you get an extra girlfriend with her own place, and a car, or you won't really be any better off than you were alone.

Your girlfriend better not get pregnant, because this would be a hard time to raise a kid. You plan to go to college, and that would ruin it, especially if you're still in high school and have a kid. You might even want to kick your girlfriend in the stomach, or grab her around the shoulders and fall down the stairs, because that would be an accident. Or you could just buy an abortion pill. But the stair-faller declared that is just wrong. He could never do anything like that.

Sometimes a girl needs to get a new boyfriend. Especially if the old one slams her phone down on a desk at summer school, so it is cracked to pieces, with acid leaking out of it, and says, "Here's you phone!" And besides, he doesn't even have a job, and you work, and always give him money, and he treats you bad. Sonny there would treat you better than that. Except that Sonny says, "Hey! Don't go talkin' like that! I don't want to get killed by Ex if you break up with him!" The girl thinks she needs to get a new boyfriend first, a subject on which there is disagreement, what with the females saying no, you need to get rid of him, then get a new boyfriend. You shouldn't leave one for the other, because then Ex will think it is the guy's fault, not YOU that want to break up with him. Apparently this has been discussed many times before, with the girl declaring, "You are the third teacher today telling me that I should break up with him." Some people hear what they want to hear, I suppose.

Myself, I hear what I don't want to hear. Like all that stuff above, as they are supposed to be doing their bellringer, but apparently they can write and talk at the same time, while I am taking roll. And it's not the first time I have made the comment to a student, "You don't have to settle for that. You are worth more than that. Look out for yourself." Which in my opinion is not advice to break up with your boyfriend, but common sense for life. If you work two jobs, and give half your money to a parent who goes to a gambling boat every day, and the other half to a boyfriend who buys a truck with it, then what are you working for?

I know what I am working for. A Mansion with a spanking new outhouse. HH and the #1 son are going to dig the hole after supper. I suppose there will be a christening of sorts, though I seriously doubt that a bottle of champagne will be involved. I don't really want to think about it.