The Songbook Of My Life

My life is like an Ozark Mountain Daredevils song. Gotcha! I bet you thought I was going to say my life is like a Seinfeld episode, didn't you? Well, tonight it's a song. Those of you unfamiliar with this homegrown southwestern Missouri band may not have heard a little song called "Followin' the Way That I Feel." That's OK. I'll share a bit of the lyrics so you see how my life is just like that song. It goes a little somethin' like this: "Lately I've gone a lot of places, and seen a lot of things I didn't need to see..." Yep. That's my life. Except for the part about going a lot of places, because I don't really go anywhere except to one place, which is work, which is my classroom. And I don't see a lot of things I don't need to see. It's more like every now and then, I hear something I didn't need to hear. So if I were to add this song to the playlist for my garage band, Mommy's Got A Headache, I would sing it like: "Lately I've stayed in one place, and heard a thing or two I didn't need to hear."

Just today, for instance, I heard: "You're going to wash penises and balls, and they're going to be wrinkly, and they're going to be hairy." OK. That's just too much information for me. There I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, telling Hoodrat to take off his hoodie hood because it was black and he was sitting under my old 2007 Far Side calendar cartoons that I stuck on the wall, and he looked just like the Grim Reaper in the one that showed a black-robed family through their picture window, with someone coming up their sidewalk, past their picket fence and mailbox with "The Deaths" painted on it, and the family is saying, "Every time we sit down, there's someone else knocking at the door." Yeah. That's why I told him to take it off, and because a hood is like a hat, and it's against school rules to wear it in the building, and besides, my self-proclaimed favorite, and close personal friend of Hoodrat, had just hollered to me, "Do you see that? Hoodrat is wearing his hood! I think he needs to take it off."

I told Hoodrat to dehood, and that's when I heard it. "You're going to wash penises and balls, and they're going to be wrinkly, and they're going to be hairy." It didn't come from Hoodrat. It came from my self-proclaimed BFF. This is the class that goes to the tech school. They're a good group this year. Two of them who sit right in front of my desk were discussing what their tech school teacher told them today in their CNA class. Somebody had asked a question about what they're going to do when they go to an actual nursing home later in the school year. The answer was that they would be giving baths, and somebody asked about how thorough these baths would be, so the teacher gave a graphic explanation.

I really didn't need to hear that. Then BFF's cousin, who is 10 times louder than BFF, and who sits two rows in front of BFF, heard it, and said, "Yeah. She told us, 'You're going to be washing penises and balls, and they're going to be wrinkly, and they're going to be hairy.' I couldn't believe she said that." Much like myself. I couldn't believe my students were quoting it in my classroom. To add harmony to my song, Self-Proclaimed Favorite said, "Are you going to let them talk that way in your classroom?"

My life. Just like a 30-year-old hillbilly-band song.