Money Balls

My money woes continue. I can't keep it off of me. I found that $109 worth of winners from the LSUV, and cashed them in Monday evening. I spent $50 of it on 6 tickets, and took the rest in cash. And we won $150! Now I have to take that back and cash it in. It's like one step back, and two steps forward, by cracky! I must strike while the iron is hot. It's all or nothing with me. One year, I played from February until September on $10 worth of tickets that Mabel gave me for my birthday. I'd say she got her money's worth. And speaking of Mabel's money...I forgot to take her $4 of PowerBall winnings to work Monday. Shame on me. I'm good for it, Mabel. I put it in your mailbox this morning.

On Monday, I did not want to check out my new textbooks and start a chapter. I opted for a writing assignment. We do them every week, you know. It's writing across the curriculum. I called this one Science/Fiction. It had to be a fictional story about an invention pertaining to some branch of science. I had wanted to call it Unwanted Gifts, but that did not suit my subject matter. To get the ball rolling, I told the students to think of a time that they, or someone they knew, had gotten a gift that they really did not like. I gave them a scrap of paper to write it down, and then collected the folded papers. Then I told them MY unwanted gift, and explained the rest of the assignment.

My gift was just this Christmas: a bottle of Resolve cleaning spray. Yeah. Thanks, Mom. So I explained that I couldn't make lemonade out of that Resolve, but perhaps I could tinker with it, and change its chemical composition, and turn it into a gasoline additive to increase gas mileage. Then I would be famous. I might win a Nobel Prize. Matt Lauer would interview me on the Today Show, and I could say anything I wanted on live TV. Like "My mother gave me Resolve for Christmas." That should get even with her!

Once the kids understood the premise, it was gift-giving time. Yes. We exchanged unwanted gifts. Some of those gifts were worse than Resolve: a jar of olives, a fan, socks, a can of corn, a little kid's make-up set, an oven mitt, 5 bottles of Listerine, a stick of Sam's Choice deodorant, a lamp, a box of Styrofoam peanuts, a broken game, a pack of balloons, a toothpick, a can of air.

Some inventions were used to help mankind. Such as 'Meal-in-a-Balloon', which could be sent around the world to starving nations. Or Sock Puppet, which turned out much better than sock hats or sock mittens, because you can make a stage and bring joy to the world. Or the make-up concoction which can make people or objects invisible, so soldiers can fight without being shot at. Or the baby's chew toy made of Styrofoam peanuts and not-famous glue.

OK, I had to draw the line with that last one. Everybody agreed that neither Styrofoam nor not-famous glue would be a good thing to go in a baby's mouth, even if the baby couldn't bite a piece off. As I told the little inventor, "Oh, you'd be famous alright. You'd be the famous baby-killing Styrofoam-and-glue inventor. I'm sure you'd be on the news." After that little infanticide faux pas, I really needed to sit down on my beach chair with attached fan, pop open a nice cool Dr. Olive, and reminisce about the ease of cleaning my oven with that magical Monopoly money cleanser.

A couple of classes could only think of themselves. Mankind is on his own. For example, Sam's Choice deodorant can be made into a hair-growing paste. The inventor reveled in the nice, thick hair under his arms. He called a press conference, and rubbed that paste on his chest. It got hairier than Bigfoot. And he was voted 'Sexiest Man in the World'. Forget making money off of bald men jonesin' for some hair. This dude was all about the FAME. A girl used her hand soap to create 'Instant French Manicure Soap'. In her words..."Yay, me! I can't believe I can get a French manicure just by drying and washing my hands! I have to call my BFF!" Who was so excited that she called 911, and of course they sent the news team. Or the guy who hated the shirt he got so much that he threw it across the room and found that it hung itself on a hanger. He took it to school, and the same thing happened. He went on tour. Teams of scientists studied that shirt, but couldn't find out what made it hang itself up. He was offered 2, 3, 4, 30 million dollars for that shirt, but he turned it down. That's how he became famous--for turning down $30 million. Then he was killed in a freak frying-pan accident, and became a legend. So I asked him what happened with that frying pan, and he said, "My wife was so mad that I wouldn't take the 30 million that she hit me in the face with a frying pan." Oh.

I could go on, but the point is, it passed the time quickly on the first day back, the kids were excited by it, they all got some writing practice, and they even talked about it outside of class. I know that, because every time I mentioned the beautiful silver paint with yellow flecks, somebody in each class shouted, "Carl's can of corn!"

Today was a bit anticlimactic. All I overheard was that a guy's mom was buying his truck balls for him, because they're expensive, and he doesn't have a job, and his girlfriend can't afford his balls.