Learn Me Gooder (26 page)

I love that you’re calling it “Eat some of this!”

Today we finally got to do the thing that you guys assume we do twice a week. We went on our field trip! Four months ago, I never thought this day would get here, but we finally got to leave the school and travel. Our destination was The Science Place, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s a really cool center with lots of hands-on activities, visual aids, and graphic displays. Everyone there seems to have forgotten (or at least forgiven) the whole “Mayonnaise Incident of ‘05,” so there was no problem buying tickets for our large group.

After the bell rang this morning, we didn’t stay long at the school. Mrs. Bird and I took the attendance, collected homework from last night, took care of the kids’ water imbalances (moved some out, moved some in), and sent the students who were staying behind to various classrooms around the school. Lex, Joaqim, Marcus, and Priya all lost out on their chance to go with us. Let it be known that No Child Left Behind does NOT apply to field trips.

We filled up three school buses for the journey to The Science Place. Actually, the REST of the third grade packed into the first two buses, while Mrs. Bird and I rode in comfort and luxury with our classes in the third bus. Or as close as one can possibly get to comfort and luxury inside a loud, stinky, graffitied school vehicle.

The Science Place is in Fair Park, right next door to where the Texas State Fair is held every year. When the enormous Ferris wheel came into sight, I heard several kids gasp, “Oooh!! Six Flags!!”

These are no doubt the same kids who shout, “Oooh!! Disney World!!” every time they see a duck.

During the twenty minute ride, I learned that Jessie is a very intense joke teller. He’s going to tell you a joke, and you’re going to laugh!

His first joke was, “What did the carpet say to the floor?”

I said I didn’t know (a lie, by the way), and he finished, “I’ve got you covered!”

I had barely started to smile when Jessie asked, “Did you get it? Did you get it?”

Far too many jokes followed in this same pattern. In Jessie’s mind, if someone doesn’t immediately chortle, they must not understand the joke.

In the seat behind Jessie, Felipe was making up his own jokes. “What did one dinosaur say to the other dinosaur? I am bigger than you! Said the bigger dinosaur.”

He didn’t seem too concerned about whether his seat buddy got the humor or not.

Once we got there, everyone really enjoyed themselves. There were simple machines to try out, sound and light experiments to play with, restrooms to use – it was like Christmas in May.

Over in the “Health and the Human Body” area, there was a full-sized ambulance, with a “trauma patient” in the back. By the time I wandered over to that area, there were about ten kids in the ambulance, packed into every available space around the gurney, and they were all trying to get their hands on the fake heart stimulator paddles. Clearly, some of these kids have been watching old episodes of ER, because they understand that before you can use these paddles, you have to yell, “CLEAR!” at the top of your lungs. What they DON’T seem to comprehend is the true function of those paddles. In their minds, the object is to strike the patient’s chest as violently as possible with the paddles. How this could possibly aid the recovery of a human being, I don’t understand. But then, I’ve never really understood the mass appeal of Justin Bieber, either.

Lunch was nice and serene, out on the side lawn. After everyone had eaten, though, we found that we had a problem. When we picked up our lunches from the cafeteria in the morning, we also took three coolers full of milk and juice cartons (no stinky strawberry milk). The cafeteria ladies told us not to bring back any of the milk or juice. When lunch was over, one cooler was still filled to the brim, and the other two were more than half full.

A-ha, I thought to myself. I have a mission.

When I asked the kids who wanted another milk or juice, I only got about eight takers. That wasn’t enough to even put a dent in the amount of liquid we had left over. Next, I told the kids that they would really be helping me out, doing me a personal favor, by drinking another milk or juice. To my great surprise, this actually got a lot of response. Pretty soon, the juice was gone and we were down to one cooler, but it was still nearly full, and the kids seemed to be getting lactose intolerant. When I made the discovery that there was a lot more CHOCOLATE milk hidden under a couple of layers of white milk, the kids got motivated again. I can’t believe there are so many milksists at my school!

Nevertheless, I was soon standing over a cooler with about ten cartons of regular white milk in it. Big Jack and Fo’lina had each consumed at least four cartons and were swaying on their feet like punch drunk prizefighters. Nobody else was stepping up to finish the job.

Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. A super-fantastic, genius idea. I reached down into the cooler and pulled out the object I had spied. I held it up over my head and shouted, “Whoever drinks a carton of milk gets a free ice cube!”

The kids closest to the cooler almost got trampled.

All this time, all I needed to do was offer free ice cubes, and my kids would have bent over backwards to learn their lessons? I’ll have to remember that for next year.
Talk to you later,
Ben Afflactose

I like that line. That would look great on a T-shirt.

I’d say Latya tells slightly higher caliber jokes than Jessie (certainly dirtier jokes), but yeah, he does get a little put out if you don’t laugh right away. At least Jessie doesn’t trail off into a mumble at the end of every punch line.

I was talking to Jill on the phone last night, and she told me that her school had a “Dress as Your Favorite Character from a Book” Day. She went to class yesterday dressed as Alice in Wonderland, and she had students dressed as Harry Potter, Marvin Redpost, and Nancy Drew. I think that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were implied.

I told her I would have gone as a Stephen King character – teacher Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone. I wouldn’t be readily identifiable from my clothing, but I could have fun going around shaking kids’ hands and making creepy and eerily accurate prophecies.

“You are going to have a bland hamburger for lunch. You’re going to get put in time out at 2:14. You’re going to fidget.”

I don’t think even Johnny Smith would have been able to foresee the events of today, though. Events involving kids who are mere weeks away from being fourth graders yet who insist on acting like kindergarteners.

Today’s malfeasance occurred in the boys’ bathroom, a well-documented hotspot of foolishness and bad choices. I was standing near the doorways monitoring the kids in the hall, so I did not see what actually happened. I had to go by witness testimony. And never were there three more unreliable witnesses.

Tyler, Eddie, and Amir were the only boys in the bathroom at the time. Tyler and Eddie were the two actually involved in the incident, so they were not inclined to tell the whole truth, and Amir (doesn’t like the feel of paper, keeps a wet stick in his backpack) is just so loopy, I never know if I can take him at his word.

Tyler came running out of the restroom to tell me that Eddie had peed on his shoe. Eddie was right behind him, and HE insisted that Tyler had poured some water on his own shoe.

Tyler’s shoe was definitely wet, but I wasn’t about to get down on all fours and do a taste and smell analysis. Instead, I asked Amir what had happened. According to Amir, here’s what really occurred:

Amir and Tyler were standing at the side-by-side urinals when Eddie came in behind them. Rather than do the logical thing and use one of the four empty stalls, Eddie decided to do the next best thing. Move up uncomfortably close to the two boys and threaten to pee on them if they didn’t move quickly.

Amir took the threat to heart and vacated his spot, while Tyler chose instead to DARE Eddie to go ahead and pee on him.

Unfortunately, Amir did not actually see whether Eddie took the dare, so I had to ponder the available evidence. On the one hand, Eddie had just threatened to urinate on a fellow student, and I’m fairly confident that he lacks the maturity to turn down a dare. On the other hand, Tyler never said, “Simon says, pee on my foot.”

In the end, I found both parties at fault, and “Rover” and “Hydrant” will be spending the next couple of days at their respective homes. Hopefully, with newspaper laid down on the floor.

All in all, we learned two major life lessons today. Lesson #1 – If you do not want someone to pee on your foot, do not DARE them to pee on your foot.

Lesson #2 – One really should not giggle when a student with a heavy Hispanic accent (like Mia) continuously pronounces the word “journal” as “urinal.” The first time she said, “I put my urinal in my desk?” I was a little scared, but now I just have to bite my tongue.

It’s probably a good thing we didn’t do Character Day at my school. Dick and Jane would be fine, but there would have been far too many Spots.
Later,
I. P. Freely

I knew you were going to mention that time Larry threatened to pee on your foot. Or those times, I should say. None of them involving a jellyfish sting.

If we did have a Character Day at my school, I would have to think of something a lot more obvious and youth-oriented than what you suggested. I realize that Atlas Shrugged is your favorite book, but if I wore a T-shirt that said, “I am John Galt,” NO ONE would get that, including most of the other teachers!

Horrible idea! Just terrible! I don’t know why I ever listen to any of your suggestions!

Although your suggestion to get burritos from Freebirds over the weekend was a great one, so forget what I just said.

This morning, Mrs. Fitzgerald called me to say she was running late and to ask if I would get her class started. I quickly got all of my kids into my room, put up a logic puzzle – which they’ve really taken to, by the way – and then picked up Mrs. Fitzgerald’s class. I was down in her room with them for about five minutes until a teacher’s assistant came, then I went back to my own classroom.

When I entered my room, the first thing I noticed was that Charles, who had come in late, looked like he had been in a bar fight. He had a black eye and several bruises on his face. Charles is not the brawling type at all, so I was shocked at his appearance. I asked him, “What happened to you??!?” and he replied, in a very matter-of-fact tone, “Oh, I got my butt kicked by a midget.”

Now THAT’S something you don’t hear every day, Chauncey!

I wasn’t going to be fazed, though. He said it so nonchalantly that I figured I should respond in kind. I just said, “Oh, that’s cool,” as if that was the most commonplace response in the world, then I turned to talk to one of the other children. The whole exchange had taken about four seconds, and in my mind I was wondering, “What. The. Hell????”

I waited until recess to follow up. When I asked him again what had happened, he told me the complete story. Yesterday, he had been at the pool at his apartment, and he had just gotten out and was drying himself off. Some kid, much smaller than him, had come up and said, “You wanna fight?” Charles had shrugged and said, “OK, why not?” Based on his appearance, he had then let the little kid use his face as a punching bag.

I suggested that the next time someone propositioned him with the question, “You wanna fight?” that his answer should be, “No, thank you, I would very much prefer to do something else.”

Something even more surreal (surrealer?) happened after recess, when the class was lined up to take their restroom break. As usual, the boys were as close to resembling an orderly line as Ron Philby is to resembling Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Suddenly, I heard Charles say, “Hey, you know those Subway commercials?”

He then started singing the jingle that goes with those Subway commercials.

“Five... Five Dollar... Five Dollar Foot Looooong...”

Then the surrealest moment of all came – all of the other boys in line started singing the jingle along with him! Suddenly I’ve got this line of ten boys all singing about five dollar foot longs and doing the accompanying hand motions.

I figured that midget must have given Charles a concussion, but did the midget get to ALL the boys in my class?

Moving from surreal to bittersweet, towards the end of the day, we received the results of the TAKS test, and they were pretty much exactly what I had been expecting. I had eight kids that didn’t pass the math test. They weren’t exactly the eight kids that I had expected, though. Two kids that I didn’t think would pass did (nice surprise), and two kids that I thought WOULD pass, did not (not so nice surprise).

Ta’varon missed the passing mark by one question, and Felipe only missed by two. Marcus’s score was in the teens – no surprise there.

On the opposite end, Tomas, Betsy, and Thilleenica each achieved a perfect score.

I took a bit of time and called each student individually up to my desk to share with them how they had done. I gave Antonio an entire stack of food coupons. I told Big Jack repeatedly that he had, in fact, done good. I let Chassany stare unabashedly at my hair while I told her she had passed.

When I was done speaking with all of them, Temperance raised her hand and asked, “When we come to school tomorrow, will we be in fourth grade?”

I replied, “Sure, and I will have ascended to Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.”

I didn’t really say that, but I did gently let Temperance and the class know that they still had to finish the rest of the third grade year. I didn’t mention that Mrs. Bird and I HAD joked earlier in the week about printing up fliers that said, “Last day of school – May 21st.”