Random Thought Thursday 3-05-09

HH the scavenger called me this morning while I was trying to make breakfast for myself and The Pony and wake the #1 son from his catatonic slumber. "Guess what I found in the middle of the road?" OK, I'm playing this game...NOT! That's fine, because without skipping a beat, HH let the cat out of the bag. "It's a concrete saw. I bet it costs several hundred dollars." I asked the unnecessary question. "Did you pick it up?" Does a chicken at the Mansion fly out of the dog pen on the very first day and get chewed up by the hounds and then later get used as a weapon to flog said hounds? You bet your a$$ HH picked up that saw. He didn't feel the least bit of remorse. "It probably fell off the truck of somebody who cuts through here. If I didn't pick it up, someone else would." More on this later.

I asked my students about the sub yesterday. It's a little game I call I Can Make You Confess Your Crimes Even Without Any Evidence To Use As Leverage. Perhaps I need to shorten that name before I turn it into a board game and market it at teacher's conventions. "Does anybody have anything they want to tell me before I read the note the sub left me? Anybody? Are you sure?" The sub left me a note that only mentioned one class as being 'a little loud'. I figured everything went well, because the room was not trashed, and nobody tried to tell me a dirty joke that the sub told them. The problem children of the techie variety sang like canaries, especially after I told them, "The sub left me a note with two names on it. Who do you think they are?" All the usual suspects were mentioned. One even confessed that the sub didn't like it when he laid down on the floor to take a nap. Without a doubt, this has got to be the most immature group of 11th graders I have ever encountered in my life. Anyhoo...after major confessions, I filled them in that the two names on the note were the two students who were absent yesterday. Nobody complained. I think they admired my shady tactics.

I had to rename my at-risk class today. I only found this out after I had searched through my old flash drive and found some 4-year-old course descriptions, and updated them, and printed them out, because the principal told me the counselor needed them right now. How dare the State of Missouri take my old course name initials and make a new statewide test by that name. Fie on you, DESE! How very dare you!

I love a good dill pickle.

LunchBuddy said that when the principal brought in her check this morning, one of the kids yelled out, "Do you think gay people are born gay, or they make a choice to be gay?" Apparently, it was a discussion they were having before he walked in. I don't think he gave an opinion. I said, "Well, of course they're born that way. Who would make a choice like that?" LunchBuddy said that's what the kid believed, but his girlfriend argued that "God wouldn't make a person gay." He said, "Why not? God makes people who are handicapped." Then LunchBuddy added that sometimes WE cause people to be born handicapped, according to things we do when we're pregnant. I don't know what she was getting at. Is there a vast conspiracy dedicated to making people gay? That's one I haven't heard about yet.

HH was only concrete-saw rich for a few hours. When he got home, he drove the Scout around asking the neighbors if they lost anything valuable. The neighbor right across the road from us, in the old LandStealer's house, said he lost a concrete saw. Poor HH. I think he is still tasting that sausage from the pot-bellied pets he 'found'.