Random Thought Thursday 4/3/08

Random thoughts flit through my mind like gnats around a watermelon-eating contest.

My students think that our school is going to be responsible for the extinction of the common chicken. Chicken nuggets, chicken patty, chicken taco, chicken and noodles have graced the menu this week. Though there are still some kids hankerin' for the chicken-fried steak of several years ago, which I seriously doubt were steak, but just a chicken patty with white gravy.

Speaking of chicken and noodles, I set aside my baloney sandwich today, and went through the tail-end of the lunch line. I think I am as popular with the cooks as Mr S, who gets a stem in his green beans every time. The first one slopped the chicken juice all over another compartment of the tray, saying, "Sorry" to her co-worker but not to me. The next one only gave me ONE breadstick, when we all know that teachers get two. Think she's trying to tell me something? She's the same one who only gives me one peanut butter and syrup sandwich on chili day. Everyone knows that it takes two sandwiches to get one good eatin' out of them. You have to pull off all the dry crust and bread to get to that circular glob of goodness in the centers. Since my compartment was already full of chicken juice, I told her to leave off the green beans. Mr S can thank me tomorrow when he gets two sticks in his green beans. Oh, but what I'm getting at is that all those teachers who cut in the lunch line, and were smugly consuming their chicken, noodles, green beans, breadsticks, and pineapple cup were filled with envy when I pranced out and set down my tray with a piece of white cake with chocolate icing. Uh huh. That's what I'm talkin' about. I scored the leftover cake. Take THAT, you line-cutters. They all commented on my cake, but didn't have the gumption to go get some, having eaten their two breadsticks and green beans and pineapple cup already.

It's surprising that I had an appetite, what with the incident in my class just before lunch. OK, who am I kidding? Mrs. HM always has an appetite. But still, the incident was none too pleasant. I have a RePete that hour. He is usually fairly tame this year, what with capturing a girlfriend in that hour, and not wanting to look the fool in her presence. A roach dared to walk across the room. I'm secretly declaring that it fell off one of the students, because it wasn't there during the first two classes. Anyhoo, a couple of boys said, "Hey! What's that? Get it!" And RePete tried to grab it a couple times, but only turned it back the way it came, and then it hid for a minute under his coat sleeve, and some other kids screamed, "IT'S A ROACH! Just kill it already!" So RePete finally got ahold of it, dangled it by a leg at a girl across the aisle, walked it by my desk, held it out to me, perhaps 12 inches from my face, and took it to the window, where he THREW it out but it bounced off the window frame onto the row of desks I use as lab tables under the window, which infuriated him for some unknown reason, so he stabbed it with his pencil, then tossed it out. Oh, and then he had the nerve to ask for some GermX, but I referred him to the boys' bathroom because I didn't want any bug guts on MY GermX, and he came back in the room shaking water off his hands because I suppose he couldn't figure out how to work the hand dryer thingy. C'mon. You didn't actually think they give kids paper towels to stuff down the toilets, did you?

Which brings me in a strange roundabout manner (yeah, like that's never happened before) to a kid who always asks for help when she doesn't really need it. Today, for example, on two multiple choice worksheets. Don't think that she can't read. She reads quite well from her library book when I am going over material or giving instructions. THREE times, she asked me to tell her how many were wrong on her paper. Kids hardly ever do this. Their science teacher at Basementia would give them one chance to bring up a paper and hear how many were wrong. Not the actual questions that were wrong, just how many. I humored her today. Not because I am kind, but because last time she did that, she ended up changing the wrong ones and missing even more than she would have if she just turned it in. Which is kind of fitting, in my skewed view of the world. Shame on you for trying to get an advantage. Oh, and the reason I thought of her was because at lunch, my cousin mentioned that a kid expected her to stay after school on FRIDAY to explain how to document note-cards for a research paper. It goes without saying, but I will say it because I like to type as much as I like to talk, that the explainin' had already been done in class, and the students had been working on these cards in class and getting feedback all week. So I said, "Don't tell me...it's Unfair Advantage Seeker." And my cousin was like, "How did you know that?" Uh huh. It doesn't exactly take a psychic to catch that one. The thing is, this kid is in a self-proclaimed race for valedictorian with a boy that I have in the same class as her. Keep in mind that they are freshmen, and that this chick is always asking what that dude got on his assignment. I don't tell her, of course. At times, he is kind of careless about turning in his work, but he could think circles around her. We need to snip her apron strings in the bud and wean her off the teat before she racks up some big GPA numbers with this scam she is running. I have decided to stop giving her the 'how many wrong' option. The others don't ask for it.

Who knew my randomness would be so long-winded today?