Full Moon Spring Fever

Have you noticed, it's full moon time again? I have. Kids are flipping out right and left. It's not just that Spring has sprung. No. The lions are not going out like lambs. They need taming. Chair and whip circus-style taming. Because they've lost their heads. I can't imagine what they're thinking. But they tell me. Or show me.

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Why do you have your cell phone out? (I didn't actually see a cell phone. I saw a kid turned sideways, looking down near his waist. That's a tell. I fished him in with that baiting question.)

I got a text.

Bring me the phone. (Wasn't that deceptively easy? No argument. No lying. Just an explanation.)

It was a text from my dad!

Put it on my desk. (Like that makes it OK. Like phone usage in class is perfectly all right, as long as it is with a parent. Because obviously, parents don't want you to get an education, really, but are just utilizing their tax-paid babysitting service, and need you to respond to them while they are working. Ha ha. Who are we kidding? Parents? Working?)

Leave it there. Because you admitted it and brought it right up, and I haven't caught you before, you can have it back after the bell. Next time, it goes to the office. (I am tired of being the phone police.)

Thank you. I won't do it again.

**That was my second phone this week. The first one was a repeat offender. It went to the office for parent pick-up after school.**

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Today there was the incontinent purse episode.

Why is there a puddle around your purse?

What? What do you mean?

That lake of liquid surrounding your purse? Can you explain that?

Ooohhh. It must be my bottle of water.

Not any more. Get something to clean that up!

How am I going to do that?

You don't expect ME to do it, do you?

No. It's just that there are no paper towels in the bathroom. (No. Only blowers. Because you stuff paper towels in the sink and toilet hoping for FEMA to toss money from the sky.)

Then go find a custodian and see if he will give you some of those brown paper towels out of the closet. (Which resulted in two custodians and a student helper parading into my classroom like we had just called GhostBusters. One carried the mop, one used the mop, and one was an appreciative audience.)

**Don't even get me started on this beverage bust. I think we should go back to the rules that still stand, as far as I know, but are not enforced no matter how hard you try, just ask Mrs. NotACook about her experience, that we had when we first busted that champagne bottle over Newmentia's bow, that NO student beverages may be brought into the building or taken out of the cafeteria, because how do we know, really, what those little whippersnappers have put into an open container that they carry around and swill from willy-nilly, though not in my classroom without a kerfluffle.**

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And for the record, a F I G H T is when two or more people pummel each other, not when one person flings himself at a seated person after the dismissal bell and whales on the unsuspecting victim until stopped by another. No fight. No glory. Just an assault with battery, no justification, no matter what the whalee might have said about the whaler's momma. This is not the wild west. It's just another day in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's Ultimate Fighting Championship Arena.