Two Balls

The week has gone by fairly quickly. Overall, I'd give the week a 9 out of 10. I got my shoulder mangled with and it's almost entirely better. I had my yearly eye doctor check up and found out that my vision is still correctable. (quite an iffy game with my -10.5 eyesight) I found out that science, that wonderful science, has continued to advance and has yet again come out with an even higher index lens for glasses so that I might stand a chance to wear glasses that don't make me look like a member of the special population. My students took a mock writing test and no one failed. My worst student might be moving to Alaska. FWK's molars finally came in. My tennis match got cancelled on the night that I had my shoulder worked on. The only thing Gus destroyed this week was a pencil. I convinced the parent of the worst case of ADD I've ever seen (who doesn't believe in medication) to go to the doctor today and put her kid on medicine without ever uttering the words "medicine," "doctor," or "your kid is a social retard." All in all a quite satisfying week. And my People magazine is sitting on the coffee table in front of a cozy fire on a rainy 41 degree night. I'm set.

A couple clips from my day:

1. I had all the kids gathered on the floor and I was about to start read aloud when a little boy looked up at me out of the blue and goes, "Do you have any children?" I told him no, that the 44 of them, plus Gus were about all I could handle right now. He thought about that for a minute and then he goes, "So, do you have any grandchildren?" Um hmm. Yeah. You're super-smart.

2. I was sitting in on a novel discussion group, evaluating my students' participation. I always try to sit to the edge of the group, as not to influence their discussion - I like it to be as natural as possible so that I can hear how they're thinking. Today, however, was a bit too natural and I got so tickled that I almost lost it. I'm pretty good at keeping a straight face most of the time, but today just struck me for some reason.
They were talking about the book Maniac Magee, in which a child is orphaned and sent to live with his aunt and uncle who hate each other. They have divided the house in half and had two of everything so they never had to communicate. The boy would take turns eating with them, sleeping on their side of the house, etc.
One of the kids had posed the discussion question, "What would be good about living in that environment?" And another kids blurted out, "You'd get to have two of everything! You'd get to have, like...two balls or whatever!" and all the other kids were immediately rolling on the floor laughing except for him and one other little girl who didn't get the joke. I was feverishly writing comments on another paper and trying to make my mind focus on the formation of letters, meaningful feedback, anything but laughing with these kids! It was horrible. I got a stomachache from trying to keep from laughing. And then had to continue to sit there while the two clueless kids repeated, "What's so funny? Mrs. R! We don't get it! Why are they laughing?" Hee.

Then on the playground a student told me a joke that started out, "A blonde and a brunette were sitting in a bar..." When I was in fourth grade I was only concerned with my plastic charm necklace and what happened the night before on You Can't Do That on Television! Ah, well.